Work was a bit long this week, then add in the travel times since all but one of the jobs I have been doing has been at least a half-hour away.  Today, in fact, coming home took over an hour for what should have been a half hour before traffic.  Sigh.  So without further interruption, here is installment number three of camp 2009.

Some of you may recall that the week I was away was the first week of summer, in more than one way.  That is, starting Tuesday it was h-o-t.  This would have been a far better day for us to have all the water games!  The start of the day went pretty much like Monday, so I won’t bore you with that.  The first highlight was the up-front game before the morning teaching session.  The lesson was going to be on the eyes (see the picture below of Pastor John and his special glasses… 😀 )The “game” therefore involved an eye chart which the kids read as if they were in an optometrist’s room.  Did you notice I put the word game in quotes?  That’s because there was no winner.  As soon as one of the four read the lower lines, “if you can read this you are about to be pied,”  WHAP!  All four of them.  But don’t take my word for it- look below for the picture of one of my guys.

So lesson, then small group- the memory verse for this day was from the book of Psalms: Ps 119:37 “Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.” See?  Eyes.  Pun intended.  Okay then.  This time, after the session for the big game, we had the same two games as yesterday but switched.  While the other two teams played the wipe-out wiffleball game, we played the same team as yesterday morning in human foosball.  I am sure to have mentioned this game before as it is a standard for camp and winter retreat.  It is a life-size foosball game where each team is divided into lines, holding hands, like on a foosball table.  Multiple giant balls are thrown in (more added throughout the game) and the kids have to kick them over the other team’s heads into the goal.  The lines can bend, but not break.  This game was so close in the end 70-something to eighty-something.  Sweating from the direct beating of the sun, we had a break from action with crafts.  The kids worked on pouches the first had to stamp with leather tools before tying two pieces together with a needle and plastic thread.  Among the different bevel, letter, and picture stamps were a couple of crosses- you can see one below.

We continued to maintain a fairly clean cabin and added open bibles on pillows, key verse highlighted to the mix.  Unfortunately another cabin thought of this too (or was a spy listening in at the right time (!) ) so they won the award.  Cabin S, the dirtiest cabin of yesterday with proof on video was much improved, but they still weren’t the winner- that went to the team that would be our nemesis all week- the Biohazards.  Well, tomorrow we would add something new.  While they were inspecting our cabins, we were at our afternoon instructional- tennis.  To get there we would have to travel over a huge mountain in the woods (well, it was a hill with a stairway, but it seemed like a huge mountain at the time!).   The weather continued to be brutal with a hot, sunny sky so I spent much time in the few shaded areas while the kids went through their instructional.  When it was done, we hiked back over the mountain hill  and went right to the swimming front for afternoon canteen time.  I had given kids the option of getting in swim gear before we headed to tennis to save time since tennis was almost on the way to swimming, but only one heeded the advice so most would not be going in the water.  None in fact, as the only one who prepared still didn’t go in.  One who didn’t prepare ended up looking longingly at the water as the heat continued.  He was sure to get his trunks on next time.

Well, there really isn’t much more to add.  The rest of the day was pretty much like yesterday.  I don’t think I mentioned that the evening session started with some youtube-esqe video with a puppet voiced by a falsetto voice talked about movies.  I could only understand maybe half of what was being said and don’t know the name of the video, but it ended up Friday with revealing the number one hit movie of all time.  If someone could help here I am curious.  Anyway, these shorts “introduced” our video of the day- a five-minute-or-so video of all of us throughout the day.  The next heart talked about in the lesson was the shallow heart, the heart that receives the Word of God, but not deeply so that when things go sour one turns from, instead of to, God.  Now that really is it- tune in next time.  All pictures in this thread by the way have once again been selected, or in some cases edited, to help keep from revealing identifiable faces.  I shouldn’t have to say it again, but click for larger pictures. 😉

