Cousin’s Camp
The theme is selected! T-shirts have been ordered! Craft materials are being purchased! Prizes are being collected!
It’s that time of year again — time for Cousin’s Camp at our house. In case you’re wondering what Cousin’s Camp is – here’s your answer. Cousin’s Camp is a gathering of all of our grandchildren at our house for a weekend of fun, food (physical and spiritual), and a little bit of foolishness. I borrowed the idea from my dear friend and sister in Christ, Sheila Butt, and tweaked it a bit to fit our family.
Why have it? I wanted to make sure that our grandchildren would get to spend quality time with their cousins. You see, since our daughter is married to a preacher and our son is a preacher, they don’t often live close enough to each other (or us) to spend much time together. It has become one of our favorite times of the year even though our grandchildren are getting older.
We usually try to have our camp soon after the end of the school year and before church camp weeks begin. For those of you who have never heard of this, or have asked me about it, I thought I might give you a few details of what goes into this camp.
Our camp is usually held on Memorial Day weekend and begins on Thursday afternoon and ends with lunch on Monday. The rest of that weekend is packed with fun, games, crafts, chores, cabin (bedroom) clean-up, rest time, meals, devotionals, singing, worship on Sunday, and lots of other special activities.
Our camp staff consists of Grampy as Camp Director, our daughter and daughter-in-law as Camp Counselors, our oldest grandson as Junior Counselor, and Grammy as chief cook and bottle washer. Our campers consist of our four other grandchildren.
A schedule is made out and posted on a large piece of foam board so the campers can know what is coming up that day. The schedule is not so rigid that we can’t adjust it, but it does help to keep things on track so we get to do all we want to do at camp.
Each year has a theme, and this year’s theme is “Family Fun.” We will be working on enjoying our time together as a family while we teach lessons like being a good sport and helping others who may not be so good at some of the same things you are. We will have a tournament board to keep scores for the games and prizes will be awarded for winners (Dollar Tree is great for this).
One larger craft is usually done by the campers, to have something to take home with them as a reminder of this particular cousin’s camp. One year we painted T-shirts. On other years we have done family trees on canvas, picture frames on window panes which held pictures of them as they were growing up, photograph albums containing pictures of their parents when they were their age, and other ideas like these.
One of their favorite things to do began about two years ago. Our theme that year was “Discovery,” and it centered around discovering your family roots. Since both sets of their grandparents are buried in the same cemetery not far from where we live, we loaded everyone up and took everything we needed to clean the stones and put out new flowers for Memorial Day. Then we told them the story of how their great-grandparents met and married. We took pictures of them standing beside their graves stones with the new flowers. When the next year rolled around, they all wanted to know if they could go to the cemetery again and put out the new flowers. I can’t even describe for you the emotion Jim and I felt when they asked that question.
One of my personal favorite parts of Camp is the evening devotional. Jim does the first one on Thursday night, and then our three grandsons each take a night and present a devotional while one of the others leads the singing and the prayer. The thought and preparation that they put into their devotionals is an inspiration to me. To see them all listening so closely to what is said and then singing and praying together really fills my heart with joy.
There’s so much more I could write about Cousin’s Camp, but this post would be way too long!!! Contact me anytime you want more information.
Let me end by saying…
Four days. Laughter and tears. Hard work. Memories galore. Immeasurable love. Exhaustion overload.
Grandchildren who have memories they will never forget in this life.
Grandparents who have hearts full of love for five special grandchildren.
A Father in Heaven who watches over all of us.
“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4).
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AUTHOR: Donna Faughn
