This year’s Cousins Camp was an absolute blast! The Phoenix cousins hauled in here on the 13th and the Charlotte cousins came up on the 15th, and the fun began. The night of the 15th, after an afternoon of catching up, we had a contra dance for the first time. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is a type of line dancing that is more athletic then romantic. It was a hoot, especially since everyone who could stand up wanted to do it, and that included numerous little kids. We learned what a do-si-do was, how to peel off, and lots of other things, but we never seemed to be able to learn to keep in straight lines. Oh, well — next year, maybe!
The next day the work began. Last year, after much encouragement, I handed out scripts for actual plays — not just something we made up ourselves. We had done a small play a couple of years ago, and it was so much fun, the kids kept asking for another one. Well, I had to choose between a medieval one — a re-telling of an Arthurian tale which featured more boys than girls, and an adaptation of Little Women, which featured more girls than boys. The short version of what happened then is that we decided to do both of them. The kids had both scripts all year, and kept getting more and more excited about playing them, so…..we just did, although we ended up cutting some scenes in Little Women. It was getting far too long.
The younger kids [10 boys, 2 girls, 4 through 9] wanted a play too, and I scratched my head for a story that would not be too long, but would incorporate a lot of people. I came up with the old tale of “Stone Soup”, which could have as many people as you could get on stage. I ended up writing my own script so I could customize it for the group.
It’s a good thing I had a year to pull it together because it takes a lot more stuff to do a decent job on these things. I found some costumes on line [the jester and knights would have been hard to do], but a great many of the costumes were pulled together with what we had, what we could borrow, what we could find at the Good Will, and even what one grandma was persuaded to make. I am still amazed at the creativity of both my kids, and my grandkids!!
Well, this is getting very long. Next time I hope to have a couple pictures for you. All the picture-takers are supposed to upload their picture to me. We’ll see…..;-)