EDIT:  I skipped over the evening game!  Of course, after most of the hot day was over, only then did we get a game involving swimming trunks and getting wet.  So the kids changed into their trunks once again and headed to the game field after dinner.  Smack in the middle was a large inflatable pool filled with objects in water that the kids had to find.  This was a summer-ized version of the classic “steal the bacon,” the version where the kids are told what to find and bring back.  They were told such things as, “three chickens, two pics, and one noodle,” which of course they had to bring back one at a time.  Several kids were called at any one time so that made it less work, but more chaotic.  The boys and girls each had their own game going- gee, I wonder why? 😀 )We won this game despite the odds-evening attempt against us (we were doing too well by this time) by giving us less numbers so when #10 or 11 were called we couldn’t go.  Well, at first we did pick someone to go for those numbers as normal for when one team has more than another, but were “corrected” when caught and accused of cheating.  Well, we really did what was normal so we weren’t cheating, but in the director’s mind the number we had was it, no extras to be given.  I think he should have explained this better.  Well, it was still all good fun and the kids enjoyed it.

or was that a tube? Or a film container? What was the latitude?

I decided to go on a treasure hunt while my daughter was in play rehearsals. I was thinking it would be a good way to get a little exercise and play with my new GPS.

So I loaded in a bunch of geocache locations on my GPS and went to look for them. I went to the first location that I remembered finding, turned on my GPS to start looking for them. Nope, they were not in the list. I didn’t get those downloaded. That should be ok, I think I wrote down the longitude and latitude on a piece of paper. Too bad I didn’t bring it with me. Hmmm, this isn’t going very well.

So, I decided to let my GPS guide me to one I did have on the machine. I got close, I’m sure I got very close. The GPS said I was within 20 feet as I stepped out of my truck. Ok, so this one wasn’t going to be the exercise I thought it was going to be. I got out to check it out, and I was suddenly (moving physically a mere 2 feet) 50 feet away from my desired location. Step away from the truck and overhead wires, they may be interfering with my GPS signals. Yes, two more feet and I was about 18 feet away. But which way? My GPS said to the right. North, south, east or west would have been good. I looked around and saw two likely locations for someone to hide something. I circled both locations and was constantly told the location was to the right…

Something just wasn’t adding up. So I tried to look at the longitude and latitude recorded for the object and compare that to the longitude and latitude given by my little GPS. Oops, the downloaded file did not print that information on my GPS screen. Maybe I downloaded it incorrectly. It just gave me the identifying number. No descriptions, nothing. So, I guess couldn’t match it by that either.

I changed my ‘car’ to be an arrow and circled around the two locations again. Constantly keeping my ‘arrow’ pointed in the directions of the objects. I think I narrowed it down to one of the objects, and I was able to pace a 15 – 20 foot circle around it. Yes, the GPS kept telling me I was 15 to 20 feet away. I moved closer and repeated the process. There were times I was 100 feet away, when 5 feet farther out I was only 15 feet away. Something was definitely interfering with the GPS. I guess I got my exercise circling one area in searching for something that I didn’t have a clue as to what it looked like. I don’t think I found it.

Oh well, back to the drawing board. I will arm myself with better information and try again someday. I’m also wondering if the GPS units designed for walking would give more information from the downloaded files. I guess I will need to look into that.

Not to quote Toby Keith, but…  I today am feeling glum.  Back-to-Back shows I have auditioned for and not been cast.  🙁  Joseph and now Little Shop.

I am sure it will be a great show I was just so excited (with the hope) to be a part of it.  I tried out for the voice of the plant and, well, someone else tried out who was better — that’s theatre!

I am just a bit down realizing that never before Joseph had I auditioned for a musical and not made the cut and now…  It is 2-in-a-row and I have to face the facts — I AIN’T AS GOOD AS I ONCE WAS.  Ahh, growing older…  🙁  In fact, the last musical I auditioned for and was cast in was Grease a FEW YEARS ago!  Ugh!

Anyway, some great people auditioned and made Little Shop — some of our new friends from Hicksville auditioned and really did outstanding!  AND THEY MADE IT!!!  🙂

You can see the complete Little Shop cast list here.

It is a real sad realization that my musical theatre “career” has definately passed it’s prime and very well might be over (eneded with Grease! — ugh!).

