Thursday, August 31, 2006

The "Not my sister "award

We vacation in Michigan every summer for the past 19 years at a place called Michigania http://alumni.umich.edu/michigania_camp/schedule.php.
Our kids loved it so back we would go.

Our daughter loved it so much, she has actually worked there for the past 2 summers.
(This summer she was the director of Nature.)

Part of the experince of Michigania for the little ones, is earning awards that you receive on Friday before you leave on Saturday.
Let me assure you that this is a BIG deal for the under 10 crowd. If your kid doesn't receive one, the ride home on Saturday is TORTURE. My kids over the years have received the most interesting/boring/funny awards.

I never knew how much effort it cost the counselors(ie the daughter) to come up with these awards and try and make sure that the little ones all get something from at least one area.

Adults even get awards for funny things. One year, there was a group of campers that sunk a sail boat-a pretty BIG sailboat- and their award was something like.... "The campers least likely to be invited back to the sailing area" award.
So you get my drift on these awards.

This summer, we were at camp with my nepwhew and his fiance. His fiance looks more like a family member than the nephew since she is very tall. When we went looking at colleges, she went with the daughter and I and every where we went, they all thought I had twins entering college....Poor fiance had already graduated from COLLEGE and was not amused that they thought she was a high schooler...but she took it with good grace.
So we are at camp and most of the campers realize that the daughter is the director of Nature and then they see the fiance walking around camp and ask her many questions about the Nature program and what time the Nature activites happen. After the first few times, she started giving them bogus times as is was just easier than saying "umm..... I'm not the director of Nature."
This happened all week, every day.
Friday comes, and the daughter is up giving out all her little awards and finally got to the last one.
(some of her awards are "the best rock polishier" "the best leaf print T-shirt maker" "the best cricket catcher(to feed the snakes with)" "the best bunny holder/ petter/ etc" "the most consistent trail hiker" and so on and so forth.

she started with "I have never given this award before and I probably won't have to ever again.... I am an only daughter, I have 2 brothers, no sisters, you can ask my mom -she is right over there.
"The NOT my sister award" goes to M********, my almost cousin, fiance to my cousin, D*****."

Lots of clapping as she goes to get her award and -no joke here- 4 people turned to me while they were side by side and said
"she's joking right? They really are sisters aren't they?"

some people just don't listen.

1 comment:

MotherOf3Guys said...

We know what that feels like when they say,"You must be sisters", "you look like twins," " or when they come up and start talking to you, thinking they are talking to your sister! At least we really ARE sisters! Pretty ironic that they look some much alike, and that they soon will be related by marriage.