The dirtiest week of my life...

Muddy Buddy Richmond 2008 --photo by brightroom.com.
This past week I definitely earned my "Earth Mother" nickname.
I finished the week teamed up with Bill at the Muddy Buddy race in Richmond. We had a great time mountain biking and running the 6 mile course and then slithering through the mud pit. We even had a decent finish time placing us almost in the middle of our age group. Special thanks to Grandma Linda for watching the girls and to our biggest fans...Steph, Casey, and Griffin for braving the sun, mud, traffic, and sweat to attempt to see us finish.

Earlier that week, I volunteered as a full time Unit co-leader for Camp Claude Moore. This was a week long, all-day girl scout camp held exclusively outdoors (rain or shine---and of course there was rain) The "plan" called for Kristen to join the Tag-a-longs unit and play blissfully all day with other volunteers' children who weren't old enough to join the other units. Lauren would be in a unit that I was not involved in leading. My unit leader would have everything under control and would just need support moving gear, setting things up, refilling the water jug, etc. She and I would take our eager campers to exciting centers and return 45 minutes later to help get the group to the next center. Ahhhh.

This is how it really went...
Shortly after dropping off my children at the area designated for volunteer's kids on the opposite end of the park, I joined my unit and forty minutes later we joined all the campers at morning flag. The first order of business at flag was the auctioning off of Lauren (and only Lauren) in front of the 300+ campers because her unit leader never came to claim her. Not the most auspicious start to the week. After flag we took our unit to a center and my unit leader, aka The Invisible Woman, asked if I would mind if she ran back to her car. This would be the first in a long line of requests to part company. Shortly after she disappeared, I heard over the the walkie talkie that Kristen was crying and the tag-a-long leader was trying to locate me. @$%#$%@#%#$!!! I tried in vain to communicate via the walkie-talkie and finally made the decision to run over and check on her. I handed over all the allergy medicines and Epi-pens for the unit to another adult on the scene and promised to return shortly. I sprinted about a half mile to the tag-a-long area to discover that Kristen had been moved to another area to talk to the "head honcho" of the camp. I continued my sprint to that area moving even further from my unit. I finally located her and was told that they were trying not to involve me and attempting to get it worked out. Well, TooOOooOOooo LATE!! Kristen and I negotiated a return to her unit which involved a frozen treat. Back I sprinted to my unit.
20 minutes later...repeat.
20 minutes later...repeat,
except that I decided to bring her back to my unit and she could be a REAL tag-a-long. I later discovered that she needed to go to the bathroom and no one was going to convince her to use the porta-potty. Once we located an acceptable spot in the woods, things improved markedly. Several of the campers in my unit LOVED carrying Kristen around and Kristen loved all the attention. I flicked two deer ticks off my leg, wiped the sweat from my brow, visited the hot and stinky porta-john and thought to myself...isn't this grand? Things were looking up.

The week continued and brought torrential downpours with no cover in sight, campers' parents coming 40 minutes after camp was over, multiple bug bites covering my limbs, complaining campers, center leaders chastising me for not having "control" of my unit, Kristen hanging all over me and refusing to cooperate, blah blah, blah. I capped off the week by thoroughly embarrassing myself performing the Cotton Eye Joe-Cupid Shuffle-Macarena-Electric Slide medley alongside my campers in front of all the parents. If you have no idea what I'm talking about...you need to spend some time with 5th and 6th grade girls.

I can't wait to sign up for next year.