The Boys and Girls Club

The Boys and Girls Club is a fabulous experience for Kevin!!! With hundreds of kids, they are so well organized and have a selection of activities for everyone. The Club is housed in four or five buildings plus huge outdoor areas including a ravine and wooded area. I find it interesting that they keep the boys and girls separated for most, if not all, of the day.

Grampa figures it is over a mile from our condo to the Boys and Girls Club. Since it takes close to half an hour to travel each way, leaving only an hour for a lunch break, I decided to pack a picnic lunch and eat at the lakeshore. The kids are encouraged to arrange a meeting place for parents to find them. I waited a long time before he finally appeared with THREE freezies. Grampa had given him a handful of change to buy treats at the YAC. This is a great experience for him to learn about money!

I intended to go to the Bell Tower, but Kevin stopped at Palestine Park and ate atop Mt. Hebron. Chautauqua Institution developed over 130 years ago by the United Methodist Church as a place to teach Sunday School teachers. Palestine Park was built for the teachers to learn about the Holy Land.

A while later, he had disappeared. When I found him, he was near the beach sitting at a picnic table with a family of two kids -- a girl his age and a boy in 4th grade. He had made himself quite at home. LOL They found him to be a unique, bright boy with a lot spunk.
Kevin took his new friend back to Mount Hebron to play.


Our new friends informed us about the "lanyard line" where the counselors sell lanyard materials daily from 1:30 to 2:00. So Kevin and their kids got in line for a lanyard.

When I came at the end of the day to pick up Kevin, I chatted with the parents Kevin ate with at lunch. The wife told me her husband doesn't like kids, but he really likes Kevin. He thinks Kevin is very articulate, sociable, and intelligent. Their daughter was missing and they assumed she was over at the YAC buying some treats. Kevin said he would go find her and took off. It is so cute to watch the blossoming independence of running off in a crowd of a few hundred kids to go find a friend three buildings away. There isn't a safer place for a kid to be than at Chautauqua Institution.

Kevin brought home a dragon he made from an egg carton.


Grandma wanted to attend the choir rehearsal so she can sing on Sunday, so one of Kevin's counselors was able to babysit! When I returned, they were playing crazy chasing games around the condo. He didn't want her to leave. But, not long after the babysitter left, Melanie arrived to spend a couple of days with us and experience Chautauqua! It was really difficult to get him to go to bed with Melanie here!