4H Youth Show 2015

Our homeschooling group, the one we gather with once a week, sometimes more, to pool our energies and gather in enough numbers to take classes and go on field trips, is ostensibly a 4H club. I, ostensibly, am their 4H club leader. In our group that's not a big job. Most of our members don't even seem to know that they belong to a 4H club, so that makes my job easy. But over the two years I've had the job, I've slowly gotten to know the 4H machine better and better, and most of what I've learned is really great.

First, while most people when they hear 4H think cows, pigs, and sheep (oh my!), there's really a lot more to the group than that. 4H is really just a state run umbrella group for all kinds of clubs. As the parent group, 4H provides registration assistance, insurance, and even sometimes monetary support to the clubs that pay their nominal dues. So there are all kinds of clubs under the 4H umbrella, including dog training clubs or word working clubs in addition to the standard young farmer or horse clubs. There's our rather substantial homeschooling club, for instance, and at least one other club that resembles more a boy scout type assembly than a farm hand guild. It takes all kinds, and the varieties are far reaching.

Second, once you've paid your dues through your own parent club (for us that's our homeschooling group), you may participate in any other 4H club or activity for which you are otherwise elligible. The door is wide open! Come check it all out! Both this and last year, Calvin participated in our local 4H archery club, where, for just $1 per Tuesday evening, he got to borrow their equipment and their expertise for two hours of archery fun. They also offer classes or workshops throughout the year. Next year we're thinking about taking part in the photography workshops. And the 4H mother office is considering adding some fine arts classes or clubs, including creative writing, theater, and music. I know he'd love that.

The 4H year is wrapped up late every July, just before the August last hurrah vacations and the beginning of a new school year. The wrap up consists of a week of activities that show off what the kids have learned or accomplished during the year. There is a day of still project showing (those being anying that does not include livestock in some way), a variety of contests and competitions throughout the week (some including livestock, some not), and a final fun day of tournaments and silly races. Calvin showed woodowrking, photography, poetry, and educational wildlife notebooks as still projects this year. He participated in the make something out of foam scraps challenge, and competed in the archery tournament. He also got a little crazy in the end of the week olympic game challenge. We ate ice cream, got face (or arm) paint, hung out with a lot of friends, and, yes, saw the obligatory cows, chickens, horses, etc. Oh, and rabbit agility. Can't miss rabbit agility.

You don't have to go far

Relaxation for me has always come easiest north of a certain latitude. Cross the Zilwaukee Bridge and just feel the the sky get bluer, the grass get greener, the air become sweeter. Anything south of Gaylord has always seemed just a few steps too close the stresses and pulls of our suburban life.

But it turns out that you don't have make the long journey north to enjoy getting away from it all, and when our summer camping friends couldn't take as much time off this year, we found our little slice of heaven a few hours closer to home.

Go west, young family, and find the green trees and warm lakes of Waterloo Recreation center. Swimming and campfires and a little bit of wildlife were all we needed to make the weekend a great success, even with the scattered rain showers that passed through. We got ou s'mores, and our annual steak and corn campfire dinner. We got our time together, and no matter where we are, that makes the camping a great success.

Climbing

Birthday party at the local climbing facility today. That's fun for all ages—for the kids, who are climbing with all the energy of childhood and none of the fears of adulthood, and for the adults, who are watching from the sidelines, knowing their children will be tired that evening. Calvin has always been a cautious child, so I expected him to stay relatively low to the ground, and he did, but he was tireless, keeping at long after the others had retired to the bouncy room. And in the free climb area he totally killed it, eventually conquering his anxieties and the wall itself to make it to the very top.

Now he wants a climbing membership.

Letterboxing

Here is where I make a confession. Calvin has never had a traditional birthday party. Every year he has had wonderful celebrations with his grandparents, but we have completely avoided the traditional "have a bunch of kids over for games, cake, and presents and send them home with a favor" kinds of parties. Jon and I both have fond memories of our own parties when we were younger, and there is no good reason for our own reluctance, other than sheer fright maybe. Each year, though, we've had to put more consideration into it as Calvin has become increasingly social, and this year was finally the year. We checked our anxieties at the curb, selected a free weekend, and did what any self-respecting parents would do: we farmed it out.

Actually, we gave Calvin the choice of having a party at home, or going to one of a variety of venues. His choice was a letterboxing hiking party at the Leslie Science Center, a city park in Ann Arbor with a beautiful collection of living raptors. The birds alone would have been a good draw, but we had a great guide who led us through making nature stamps, taught us how to use a compass, then took us on a well developed scavenger hunt, looking for clue after clue until, finally, we arrived at a cache box with a stamp book of previous visitors inside. Back in the party room the kids used their previously made stamps to leave their own mark in the book for the next group to see, then we had the obligatory cake and ice cream.

I believe fun was had by all, and I know that fun was had by Calvin, who enjoyed greatly the fact that so many of his friends came together to celebrate with him. I agree—the outpouring of love and adoration from so many little individuals was by far the greatest outcome of the entire day.

Partying

Have I have told the story here of our "camping friends"? I call them camping friends for the purpose of simplification, because we've gone camping with them at least every year for the past five, but that's not the only basis for our friendship. Sarah and I were friends growing up. We've been friends, in fact, since we were in first grade (Sarah likes to tell it that it would have been earlier, but she got stuck in afternoon kindergarten while I had morning). We lost touch somewhere midway through high school and did not reconnect until the miracle of facebook, when we found that our children were born just two days apart. Two days.

So we get together several times a year, including to go camping, and to celebrate the kids' birthdays together. It's a tradition now.

And, because one party per weekend isn't enough for a ninth birthday, we also had a party with the grandparents this weekend. You could say it was a grand party. Because you only turn nine once.