Tuesday September 27 2011 was an amazing day.  Our entire family was up before the crack of dawn because it was my husband’s big day in Findlay Ohio – his meeting and official interview with the church conference that was going to decide if they agreed with the local church board’s recommendation that my husband be their new pastor.  We allowed plenty of extra time that morning because we weren’t sure what bumps we might encounter while rousing 4 kids out of bed while it was still dark outside.  But it went perfectly – all the kids were agreeable and all were ready before it was time to leave, unprecedented!  No one complained about going to the babysitter’s; actually, they seemed excited about it.  My husband and I dropped off the kids, and as we turned onto the long country road that would take us most of the way there, I noticed a stunning effect of the sunrise.  A beam of orange light was coming down from the clouds – not in the east where the rest of the sunrise was visible, but off to the west.  It was really more like a column of soft orange light – an orange rainbow.  It was beautiful, unlike anything either of us had ever seen, and we enjoyed it together until it faded into the dawning of the new day.

The almost 2 hour drive was most pleasant; my husband and I always enjoy each other’s company.  Plus our spirits were buoyed by the kids’ great behavior that morning and the blessing of the orange rainbow.

My husband’s meeting went well while I explored Findlay by myself a bit.  I found an African Grey Parrot (my favorite kind of bird!) at the pet store, so I played with her for a while and checked out some other stores.  We ate a wonderful lunch, and then my husband got the call – the conference approved him; he is the new pastor of Union Chapel!  Now the waiting is over, and we know for sure the direction that God has been pointing us.  We finished out our day in Findlay with a movie and another peaceful long drive, just the two of us.  As we left the town of Findlay and headed out into the Ohio countryside, there was a full-size, full-color rainbow in all its glory.  Two rainbows in one day (occurring almost 12 hours and dozens of miles apart)?  They seemed to perfectly epitomize God’s blessings on this day for us, beginning with the kids being so great, followed by our long drives going safely and smoothly, and finally, the good news about my husband’s new calling.  Does God speak to people using rainbows?  For sure, He used a rainbow to illustrate his promise that He will never destroy the earth with flood again in Genesis 9:11-15:

 “11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.”

And, God loves it when we notice His works of art in nature and offer praise to Him – there are more than a few examples of this in the Bible as well.  My husband and I saw the rainbows as messages to us from God; reassurance to us as we embark on yet another new journey at this stage in our lives, stamps of approval for a very blessed day and extra nods of encouragement from Our Heavenly Father as we might be tempted to be distracted by our uncertainties.

It was a very blessed day spent with my favorite person in the whole world.  I am so proud of him for everything that he is, everything he is becoming, and for his being hand-picked by God to take on this incredibly awesome responsibility.  And to say that I am honored to realize that I am the one who gets to experience this life by his side is a gross understatement.  For these reasons and others, I thank God every day.

Unfortunately, this isn’t either of the rainbows we saw the other day because I didn’t have my camera with me to take pictures.  But I figured that I needed a picture of a beautiful rainbow on this post!  🙂

‘E’S BACK!  Yes, I have returned from the state of Michigan to learn there was a tornado in the area while I was away.  Two towns away, with little damage and no casualties, so not exactly those news breakers of weeks past.  Moving on, in addition to the additions and subtractions they make from year to year (i.e., the Zorb this year replaced mountain biking), there are always differences in the kids and the weather.  Each group of campers is different.  I had ten boys in my cabin this year, and a junior leader who was one of my 4th/5th grade kids at church (not camp) from years past.  I have had the sweetest kids you could know, and some, well, not quite the other end of the scale but leaning that way.  Sometimes strongly.  The most difficult one I had this year was mostly trouble at bedtime, not wanting to stay in bed, his own bed, etc.  During the day he was great to lead.  I originally had nine boys, but one was added at the last minute so in addition to the nine 5th graders, I had one 4th grader.  I won’t be able to form a strong relationship with him however, as his family will be moving out of state soon.  Nor will I have any relationship at all with another, who came as a friend of one of our students.  He has Christian parents however (and he already accepted Christ), unlike another guest I had a few years ago who came from a decidedly non-Christian family, though he did accept Jesus during his week at camp.

