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Home from 4 nights at family camp at Camp Laurel in Maine.  Big fun this year!!  Lots of friends, time together, activities, campfires, and one very tired family.  We drove back home in tropical storm Irene and it was a non-event.  Lots of cute stories, but most of this year's uniqueness centered around Owen's obsession with a 5 year old girl named Clover.  They always like to hang together at church-related events, but this year at camp he became fanatical.  Clover was mostly receptive of his attention and they spent 3/4 of the week happily together, but sometimes she needed more space than he was willing to give so we had to have some talks with a very frustrated boy about being a gentleman.  Who knew we'd be dealing with this at 4 years old?!  As an indication of how serious his attentions became, he woke from a nap one day a bit woozy and instantly sat up saying, "Clover!  Clover!  Where is Clover?"  It's very funny that they picked each other because they are uncannily alike (don't complements usually attract?).  Very adventurous, talkative, strong-willed and full of ideas.  They were not always the best influence on each other.  Clover has a wandering habit, and while Owen is usually trustworthy about not wandering off, one time a small search party had to go looking for them and it turned out they'd wandered off together to go find a tree to climb.  When scolded, Owen insisted ad nauseum, "But MOM, Clover knows ALL the inches of family camp!"  It was clear who was boss in the relationship...Owen doesn't accept 'no' happily from many people, but took whatever lumps Clover was handing out.  Owen:  "Clover knows how to find trees to climb for us, but she doesn't let me climb them."  Clover:  "I can make him into mashed potatoes."

Here are a couple pictures of joyful Owen, now barely big enough to attempt the (30 ft?) climbing wall.  Well, he was basically hoisted by the staff worker...but he had a blast and felt like big stuff :)