Camp Pondy

Dee (A.K.A. Meema Dee, Meema, the Meems, Yo! Meems, etc) gets maximum grandmother delight from our 14 shared grandchildren. We laughingly say, "happy to see them come -- happy to see them go," but she is always aching for more face time with small (and now not so small) faces. So when we moved north full time in the fall of 2013, planning began for the first annual "Camp Pondy," when grandkids 4 and older would spend a short week with Meema and Papa minus parents. That first year all 9 who were of age showed up Monday afternoon June 30th, and reunited with parents for holiday festivities on Friday morning July 4th. Campers included Jack, Ben, Lexi, Janie, Maggie, Joe, Cal, Luke and Jules. We had some last minute jitters about including our two 4-year-olds, but Luke and Jules proved to be great campers. Older cousins looked out for and basked in the hero worship of younger cousins.

We all stayed busy with a host of activities

• sleeping in the tipi
• trips to the beach, playground, DQ and Aunt Belle's Candy Store
• daring the zip line
• waging airsoft wars
• throwing knives and tomahawks
• archery
• face painting -- and lots of funny looks in the candy store
• splashing in the above ground pool that appears each year just for Camp Pondy week
• campfires every night with s'mores until all hours
• attempting an "all-nighter" and fading out one by one
• hiking in the woods
• launching stomp rockets -- and a few Estes models too
• wood burning, painting, making jewelry
• eating a pirate dinner
• throwing water balloons

Since then we have added campers Sammi, Ike, Evelyn, Alex and Violet as they turned 4 and we've also grown our list of activities. Sleeping in the tree house, day trips to Deep Portage and Itasca State Park, more campfire cooking and tubing on Leech Lake have been features of more recent years. By 2017 the process was so smooth Papa remarked, "We could just put the take-out pizza number on the fridge and leave them for 4 days." In 2018 we had help from our friend Mary who brought more fun ideas and added extra organization and adult supervision for Papa and Meema. Now that the Pops is retired and we have a boat in the water full time we can provide more tubing, boarding and water skiing. We have 15 campers who are age 4 or older. Our young friend (and registered nurse) Summer Hanson joined us in 2020 and 2021 to help corral the gang and patch them up when needed. Summer schedules get tough for the older ones but we hope to have as many as possible here for Camp Pondy each year for a while. It is super grandparent medicine.

Camp Pondy 2014 Papa, Cal, Jack, Janie, Ben, Joe, Jules, Maggie, Luke, Lexi, Meema	Camp Pondy 2018 Cal, Papa, Joe, Sammi, Maggie, Lexi, Jack, Ike, Janie, Luke, Jules, Meema, Evelyn
Camp Pondy 2020 Luke, Sammi, Cal, Joe, Jack, Papa, Mary, Jules, Maggie, Janie, Evelyn, Lexi, Meema, Alex, Ike