Summer must be coming soon...

Hey, The St. Pete Times linked to our R.V. vacation last summer on the front page today.



Good times...

(I wonder if it will be in print tomorrow?)

Whoa Momma needs summer camp feedback

(Cross-posted from Whoa Momma!)

I did laundry every day last week when my older son was at the Boyd Hill Nature Preserve Pioneer Camp. If you are familiar with it, the kids who attend the camp are generally dirty every day and then get hosed down at the end of the day. So every day he was soaking wet after playing in the mud, getting in the line of fire of squish (it's rotten food than is basically squished by a sledgehammer) or going through the pudding gauntlet. It used to be the pudding pole but the gauntlet is fun too, only maybe dirtier.

And even though I was tired of the daily laundry routine by the end of the week, for the third year in a row my son was as happy as a clam. He couldn't wait to get there every day and when my husband picked him up, he couldn't wait to talk about the expolits, whether he worked in leather, made a shelter with a team of kids or learned a new joke or riddle. If I had some stock in Tide, I would probably send him every week each summer.

So, now we want to hear from you. A few weeks before school ended, Go Momma ran an extensive list of bay area summer camps. But that's only part of the information we want to give you. We want to be able to share what other parents and kids thought about the camps. We want you to tell us about your child's summer camp experience. Did she love it so much she can't wait to get back next year or next week? Or would she rather stay home alone than go one more day? Do your feel like you are getting your money's worth or will you look elsewhere next time? Does it offer extra care or are you out of luck when noon hits? We want to know everything, so Mommas and Poppas, please fill out this questionnaire on your child's camp experience and let us know what you think. Once we have gathered your tales from summer camp, we will share them with readers in the coming weeks.

Thanks in advance for your help. Here's to lots of laundry in your future.

-- Sherry Robinson

*Please leave your thoughts here.

I won a Pulitzer!*

*Well, not yet, exactly.

But the fine newspaper, The St. Petersburg Times, in which I regularly contribute non-Pulitzer writing did win 2 this year, so I figure perhaps that means that I can vicariously celebrate in a non-contractual, contributing freelancing sort of way.

Congratulations to the real writers out there.

If I've ever asked you to pick one up in car line, I didn't mean you...

Sunday's paper. My first feature. Happiness.

I need to clear up something here because it's come up with my friends and I feel bad--this article wasn't directed at you! It's for the strangers that feel the need to comment on my ovary production at every flippin' inappropriate moment, not to people that actually know me. So, really, I wasn't talking about you--just the creepy guy behind you. :)

I'm just now catching up on all of the very nice emails and comments I have received. Yesterday, I was in an ibuprofen-induced stupor because of some crazy shoulder thing that has the right side of my body paralyzed. It was either from swinging a baseball bat the day before with the kids, or all of the worry I've had over this piece concentrated in a large knot in my hypothalamus.