The Much Coveted White Glove Trophy Award

Being experienced camp parents (or parents of campers, whatever), we learned a lot of things.

1. Girls are more responsible than boys.
2. You never send your child's best clothes to camp.
3. Sometimes your child will not bring back everything that they took to camp.
4. Sometimes your child will bring back more than they took to camp. In both the clothing/towel department, and the dirt/nature department.

Knowing all these things, Sam and I invented the White Glove Trophy award at camp this year. This is simply a prize for winning cabin inspection, of course. There are other things we've learned being experienced at this camp thing, too.

1. If you have cabin inspections, kids will get into the spirit of the competition and take it seriously.
2. Regular cleaning will reduce the number of lost towels, socks, and shirts.
3. While kids are meticulous and dare I say it? Even anal about picking up after themselves at camp, this unnatural phenomenon will not carry over to their bedrooms at home. Ever.

We've known that the kids will clean thier little hearts out to win, but we also know that a tangible award makes it so much sweeter. So we hit up Salvation Army to find something to spray paint a gold color and make a super tacky treasure. But in our search, we found a trophy. A real one. The only problem is that it had a bowler on it. We're not bowling at camp. So I added a pair of 50 cent white gloves to the $3 trophy and we call it The White Glove Trophy.

We knew the kids would work to win it. What we didn't know was how coveted this trophy has become. It just cracks me up to watch the winning cabin run around camp with it held high, clung to their chests, sitting beside their plates at mealtimes, going on hikes with them... I swear, the only place it hasn't shown up yet is at the swimming pool. I'm waiting for that to happen at some point this week.

It has been the best $3.50 we've spent in a long, long time.