Jenna Bush Hager Gets Emotional Reuniting with Daughter Mila at Summer Camp Pickup: Watch

After writing a heartbreaking letter last year begging to come home from camp, Mila, 9, was happy to reunite with her family after another summer at Texas’ Camp Longhorn

Jenna Bush Hager is thrilled to be welcoming her daughter home from summer camp.

On Monday’s episode of Today with Hoda and Jenna, Bush Hager opened up to co-host Hoda Kotb about picking up her oldest child, daughter Margaret “Mila” Laura, from her summer at Camp Longhorn in Texas. The camp is the same one Bush Hager attended as a kid.

Bush Hager shared videos on Instagram and later, on the show, that illustrate just how happy Mila, 9, was to reunite with dad Henry Hager. “We got our girl,” she captioned the video where Mila hugs him tight.

The TV personality also shared a video that one of her friends from camp, whom she reconnected with as they both enrolled their kids, captured of Mila running and jumping into her mom’s arms. Bush Hager also shared a selfie with Mila, writing, “I kissed her a million times.”

The sweetest part was watching Mila reunite with younger siblings Henry “Hal” Harold, 3, and Poppy Louise, 6.

.@JennaBushHager is sharing the story of picking up Mila from camp! pic.twitter.com/rxA7m6xipQ

— TODAY with Hoda & Jenna (@HodaAndJenna) August 1, 2022

Last summer, the Today co-host revealed on air that she received the “saddest” letter from her then-8-year-old that “broke my heart in a million pieces.” Bush Hager read the heart-wrenching letter on the broadcast, with the emotional note going viral afterward.

“Dear Mom and Dad, I miss you. I wish I could be with you,” she read at the time. “P.S. Daddy, how much longer till you pick me up? I miss you too much. I need to stop crying. So goodbye. I miss you terribly, Mom and Dad.”

Though things got off to a rough start, Bush Hager later told PEOPLE that Mila eventually got acclimated and came to “love” her camp experience.

“It broke both of our hearts, but I didn’t think that … I just put it out there. People would stop me on the street and be like, ‘When are you going to get Mila?’ I’m like, ‘I was just reading a letter!’ Then, the camp called, they felt really bad,” she said in a conversation with PEOPLE ahead of the George H.W. Bush Points of Light Awards. “They were like, ‘Don’t worry, she’s happy.’ I was like, ‘No, it’s all okay.’ ”

 

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The mom of three explained to PEOPLE that Mila “was really homesick.”

“She went to camp in Texas; she’s from New York City and it’s like 97 degrees outside on a lake in Texas, so there might’ve been some slight culture shock that I don’t really appreciate because I went to that camp but I was from Texas and was used to the summers,” Bush Hager explained.

“She said later, and this is kind of heartbreaking — again, I shouldn’t say this because I’m going to get backlash … but she was like, ‘When people were homesick, all the Houston girls came together and were sad, and all the Dallas girls went together and were sad, and all the Austin girls felt sad. When I was sad, I was just sad all by myself.’ ”

“It’s kind of a good lesson, though, since we’re just coming out of a pandemic. You’ve got to learn how to be sad by yourself, so it’s all okay,” Bush Hager added.