One of the new things this year was a talent show.  I made sure to sign up for a skit, though I did come prepared with some songs from Oliver! in case we had to sing.  You see, there was only one slot available each night for skits.  This will have to be tweaked a bit for next year as no one signed up for the first night.  Too little rehearsal time?  Together we decided to do a backstage audition scene, though looking like an Idol episode with three judges holding their product-placement IBC root beer bottles.  We came up with a script the first couple days, tweaking it even at the last rehearsal.  I assigned three judge roles, one being kind of a mean one (yeah, you know…); six contestants in three acts (one became a security guard instead during a tweak); and one cameraman who dropped out when he wasn’t feeling very well on the day of performance, giving me his line which didn’t quite work out as it was meant for a cameraman, not someone yelling from offstage.  The one who didn’t want to even do a skit turned out to do a great job as a judge.  I would say that they wrote half the script adding great ideas like a group doing a purposely bad “pattycake” routine, calling themselves the Pattycake Pros, or PPs for short (remember the audience/participant ages!).  We also had a male diva contestant named Justin B-[eye]-ber, who the judges naturally mispronounce.  The mispronounced name was my idea, but the kids came up with the contestant idea among others.  He was dragged off by the security guard after hitting a judge, only to return later chased by that same security guard.  The kids added being chased by some girls at the end, so we borrowed a few from a girl’s cabin who would chase him thinking he must be the famous pop star, where he once again shouted that he was B-[eye]-ber, not B-[ee]-ber.  The most amazing addition they came up with was changing my generic “Jesus Rocks” at the end of another bad performance (making it a smashing hit in the judges eyes as a result instead of another flop) to a bible verse from the lesson earlier that day about not fearing, finding comfort in God instead.  I believe the verse was Psalm 27:1.  That was the Holy Spirit talking through the boy who came up with that change!

This post is getting kind of long, and I have to get a couple things done before I go to bed, so I will leave you with this video from the Zorb activity.  This answers the question, “Is it safe to be in front of a moving Zorb?”

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/25643379[/vimeo]

It has been a while since the last camp post, so why don’t I just wrap it up in one post?  Since we’re talking two days, I have a lot of photos this time.   The highlights of course were the games and instructionals.  But before we get to those, the themes for the last two days were the tongue and the hands/feet.  The tongue refers to what we say and the hands and feet refer to our actions.  If you’re keeping up with the key verses, here they are (can you match up the theme with the verse?):

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. (Ephesians 4:29)

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,
but the companion of fools will suffer harm. (Proverbs 13:20)

The one heart lesson on Thursday night was the good news- the faithful heart.  After three nights of learning about the bad hearts it was refreshing to finally get to the one that hears the Word and takes action, letting it take root strongly in one’s heart.

The first game was Man Overboard against the Blue Shields.  Man Overboard is a running game where the kids have to follow the directions of where to go and what to do.  There are four sides to a ship, but for this large of a group we only used two- bow and stern.  Besides the two places to go, the one in charge can call things like octopus!, shark!, hit the deck!, and of course the title, man overboard!  There are more too.  When the kids hear this they have to do an action associated with the command.  See the photo section for two such actions.  Since this is a relatively short game for the allotted time, they played a couple of games and followed with a couple rounds of Simon Says.  The boys actually played this the night before before going on a hay ride at the end of the day, but not for a good reason- it was because several boys didn’t listen to directions.  It was a fun sort of reminder for them I think.  Our team rocked on these games.  The next morning the game was Bedlam against the Red Cross.  This was a more subjective game where the teams were given an action to do, like act like a particular animal or object (i.e., ice-cream truck), and whichever team did it best overall according to the leaders judging would win the points.  I have no idea who actually won this one.

Hey, did I skip a game?  Well, that’s because I saved the best for last.  Last time I mentioned Counselor Hunt was switched to Thursday.  This is quite a different game from the rest.  This annual game is where the counselors all hide somewhere in the camp and the kids, working in groups, have to find them.  Over the last four years, I have tamed a bit on this one.  The first couple times I played it I hid so well that almost no one found me.  Last year (or was it the year before?) I switched tactics to make it easier for the kids- I placed myself so that I was hidden from most directions, but visible if they looked from a certain angle.  Several found me of course, but that was the idea.  Another strategy some take with this game is to hide in plain sight.  That is, they will place themselves in a spot they can’t be missed like the middle of the road or reading a newspaper in front of a cabin.  They are so obvious that they must not be playing, or so most of the kids think.  This year I didn’t hide at all.  I was one of the runners, called viruses in this medical theme.  You can tell by the name that this is bad news for the kids.  Instead of hiding, I was one of about four who would chase the kids.  If caught, they would be marked and would have to have the virus “cured” before they could continue the game.  This was a very tiring job- no wonder the high school kids were usually the ones to do it!  I think I marked about five or six kids throughout the game, regrettably one of my own (hey, we had to play fair!).  I ran up to three from my cabin, and instead of running away like they all should have, one of them ran toward me, an excited look on his face that he “found” me. Doh! (visualize hand slapping face here).

