One cell on the June tab of our budget spreadsheet had been yellow since February. It said "camp??" and nothing else, and every time I opened the file to log a grocery run, there it was, still yellow. Last Sunday afternoon Ben and I finally sat down at the kitchen table with the city's summer camp brochure, both of our work calendars and a legal pad, and we didn't get up until that cell was filled in.
Here's the problem in numbers. School lets out May 21. It starts again the first week of August. In between are eleven weeks, two parents with full-time jobs and one ten-year-old who has informed us she is "too old for a babysitter and too young to be home all day." That's irritating mostly because she's right.
The plan, week by week
We cover nine of those weeks with camps and grandparents. Ben covers the leftover days on either end with vacation time. This is the version now taped inside the pantry door:
| Dates | Who has Harper | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| May 22-23 | Ben, vacation days | $0 |
| May 27-30 | Ben, vacation days | $0 |
| June 2-6 | City day camp | $165 |
| June 9-13 | City day camp | $165 |
| June 16-20 | Art camp | $210 |
| June 22-July 5 | Camp grandma in Florence | about $190 |
| July 7-11 | City day camp | $165 |
| July 14-18 | Soccer camp | $145 |
| July 21-25 | City day camp | $165 |
| July 28-Aug. 1 | City day camp | $165 |
| Aug. 4-5 | Ben, vacation days | $0 |
| Total | about $1,370 |
Ben's share comes to eight vacation days, the better part of two weeks of his time off this year, and he offered before I could finish the sentence. "It'll be fine," he said. "The porch steps have needed fixing since April anyway." Harper has already been assigned to hold the level.
Why the city camp got five weeks
Price, mostly. At $165 a week, the city day camp costs roughly half of what the private camps we looked at were charging. It also runs the length of a full work schedule, which matters more than any photo in a brochure. Drop-off opens early enough for me to make the I-565 merge on an office day, and pickup runs late enough that I can get there on a Wednesday after my 38-minute drive home, since Ben has clinic until 7 that night.
Harper's ranking, delivered at dinner: soccer camp first, art camp second, city camp "fine, because two girls from my class are going." I'll take fine.
Art camp is the splurge at $210 for one week. She asked for it in January and brought it up about every four days after that, so it earned its line. Soccer camp is $145 and comes with a T-shirt she will wear until you can read a newspaper through it.
Then there's camp grandma: two weeks with my parents in Florence at the end of June. My mother says the food is on them and will hear no further discussion. So the $190 is our estimate for two round trips of gas, spending money for Harper and whatever I can sneak into my dad's truck before he notices.
What it adds up to
About $1,370 for the summer. Spread over June and July, that's roughly $685 a month, a little more than double the $320 we pay for after-care during the school year. The after-care charge stops when school does, which takes some of the sting out.
We set up a childcare savings line in the budget for exactly this, and it covers most of the total. The rest comes out of the June and July tabs, which means fewer dinners out this summer. Nobody in this house is happy about that, and nobody is surprised either.
A few things I learned putting this together:
- Register the day signups open. The city camp weeks we wanted filled within a few days. I signed up from my desk at lunch.
- Count the gap days, not just the weeks. The two days after school lets out and the two before it starts again are the ones that sneak up on you.
- Write down who does pickup each day. A camp that ends at 5:30 only helps if somebody can be there by 5:30.
- Ask the grandparents in January. My parents block their two weeks before they plan anything else, and I don't take that for granted.
Is it a perfect summer? No. There will be a week in July when everyone is tired of everyone, and at least one morning when the camp bag is missing a swimsuit. But the yellow cell is white now, the dates are in both of our calendars and the total fits. For a family with two jobs and one kid who reads through her lunch break, that's about as good as summer planning gets.