Oh well.  I wish I had appreciated my God given talents more when I still had them; I was never very confident.  It is ironic that I was never very satisfied with my singing in the past and now I only wish I could have my past talent back — eech!!!

Acting wise I have lost a few steps too — I thought my reading for the voice of Audrey II went really well; though I know I stunk up the place with my “singing” of Love Changes Everything.  Ugh…  This stinks!

Ugh…

My previous post became too lengthy, but I wanted to share the following video they had on the hotel tv.  Whether it was my relief that the baby had finally fallen asleep, or my being so tired after a huge busy day, the video made me emotional – I think it’s just a feel-good video.  I meant to show it to the fellow animal lovers in my family, but it skipped my mind that morning, so now they can see it here; it’s awesome!

Christian The Lion:

While at work tonight, my sister and cousin came into the store with some bad news.  The director for Little Shop called the house to inform me that I was not cast in any role… apparently my attempt at a Jewish accent did not meet with the director’s approval?  Have to work on that…. I would hate to think that he only one I am good as is one from Liswathistan 😉 .  I will have to think about the offer to work backstage this time.  It has happened previously and while it was fun, I really want to be on stage.  I know that the Village Players are doing a murder/mystery soon.  Another area theatre usually has a fall production… although the drive is a bit longer.  As I have noted before, I have been on different stages in the area and have had great times on each of them.  I dunno… is this wrong of me?   I love to be a part of the theatrical experience in any way especially when great friends are involved (two of them are producing Little Shop), but I am definately an on stage person.

Another great supporter suggested I research a theatre even farther away in Fort Wayne where they are doing Joseph in the near future.  I signed up to join their email list to be informed of audition dates and info.  That would be a GREAT BIG WONDERFUL adventure.  We shall see.  Until then…

Well, life is back to normal, I guess you could say, whatever “normal” is.  My 3 girls were with their Grandma in Illinois for over a week, and they had an awesome time.  Our house was quite quiet and empty without them, so we made it our business to not be in the house much at all.  We were constantly on the go, getting to do  lots of fun things with  just the baby and even some things just hubby and me  – great times!  More on that later since I need to finish writing about our trip to King’s Island, and hopefully entice some people to come along when we go back close to Halloween.  But for now, here is a re-cap of our trip to Shipshewanni – I’m respectfully poking fun at my mom, who has a tendency to sometimes mispronounce things – love you Mom!

So Monday, instead of driving to Illinois to pick up the kids, we met them and my parents, uncle,  sister, nephews, and brother-in-law in Shipshewana Indiana for two days of fun in an indoor water park.  Anticipating this trip for months, I was sure I was going to have a fun blog to write – a family trip with 7 adults, 4 kids and 2 babies sounded like fodder for a National Lampoon movie.  But strangely,  especially considering this group of people – you know who you are 🙂 – nothing bizarre happened; no one in the group got crazy (except for our baby, but that will be addressed later on…), and we all had a blast!

I have to be honest and say that when we got to the water park, I was a bit disappointed to see that there wasn’t a swimming pool.  But as time went on, I became happy with the small size of the place since it was easy to keep tabs  on the kids and find other members of the family to catch up and chat.  There were two large water slides where you go down on rafts, and we had an awesome time taking turns going down with everyone racing each other.  You could go down one or two-at-a-time, and after a while, our oldest got brave enough to try and found she LOVED the water slides!  Same with her cousin, and the two of them went down together – it was adorable to  see the two of them work together to carry their huge raft up all those stairs.  I wish I had a picture, but it was impossible to have a camera in the water park – and please, with my camera luck, do you think I could have taken pictures in the water park and still have had a camera when we left?  Doubtful.  But anyway, we (exhaustively!) made our way up all those stairs time and time again to race our daughter and my nephew and even my mom and dad down the water slide.

They also had a kids’ pool with lots of things to play with and a soft floor for the babies to crawl on.  There was also a playground with 4 water slides –  the kind you go down without a raft – and I liked those too until I mistakenly went down one before it was cleared…  My husband was standing at the bottom of it holding our two-year-old, and I slid right into the back of his legs, bowling them over.  Thank goodness no one was hurt, and I’m sure it was an hilarious, stooge-like display of idiocy.

