A Family History

At first, Camp Tecumseh was a place that we loved to visit. Mom and Dad say that we have a "family history" with camp.

It all started when our mom was 11 years old. Her parents heard about Camp Tecumseh from some of their friends and decided to send Mom for a week. She loved it! She came back every summer for the next five years.  Our Uncle Brian and Aunt Kristin were campers too.  Here's a picture of Mom with Uncle Brian during their second summer at camp:

  When Mom was in college, she applied to work at Tecumseh as a summer camp counselor. She says that it was her dream to work there! She was a counselor for four summers. She also worked weekends in the fall and spring. After she and Dad met at their college, she told him that he should come to camp too--so he did! They worked as counselors together.  Here's a picture of when Grandpa came to visit Mom and Dad at a campfire:

Even after they were too old to be counselors anymore, Mom and Dad still loved camp. They went back at least once a year to visit. They also went sometimes to work on service projects or to chaperone retreats. Mom was a teacher, and she took her student clubs for retreats at Camp Tecumseh too. When Mom chaperoned a Student Council retreat at camp, Bryn got to go for the first time--inside Mom's belly!

  

Bryn came to camp again when she was 9 months old. This was because Mom was in charge of another Student Council retreat. Bryn even got to spend the night in a cabin! Here you can see baby Bryn hanging out with some of Mom's students:

When Bryn was one and a half, she got to go visit her very first campfire. She loved all the songs and silly skits... but most of all, she loved kicking a ball through the big, open field in River Village. Shay is inside Mom's belly in these pictures:

When Shay was eight months old and Bryn was two and a half, Mom took them to camp's Annual Meeting. She said it was important that they kept up with all the news at camp.... but Bryn was way more interested in playing checkers with the executive director's daughter, Katie:

When Shay was one and Bryn was three, camp turned 85 years old! There was a big celebration, and lots of people who loved camp got to go visit for the whole weekend. We saw some of Mom and Dad's old friends. We also loved going down the big Black Hole slide--we rode on sleds to go really fast! Bryn got to go on her first trail ride.... and she liked it so much that then she took a second one! We also loved the animals on the mini-farm.

Liam made his first trip to camp when he was less than three months old. That summer, Bryn was four and Shay was two. We got to explore all of camp, see lots of nature, eat in the dining hall, and see a really funny campfire. Shay also got to go on her first horse ride, but Liam just had to ride on Dad in the baby carrier.

   

After that, Mom and Dad went to visit camp a few times without us--they were meeting with the executive director about a job for Dad. Just after Liam turned one, we packed up our house in Indianapolis and moved to Camp Tecumseh!

A little over a year after we came to camp, our baby brother Aiden was born.  So he's REALLY a "camp kid"--he has never lived anywhere else!

If you'd like to see more pictures of our family at camp, you can view them here in a Flickr album.