Memories over 30 years in the making.....

"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us."

~Helen Keller

How do you put in to words memories that span a huge part of your life? I am writing this morning, tired (after getting to bed at 3:30AM and only sleeping for a few hours), happy, and feeling overwhelmed and grateful!

I haven't blogged much about this, but my brother and I attended summer camp for a good chunk of our childhood, in to our teen years, and early 20's. The camp was run by our church and everyone that attended was all Greek kids that we have known pretty much our entire lives. The camp is no longer in existence, having been replaced in the early 90's by a much larger camp run by the Greek Archdiocese of America. I am so sad my nephew and his generation will never get to experience what we did...though, much of what was, umm, accepted in the 70's and 80's, like hanging campers by their underwear from a flagpole probably wouldn't fly now! :-)

I want to try to put in to words how much camp meant to all of us that attended, but at the same time I don't want to. First, because honestly if you weren't there you just wouldn't really get it. And also because it was such a personal and wonderful experience shared by a relatively small number of people....it is like it all ours and it is kind of hard to share.

So, with that said...I will let these pictures that I took last night at the reunion we had do most of the talking. Most of us, though still fairly local, have not seen each other in over 20 years! In the last few years, as the popularity of Facebook grew, a group was formed. We talked and talked over this time about getting together but none of us actually took action. Finally our friend Jamie stepped up and made it happen! She picked a date and time and location and got the ball rolling. The result of her hard work? An amazing night with amazing people that will always be an important part of a special time in my life! And now that we finally did this and we saw how great it was we definitely will not let another 20 years go by before doing it again!

Get ready to see a whole bunch of Greeks!

Enjoy the pics!

Chris, Chris, me, Nick

Corrina and Peter

(so bummed this one came out blurry)

Jonathan (my brother) and Evangeline

Mark, JIm, Francine, George

Pam, Mary, Nick, Jennifer

Jim

Love him! Always such a goof!

Jim and Chris

Eleni, Teena, Jim, Tina

Nick, Jim

Brothers goofing around! All we were missing was their

younger brother Tommy who couldn't make it :(

Nick, Jim

Steva, Steve, Kerri, Michelle, Dean

Nick

George

Nick and Peter

This is so great...every year at camp someone won Camper of the Year. Peter knows someone who makes trophies so he had this one made up for "Camper of the Year 30 Years Later"or something like that...

...and presented it to Jamie for getting us all together!!!

So very cool!!!

Ernie was our camp director for several years (after many years at camp!) and lives out of state now and unfortunately couldn't make it up for the reunion. So he sent up dozens of gorgeous long stem red roses for all the girls! So sweet!

And Peter put together a DVD of camp pictures through the years and set it all to music...and he made a copy for every one us!!! So very thoughtful!

It was a FABULOUS night! So many laughs, stories, hugs, and memories!!! The few words I have said here hardly do it justice, because really, how do you adequately describe such precious memories?