They also had a lazy river – my favorite.  You just grab a raft and float on down the river, and my 1-year-old son fell asleep because it was so peaceful to float down the river in my arms.  When we are rich, we are going to build a lazy river at my goat farm where I will play with goats, make cheese, and relax in my lazy river 🙂

We split up for dinner, and my parents and uncle were nice enough to watch the kids so  we could go out to dinner with my sister and brother-in-law.  We took the babies with us (our youngest sons are 2½ months apart), and they allowed us sisters and husbands some much-needed catch-up time; I think it’s been over 5 years since we went out together which is too long!  We went to an Amish-style restaurant, and at first I thought it was going to be a gimmick.  You know, yucky Sysco food disguised as Amish style food…  but thankfully, I was wrong.  The food was SO good!  The roast beef was incredible, the mashed potatoes homemade and not out of a package as so many are, and the chicken and noodles tasted like the noodles were also made from scratch.  Everything was all we could eat, served family style – YUM!  I highly recommend the Blue Gate restaurant!

So then we went back to the water park for a little bit until it closed, and then it was time to try to get the kids settled down for the night.  My parents were gracious enough to splurge (the entire trip was a Christmas gift from them) and get us a room with some extra space for our large family, and the two oldest girls had their own little bunk bed area with a tv and nightlights in their beds.  They were out in a jiffy.  Not the case with the younger two – our two-year-old Disney had to bunk with us for lack of beds while her one-year-old brother had a crib.  Disney  and I caught up on life and her week with Grandma while whispering under the covers while Daddy tried to get the baby to bed.  Soon, Disney was asleep which just left one standing…  and standing…  Christopher refused to go to sleep.  In a hotel, especially in a room adjoining my sister’s where they also had a fussy trying-to-go-to-sleep baby, we could not let him cry it out, so  we took him down the hall to the mini-arcade – at least I could read my magazine and my husband could play some Madden while the baby crawled around.  Ha.  All he wanted to do was crawl up and (fall) down the stairs, so no fun for us.  I thought about taking him downstairs so we could at least sit with my dad and uncle and enjoy the evening air, but one of us had to stay with the sleeping girls.  Since our goal was to be able to spend some time together, this was not an option.  We ended up sitting outside of our room for awhile, letting the baby crawl, but soon he got crabby and we realized we were just assaulting my sister’s family from the other side of the room with our noise.  Finally we put him back in his crib and hid out in the bathroom so we were out of sight, and this did the trick – 4 down!  Except that now it was too late to do anything together, so we just watched a few of those weird youtube-like videos and went to bed.  Apparently the baby woke up again in the middle of the night and also early the next morning, and my awesome husband took care of him, even though he was dead tired by the time we got home the next day.  I didn’t sleep well either, especially with Disney in our bed who kept kicking me.

So the next morning, we were up for breakfast, and I couldn’t eat anything because I was so tired.  No problem; I’d get lunch later when I was hungry and at the very least, we had big plans to pick up some gourmet cheese from the awesome cheese shop before we left town.  We split up for the day since my husband didn’t mind taking the older kids to the water park again, and the rest of us had had enough water park, so we went to the flea market instead – what a madhouse!  I don’t know why it’s only open 2 days a week because for those 2 days, the area is MOBBED with tons of traffic!  But anyway, the flea market is huge and has a wide variety of things for everyone.  Before I left, hubby said to make sure I bought myself something, so I did – isn’t he awesome?  He takes most of the kids for the day AND tells me to buy myself something, awww…  (and this is why I obliged to let him try out for a play – he is a giver; he deserves to do  something HE wants to do.  Of course, being in a show takes months of rehearsal and prep time –  oh, man, what did I agree to???)  But anyway, I got a black and white vintage photo of Wrigley Field in 1946 – how cool is that?  I bought a Bears Superbowl frame and some hot sauce for hubby, and we left the flea market before seeing all of it – is that possible to do in just one day?  Then it was time to go home, and our oldest was really upset to see Grandma go – she has a Grandma addiction, so the more time she spends with Grandma, the more sad she gets when it’s time to leave.  But she got over it, and we achieved the coveted quadruple-kid-pass-out on the way home.  Overall, an awesome time, and I think we should definitely do something again next year.  As fun as the water park was, I might suggest a different location next time – maybe a campground or another place where we would have more sit-down time to really get together, catch up, and maybe even play some games.  My sole complaint is that I arrived home cheese-less 🙁  There was an awesome cheese shop, and we were going to stop on the way home, but the kids were just too crazy and the traffic too thick in Shipshewana for us to stop – dangit.  I had been looking forward to that cheese for two days!  Bermuda onion cheese, yummmm…
(drooling….)

