Summer camp is a time-tested way for kids to develop the skills they'll need to successfully deal with life. It's an experience that every child should be able to have but isn't always possible. If you missed the camp experience as a child, it's not too late to have it as an adult!

When I was little, I dreamed of going to summer camp, so intensely that even though my family didn't have the money to send me, I would actually make lists of what clothes and toiletries I would need and then I would pack them. As my camp age-appropriate years withered on the vine, my dream faded but it never really died.

Flash forward to mom-hood and imagine my glee finding a gymnastics camp that takes adults! Camp Woodward in Pennsylvania (they also have a California location), the country's premiere camp for extreme sports had decided to allow adults to attend the final week of summer camp. And although packing no longer holds the magic that it once did, I was thrilled at getting a second chance at camp!

Camp Woodward is about thirty miles from Penn State, in rural Amish country, and my ride to camp was in a shiny black Woodward Hummer, which had to slow several times along the two lane road to pass Amish horses and buggies. The view as we pulled up to camp was beautiful - the main drive slopes down to the cabins and grounds spread over acres of green grass with a background of forest and mountains. The extreme sports portions of the camp were interspersed among the grounds, resembling giant "hot wheels" tracks for humans, and nearby horses grazed along a corral.

Camp is a similar experience for both children and adults in that you're meeting all kinds of new people, which not only teaches you about others, it forces you to learn about yourself. Which people are you going to become friends with? Will coffee be served in the dining hall? How do you divide up one bathroom while living for a week in a bunk with nine other women?

I quickly became friends with Stacie Medina (Hi, Stacie!), a fellow gymnast mom whom I had already met briefly online in a gymnastics forum. Of the nine women, we were the only gymnasts (the rest of the women were at Woodward for skateboarding and BMX biking), and in our first gymnastics session, we found out that we were actually the first female adult gymnasts at the camp ever. It made the rest of the week extra fun. Little girls would come up to us in the dining hall and ask if we were the Adult Gymnasts. The group of girls we worked out with were all around thirteen and amazed when they found out we had kids. "You have a child?" one asked me. When I told her "yes," she gasped, "So that means you're a mom?" My thoughts exactly.

Camp is also the same for adults and kids in that you're guaranteed to make lasting memories. One of my cabin mates had come to camp with her husband and we found it hilarious that he was kicked out of our cabin by a counselor passing by who saw him walk in (No boys allowed in the girls' cabins!). My very favorite moment that week was meeting one of my gymnastics heroes, Olympic Gold Medalist Svetlana Boguinskia (the "Belarusian Swan"), who was one of our coaches and a totally sweet person. When my group was doing handstand forward rolls, she pointed at me and said, "That was a good one!"

Sometimes being an adult (and a "mom") means cutting off the part of you that is spontaneous. Who has time to be spontaneous while working, raising a family, negotiating an appointment time with the cable company, and discovering that for the third time in a row the tomatoes you bought at the supermarket are moldy? But after a week of being told repeatedly that there's no such word as "can't", having no obligations except gymnastics, not having to cook or even think about money, you begin to remember what it was like to imagine different versions of yourself…

Such as being one of the first female adult gymnasts ever!

Check out the coolness for yourself at: www.campwoodward.com. Besides gymnastics, the recreational activities include horseback riding, swimming, ropes courses, paintball, go-cart racing, and rock-wall climbing.

So any more of you adult gymnasts (or wannabes!) out there? Drop me a line at kara@familymagazinegroup.com. The cabins sleep nine!