Devon

This weekend was father-sons camp out but since I have no sons at home I had to borrow a son for the weekend. I home teach Tom and Betty Sellers and their grandson Devon needed a Father and I needed a son wo off we went. Devon's brother Noah wasn’t interested in going camping so it was me and Devon.

I left work early, got my gear all packed, made some tin foil dinners, picked up Devon and off we went.

A few years ago I took Noah to a camp out and he said about ten words to me the entire camp out, Devon got in my truck and he was chatting up a storm the entire way there. I had him help me set up the tent and build a fire and once we got the dinners cooking he was off playing with his friends.

I know I’ve mentioned this before but this weekend it was reemphasized again today. When my boys were young I would go to bed somewhere around midnight and the kids were up all night long. I’m not exactly sure when they came to bed. Now days the kids are off to bed by 10:00. That was true last night except for Devon, that boy was more like my boys and he wanted to stay up as late as he could. That was fine with me because he told me he normally gets up at 5:00 and I did NOT want him waking me up at 5:00. My hope was that if he went to bed late then perhaps he would sleep in a bit longer.

Well come 10:00 all the boys were in bed and only the adults were sitting around the fire talking. I should say the adults and Devon. He was still chatting away. The amazing thing was that he was talking about interesting things. It wasn’t a tedious conversation but rather an interesting one. Ephraim at one point even said, “You know Devon, this campfire is a lot more interesting since you came around”. Devon had been with his friends until they all went to be and then he came and joined us.

Finally we broke camp and crawled in bed at which point Devon continued talking. I think he finally nodded off around midnight. I tried reading my book for a bit but it wasn’t going to happen.

The next thing I know I hear Devon's small voice saying, “Brother Leavitt”. I checked my watch and thank goodness it was 6:45. I could hear all kinds of stuff going on outside, so I assumed Devon wanted to get up. I started climbing out of my sleeping bag and Devon said, “I think maybe I’m going to lie here a bit longer”. Hallelujah! I was all for that.

After breakfast they had a bunch of different activities planned. The first were the stilts. Mark Morris had brought about five pairs of stilts and no one was having much luck walking on them. As it turns out, Lester and I had a stilts when we were teenagers and we walked all over the place on them. It only took a few tries and I was up and walking like I was fifteen again. With a few pointers there were about five of us that got somewhat proficient on them. Ephraim challenged me to a race and it was no contest.

Other activities included marshmallow launchers, catapults and water rockets. I asked Devon if he wanted to build a water rocket but much to my disappointment he wanted to play some dodge ball type of game where you had two teams and each person had two tennis balls. They had boundaries and they were running around trying to take each other out. It looked like a blast and if you got hit you were dead no matter who hit you. You couldn’t even pick up someone else’s ball or you died. If you went out of bounds (even to get your ball) you died.

Anyway, I chose rockets. I was watching them make the rockets and there was this little kid in tears begging someone to help him make a rocket. His Dad had several boys there so I decided to help him out. We made a great rocket.

Finally we packed up camp and came home. There is a somewhat famous bakery on the way home called Dudley’s. We had to stop there and grab a pastry each. My walnut swirl was delicious. This afternoon I painted another wall in our front room and then took a shower.