Horse Camp

They say that a mistake you learned from and never repeated is worth making, but there most certainly are things that I never seem to learn. There is also a Finnish saying, or more of a question we tend to ask when one does not learn from repeated experiences: “Oletko kastemato?” It translates loosely to asking if someone is an earthworm, referring to the rather simple structure of the nervous system of this creature. Not quite mistakes, but there are events that seem to catch me by surprise every year. Usually these things are in relation to my children, or to be more precise the society we live in and they repeatedly show my lack of ability to maintain knowledge of some of these parenting related events.

This morning it hit me when I was driving my kids to school and saw a little sign at the roadside. On that sign it said; “register now! Summer camp registration is open!” – that’s the moment when I mentally slapped myself wondering how I was able to forget AGAIN something this elemental. The fact that there is a summer, and that you need to register these munchkins for summer camps in January.

See, summer isn’t quite on my radar in January as I have just survived the holidays and I’m trying to gain full speed heading down those six months before summer, also referred to as winter and spring. I’m thankful for that little sign, as I would have forgotten otherwise. I opened my laptop at a coffee shop and started picking camps and paying deposits. Needless to say, some of the camps were already full as not all parents forget, but I did manage to get the most important one, Hogwarts Horse Camp in August. For the price I paid for that, you'd wish it was at the real Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but no, we had to settle with Girl Scouts of Western Washington. 

I make another mental note knowing that I will still forget come January 2019. If you are a parent, and equally forgetful. It’s time. It’s time start thinking about summer camps. 

Horse Camp 2017