There were of course four instructionals throughout the two days.  I won’t talk too much about most of them though for brevity sake.  On Thursday we had fishing and archery.  Yes, there were actual fish in the lake but they didn’t get to cook up what they caught- just catch and release.  I’m sure the kids weren’t too disappointed they didn’t get to clean, gut, and cook the fish…  Not much to say on archery- most kids were, let’s just say not quite Robin Hoods, so I will move on to riflery on Friday.   The kids from Iowa put us to shame here.  They were so practiced at shooting that when they ran out of targets to hit they shot ours!  These were actually pellet guns powered by air- no real bullets for this camp.  This was a new event this year and I was looking forward to it as I remembered my times at Boy Scout camp, though there we had to pay for each round we shot.  You can see what the rifles looked like below.  Rock climbing was the final event of the week for us.  All but one of the boys in my cabin gave it a try.  Again, a couple of pictures below.

The only things left to write about (I’ll probably come up with more once I post this!) are the campfire and going home.  Wednesday night the girls had a campfire while the boys went on a hayride, which, by the way, had no hay- just the cart.  Thursday reversed these roles.  The campfire was to serve a couple of purposes.  The obvious one was marshmallows for s’mores.  The other was to burn a list of fears we wrote up the night before as part of the lesson, signifying that we release these fears to God’s control.  Since we had to wait a day on this for our turn at the campfire, you can guess what happened.  Myself included.  I’ll just say that I found my list once I got home and unpacked.  Speaking of going home, that’s what we did Friday night.  Cleaned up the cabins, packed, and headed to the bus bus.  Once again I was grateful for the buses coming down Dorothy’s Hill so we didn’t have to climb it with our luggage.  All but one of my boys boarded the bus- we left one behind.  On purpose.  Are you curious?  Okay, he was staying for family camp.  His parents wouldn’t arrive until the next day, but he stayed with another dad who stayed behind with his own son.

In the end, our team was not victorious.  We came in a close second, still far ahead of third place.  There’s always next year. 🙂

Oh, one more thing- winning the cleanest boys’ cabin twice really messed me up for one of the things I wanted to do one of the days.  Lots of balloons was the key here, but I guess I will be saving them for next year now.  On Thursday we decided that since we would probably not be allowed to win two days in a row, we saved them for Friday.  On Friday, we were busy cleaning and packing.  Oh, well.  Enjoy the pics, and be sure to click on whatever catches your eye for larger versions.

Oh, no contact lenses were really lost as far as I know.  What?  You don’t read the pop-up tooltips when you hover over the pictures?  For shame! 😛

Days -2, -1, and 0 were getting ready days of course.  Day one however is where it begins.  Past years have had a check-in time of 10:00AM.  Not so this year.  With a brand new 8:00AM check-in time I dragged myself out of bed early and got a ride over to the bank lot across form the church.  While I didn’t really care much for the early call time, it did give us a couple extra hours once we got to camp.  The chaos of checking in seemed less this year for whatever reason.  I know numbers were down due to the you-know-what, but even considering it seemed pretty tame.  Parents checked in the kids, picked up tags, saw the nurse, carried the bags to the appropriate bus, waited for departure.  During this time I had the chance to say hi to three of the kids in my cabin and their parents.  Another one I found out would meet us at camp while the fifth I didn’t know at all, leaving it a total surprise when I finally did.  Around the final prayer and departure time, I finally met him as he was pointing to some bags that hadn’t yet been loaded on.  I looked at the tag and saw the bags were for someone in my cabin.  I turned to him and saw he was the fifth boy- Diego.  I later found out that the bags were for his stepfather who was coming with him.  This was no ordinary boy either- he was in two leg casts (to straighten his legs- they weren’t broken) and was… small.  Ever watch Little People, Big World?  Yes, he has that condition.  After a prayer with the parents and campers we hopped onto the buses and we were off.  We gave them about a half-hour of chat time and then the first movie went in.  All the movies were Disney of course- rated G animated features.  Ratatouille was first and it engaged at least 95% of the kids.  Wall-E followed.  Too bad the bus DVD player had no remote as Wall-E had a couple of nice shorts in the extras.  Halfway through the bus ride we stopped at a rest-stop so the drivers could take a quick pit-stop.  Yeah, leaders too. 😉 ()Kids were stuck on the bus, but the movie was kept playing so most didn’t mind I’m sure.  Having forgotten my lunch (it’s always something, right?) I scrambled here to get overprice vending machine offerings while still trying to pick up something extra for the kids in the same boat as me.  Other leaders chipped in too.

