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.
Camp concert
All week I've been sans child during the day. I'd say I didn't know what to do with myself, but that would be a clichéd lie. Actually, there were so many things I wanted to do that the question was more, what should I get done next?
It was Boychoir camp week, so while my days were filled with projects needing to be done (and a lot of reading of Ulysses), Calvin's were half filled with singing, half filled with field trip events. This is his second year of participating in the camp, and I continue to be surprised by the fantastic afternoons that this small, family-like group offers. Following lunch the group jumps on a city bus, sometimes even doing transfers, and visits a local fun place. They putt putt golfing, they swam, they went to an indoor activity center, and, the highlight of the week for most of the boys, I think, they visited a real plastics lab at the University of Michigan. Calvin loves these activities. I love that he does so well with this group of kids, and that all day camp offers him the chance to be pretty responsible for himself, and that this camp allows him to utilize public transportation. Sometimes it's the small things (or the very big and anxiety-inducing things, if I were the person in charge of all those boys for the afternoon).
The week is over now. It ended with a fun concert that was surprisingly full of interesting music for such a short practice time (and I won't say that the short practice time kind of shows, but, I guess I said it). It was fun to compare this year to last year, when I remember Calvin being a little uncertain during the concert. Now most of that uncertainty is gone, replaced by a visible confidence. In fact, this year he was selected for the small group that worked on a couple of more intense, complicated songs. In fact, a couple of weeks ago at the end-of-the-year choir ceremony, he was asked by the director and manager of the choir if he would join the Performing Choir in singing at a wedding a couple of weeks, so he has been singing with the big boys this month, and that's very exciting.
activities, choir, music 