As you know I really don’t blog too much…  Er…  At all!  But I do have something to blog about today — MY GIRLS ARE HOME!!!  Waaaaahhhhhoooooo!!

Our three little girls were with Grandma for a week (actually, a little over a week) as they are every summer.  The girls really love going to Grandma’s house and Lisa and I really enjoy the time we have to indulge in each other.  This year Lisa and I got to do some really fun stuff too.  We just had the greatest time together (with Beeber).  But, the girls return home is always a joyous occasion — it is so great to have them home!  With much of the summer still ahead of us I am sure we will have soooo much fun.

That is all — no mega-post from me…  I just needed to get the excitement out — THE GIRLS ARE HOME!!!!

I just have to add… Made you look… 😉

I just got back the official pictures from my third daughter’s wedding. I’m going to talk to the photographers to make sure I can put their contact information here. All I have to say is, these have been the best wedding shots I’ve seen in all three of my girls weddings and then a few others besides.

It is going to take quite a bit of time to see which ones will be printed and put in the album. There were some shots that just blew me away. I will recommend them to anyone I know needing a good photographer. They also did my youngest’s senior pictures and I was very pleased with them.

Show and tell later?

Here are some pix for the day 1.  I purposely tried to select pictures where the kids’ faces weren’t clear or were in profile since they are technically not my kids so I can’t give permission for them.  If any of my silent readers from my church object to any of the pictures, please let me know and I will remove the offending pictures, thanks!  I felt it safe to put up the faces of my older crew though- again, I will remove them if there are objections.  As (almost) always, click for larger images.

I guess if I am to not forget important details about camp, I will have to post a little more often.  I have been working more lately (for less, may I remind you, during training) and when I have been off I have not felt like posting much.  Anyway, on to day two.  My alarm was set for 7:15, but I woke up at 6:45 due to my junior counselor who wanted to take a morning shower.  Personally, I’m an evening shower person when at camp- taking my shower after lights out.  It is good to get out of the clothes I have sweated in all day and wash the day’s residue off.  So David got up at 6:45 for his shower and I tried to get back to sleep, which I think I did ten minutes before my alarm.  Okay then, everybody up, I finished getting shaved and dressed and headed off to the senior morning staff meeting.  The kids got dressed, teeth brushed, and headed to the flagpole raising with David.  Jim went with his boy Diego to the flagpole.  Not much to say about the meeting- we talked a little, prayed, and the kids came in for breakfast.  We sat down in our spot from dinner last night (which by the way would be our spot for the entire week, for the first time in five years) and chowed down on our hot breakfast, eggs and sausage I believe.

Bleah.  If I keep writing in this sort of detail I will never finish the post.  Here, let me post the daily schedule and try to focus on the highlights:

7:30 AM Wake Up
7:50-8:00 AM Flag Raising
8:05-8:40 AM Breakfast
8:45-9:45 AM Spiritual Check-Up (Teaching)
10:00-10:45 AM Physical Therapy (Game)

11:00-12:00 noon Instructionals
12:15-12:50 PM Lunch and Mail Call
1:00-2:00 PM Bed Rest
2:15-3:15 PM Instructionals
3:30-5:00 PM Canteen and Free time
5:15-5:25 PM Flag Lowering
5:30-6:15 PM Dinner
6:30-7:15 PM Physical Therapy (Game)
7:30-8:30 PM Spiritual Check-Up (Teaching)
9:00-9:40 PM Canteen and Campfire
9:40-9:55 PM Cabin time
10:00 PM Lights Out!

