A Month of Holly

This SUMMER good ole' Toots went to overnight camp in the heart of the western North Carolina mountains for 28 days. Camp Merri-Mac located in Black Mountain, NC. This was the most highly anticipated event on her yearly calendar.

As I had done last year, I prepared her "camper correspondence" ahead of time, so that contacting her family would be within the realm of possibilities. Last year, I dreamed BIG and copied my friend, Amy's idea and had cute stationary printed up with Holly's name and camp address on note card and prepared the envelopes for the countless letters that she would be writing. ha.

I got smart this year and printed POSTCARDS. Again, totally stealing my friend, Amy's postcard idea for her girls for summer camp 2011. Toots and I made a deal...if she wrote me 3 postcards a week for four weeks, I would take her to Costco and buy her this GINORMOUS STUFFED TEDDY BEAR...that I really, really, really, really, really didn't want to buy or have it come live in my house and in her room. I want to be clear on my feelings towards this BEAR. Too damn big. Toots had 40 postcards stamped and ready for action. 12 for me. 28 for various friends and family. The race for the BEAR was on.....

Before I begin--I would like to point out that these A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E. postcards were designed by Laura Spence, as in Boom, my creative genius, sister-in-law. Merri-Mac divides the girls into 3 INDIAN TRIBES: Choctaw, Iroquois, and Seminoles. Each sporting their own colors, songs, cheers, chants, CLOTHING, and accessories. Toots is a Seminole. Their colors are navy and gold, but the gold looks more yellow to me at times. We weren't able to get the navy and gold but we did get blue and yellow. The motto "Not Words, But Actions," speaks for itself.

On the backside of said postcard--we have the Seminole Crest and Holly's camp address.

Note: From my Bunk at Merri-Mac

I.LOVE.THESE.POSTCARDS.SO.MUCH. THANK YOU BOOM.

When Holly whipped these adorable postcards out of her trunk--her counselors thought they were the BOMB. As she says in her first postcard, "they think my postcards are like GOLD or something."

Off to a good start. Postcard on Day One. Surpasses any dream from last summer.

Notice that she is a 15 word and done type of postcard writer.

Again--the 15-16 word range. But the addition of color.

At this point, MY DAILY EMAILS that I scribe to her that are newsy and rather longish epistle types of ditties...begin to say: WRITE ME MORE WORDS and tell me what is going on, please.

Must've been a rainy day at camp. See water stains. However, I learn that she has a nickname and that she prances around her cabin like Bambi. Stellar.

In this postcard she is directly answering questions from my daily emails.

Session one ended. Session two began. Toots's 3 school friends--LEAVE Camp. Out of a cabin of 20 girls--17 leave and 3 remain as MONTHERS. Please note: Toots referenced the campers as going into "histarics" (hysterics) I am blown away by vocabulary. I am also enrolling her in after school writing technique tutoring this fall. omg.

"tray-po" is TRADING POST. The DAILY onslaught of sugar that they buy after rest period. Toots lived for tray-po. Pictures taken at camp often showed her consuming large quantities of skittles, sodas and candy. NICE.

She switched things up with this one. Scribbled out my name and wrote BURKE. love it. I think Burke wrote her one email. Hmph.

They were a messy group of girls both sessions. They lost tray-po often. Poor Toots.

You are going to have to take my word for it that I got 2 more postcards. I'm showing 10 but I got 12. I can't seem to find them as I write this and even if I did my scanner is giving me fits and won't scan onto my Mac. Only my PC and that is cheesing me off greatly.

Toots ended up sending 42 postcards. She managed 2 more mystery postcards with postage and addresses. I was impressed.

Guess What? Somebody got to go to COSTCO. Somebody got to pick out the world's biggest bear in the GALAXY. Groan.

Big dumb Bear.

See what I'm talking about?

They deserve each other. Until I yard sale it or give it to Goodwill when she's not looking.

I'm looking forward to next year's postcards. I truly enjoyed my month of Toot's postcards. And from the mobile snapshots of postcards that people sent me, it seems the other 28 postcard recipients enjoyed their's too.