Big City Advantages

As much as I miss my home and life in Taos, I am appreciating some of the things that the "Big City" has to offer.

One of them is summer camps for the kids.  My little son went to Y camp (YMCA) for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and today he will be leaving for Church camp.  He loved the Y camp, and now I'm hoping he'll love Church camp as well.  It's Camp St. Nicholas up at Frazier Park above L.A.

St. Luke (our parish in Garden Grove) has a bus that will be leaving right from our Church parking lot after Church today.  The bus will take them straight up to camp.  This is the same arrangement we had when my boys were little and they went to camp right from Holy Virgin Mary's parking lot up in L.A.  My boys have fond memories of those camp days, and now it's my little one's turn for building memories.

This time we have an added advantage.  My brother and his wife also grew up at St. Luke's, and the friends they made there are still very much a part of their life.  Every year since they've been married (maybe longer?) they have gotten together every summer with all their friends and gone camping at the beach.  All of their kids have grown up together and of course are part of these yearly camping adventures, but the group has grown to include extended families of everyone -- which includes us.  This group has grown from about 15 people or so to now around 200 people!

We've gone camping with them once before because we were down here at the right time, and this year we will also be going.  The advantage this time will be that my little son will be part of all the kids who just got back from Camp St. Nicholas, so hopefully he will have gotten to know some of the kids at Church a bit better -- and maybe even found a buddy or two that he likes to hang with.

I can only hope.  He has found a couple of friends to hang with from high school, but it would be nice to have some friends from Church.