Right after breakfast, as you can see, was the teaching time.  Well, as you probably learned from last time, this starts off with worship.  Actually, it starts off with an up front game where someone from each team comes up and plays a crazy game such as eating strange food or toilet-paper wrapping.  I don’t remember what the game was but overall this week they weren’t as exciting as in the past.  Did I mention that this whole time was outside?  They built a sort of amphitheater a few years ago with tiered bench-seating and step-logs.  Aside from the stage, it fit rather nicely with the woods around it.  One of the worship songs was a song that would become the theme song for the week, sung at every worship time- ten times over the week.  I don’t recall the title, but it’s about sharing our faith and in the chorus they yell “we won’t be quiet” (about our faith) and “we won’t deny it.”  I don’t much care for the music, but the lyrics were sound.  As for the teaching time, the first memory verse was given, Romans 12:2- “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” In fact, this is our theme verse for this summer given the release of the second Transformers movie.  We were back in Luke 14 and talked about the brain.  Well, the mind, but “brain” fit better under the medical theme.

So with that done, our team along with another team were told to get on swimming gear for the game and meet on the game field for a game of wipe-out wiffleball.  This is a game where the kids get wet.  Really wet.  They had a hose connected though a filter to the nearby pond affectionately known as leech lake.  Lots of leeches- and some water moccasins.  No swimming in that pond.  So with the hose they would wet down the slip-n-slide between home and first base (a giant inner tube that was safe to slide into.  All other bases were toddlers’ wading pools filled with water.  The hose was also used to douse the batter between pitches, and sometimes the kids waiting to bat- no mercy.  We won the game in the end after taking an initial beating, and lucky for us our two instructionals were at the swim front so the boys wore their swimming trunks until free-time in the afternoon. This year the camp received two pontoon boats, at least one of which was for free.  God has blessed our church many times over with such gifts, including the camp itself.  So John, one of the camp directors and family pastor at my church met us at the swim front (the boys had to check in with their numbers and “boat in”) with one of them.  The ride was beautiful what with the sunny day and things to see.  There were some swans, a dam, a couple of islands, and more.  All this in the giant pond.  Yes, pond- apparently it is man-made and referred to as pond rather than lake.  Hmm.

Well, the afternoon brought us the first bed rest time.  This is a Michigan law that every camp has to follow- an hour of bed rest each day to keep campers from heat exhaustion and the like.  During this time kids were required to stay in their beds in the cabin.  They were allowed to read, play a quiet game with someone in the next bed, or sleep.  David and Diego chose to sleep.  I cleaned a bit which would become a daily ritual.  We actually won cleanest boy’s cabin for this day.  They jokingly (I hope!) called it least disastrous when they informed us.  Following bed rest we hiked back to the swim front for canoeing.  Not much to say here.  They learned how to get in a canoe and how to paddle.  We were out for a good twenty minutes or so following instruction.  I got in a canoe with two of my red-banders (non-swimmers) as required for them to go out in a canoe.  It was a nice time.  Then it was free time.  Guess where they spent free time?  The swim front!  Since we were already there and already in swim gear it was easy.  We had to “boat out” then “swim in” since boating was done.  Besides swimming, kids got to play “nuke-em,” baggo, or tetherball; lounge around on the many chairs, or get a snack at the canteen.

After dinner it was time for the final group game and lesson.  The game involved a giant basket and a lot of balls.  The object was to get as many balls in the opposing basket more points for the big balls!) as they could.  I have no idea who won that game.  The lesson pretty much went as day one.  The focus was on Mark 4 with the parable of the soils, with the focus on the hard soil, or hard heart which those who have not come to Christ have.  Those who hadn’t accepted Christ yet were encouraged to talk to their leaders.  Small group again (yes we had it in the morning too even if I didn’t mention it) and it was time for the evening free time on the big court.  I know the schedule mentions a campfire, but that was only for two of the evenings- one for the girls, one for the boys.  Monday was time for neither.  Tonight most would leave a little early to hit the showers, though one of my cabin decided he would go for morning instead.

This is a long post, so pics to follow in another post.