First of all, say the words ‘invention camp’ and tell me you don’t just pee yourself with the excitement and promise those words hold. Seriously. The fact that my son did not actually create some sort of teleportation device last week has left me mildly disappointed. I had that much hope for invention camp.

Here’s the story of invention camp, herefortowith called IC, and how we came to send our son and about $176 of our dollars in its direction:

1. The not-young man in the picture is named Dr. Forrest Bird. The dr. part is not an honorary title or jive-talkin’ nickname. He is an actual doctor, as well as an actual world famous inventor.

2. This is the Bird Aviation Museum, which was opened with much fanfare and hubbub last year. The Bird Aviation Museum hosted it’s first IC this year. The camp sold out, with many, many children on the waiting list to participate.

3. This is Charlie. He wants to be an inventor when he grows up.

4. This is me, clearly. I am the richest duck in Sandpoint and I have no problem whatsoever shelling out my hard earned (Will’s) moneybags to help my children realize their dreams

So Charlie went to invention camp, which was incredibly cool. No, he didn’t create a teleportation device. He and his buddy created A LEVITATIONAL DEVICE. BEHOLD:

It’s just a prototype, they assured us. That’s why it didn’t work. He also created a roller-coaster, an amusement park ride, a super cushioned car that safely housed an egg during a demolition derby, and made me a smoothie with his muscle-power:

So it was pretty much the best week of his life, EVAH. EV-to-the-ER.