So 3½ hours later, or 4½ when you take the time change from CDT to EDT into consideration, we arrived- about ten minutes after Wall-E ended.  We got to the usual drop off point- and kept going.  Yes!  No walking a half-mile to the camp, partly down a 40º incline (or back up that same incline at the end of the week for that matter!).  We were greeted with large welcome signs from the staff, waiting for us on the game field.  While the bus was unloaded and the luggage carried to the cabins we were given an introduction speech.  The week at camp was officially underway!  We split for the cabins so the kids could get ready for their swim tests, then headed for the swim front.  For one of only two times during the week the gate was swung open so we could enter without checking in.  At all other times the kids were required to check in to the swim front to keep track of who was there in case something happened.  I had told Diego’s stepdad that we would start out with a sandcastle/fort competition when others were doing their swim tests, two cabins at a time.  Wrong!  Just because we had the previous four years didn’t mean this would be year five- oops.  Instead, we played a friendly game of nuke ’em, a volleyball variation where instead of hitting the ball it is thrown up in the air.  If it isn’t caught by the other team, the person on that team who last touched the ball trying to catch it, or the one who it fell closest to otherwise is out.  The game is over when one team is out.  At the end of our swim test during this time, three of my kids had red bracelets for non-swimmers.  Diego was one of course as he did not even take the test because of his casts.  This was definitely different for me with more than half my cabin wearing red bands; in the past I have always had only one or two.

So with that done, we changed out of the swimming gear, went to the court on top of the hill by the girls’ cabins for more instructions for the week, then hit the lodge for dinner.  It looked like this year they turned the tables 90 degrees from previous years, but other than that it was the same as previous years.  Following dinner was the first lesson.  This week’s theme was Code Blue: Having a Heart for God, so all the lessons were based on this theme.  The main passage of scripture was the parable of the seeds and the soils they landed on or in.  We broke out for small group, and what was another first we never broke into smaller groups.  In the past I have had 7-10 kids in my cabin so the kids could be split into two groups since every cabin had at least two leaders, but with only five kids we just stayed together with all three of us leaders taking turns leading discussion.  My five kids this year all had been raised in strong Christian homes, and they all had stories to tell of accepting Jesus.  I have had others in the past that had not and have even been able to lead such kids to Christ, but this year it was all about living the Christian life with all these kids which I will be the first to say is a struggle.

As the last part of the night the kids had some “free time” which for this age group is staying in one area free to play whatever games they wished in that area.  This was their first opportunity to hid the canteen, a short bus painted like a bee where they could buy candy and pop (Gatorade and water as well).  This first night was also where I received my first scars which still populate my arms to an extent of mosquito bites as I was eaten alive.  After this I would remember to put on bug spray…

The students were given a choice on whether or not to take a shower- the only night I gave that option since they didn’t do much activity that day- and then we prayed, turned out the lights, and this post finally ended. 😀

In church as of late, we are in the midst of a pastoral series called Fearless.  I  am enjoying this series because so far we have been able to study the Biblical  story of David and Goliath and also the story of Moses and the Parting of the Red Sea – two stories I’ve certainly heard about, but hadn’t heard the details or about how they relate to modern-day Christianity until now.  Last Sunday at church, our pastor told of an amusing story during his Fearless series, and I thought I’d share it.  Also in this service, the band accompanied an amazing Bossa Nova / Spanish-style vocal  duet unlike anything I’ve seen in church so far – it was awesome!  I can’t reproduce the song unfortunately, but here is a summary of the pastor’s fun story:

A beautiful village nestled on the bottom of a valley erupted in flames.  All of the surrounding villages’ fire engines came to fight the fire, but they all stopped at the top of the hill on the road leading to the burning village in the valley, for they figured the village would not be savable and would only pose a danger to their own firefighters.  A rickety old fire truck soon showed up from a distant town, and it didn’t hesitate as it crested the hill and rode straight into the valley to fight the fire.  The fire was extinguished, the village saved, and there was a grand ceremony of celebration.  When the fearless fire department who put out the fire rose to accept their rewards and thanks, the fire chief took the stage.  The mayor of the saved village asked him, “What are you going to do with your rewards and with your thank-you money?”  The fire chief of that heroic fire department who  fearlessly rode down  the hill to save the neighboring town said, “The first thing we are going to do is to fix the brakes on that fire truck!”

The moral of the story?  Here’s my take:  The “fearless” fire-fighters didn’t even mean to go into the fire to fight it…  But they did just that, and once they got down in the valley accidentally (because of the failed brakes on the fire truck), they faced their fears and conquered that fire, even though they didn’t originally intend to and also despite their fears.

The story tied in nicely with our church’s Fearless series.  And our pastor told us that story, I think, to get our attention and to get us thinking…  And that it did.

(continued from the previous post – To Hellinois…)

So FINALLY, after yet another GPS debacle orchestrated by Jill (might be time to change the persona of the GPS again and fire Jill!) we arrived in Aurora, and it’s the first time I’ve seen my parents’ dogs in years.  Loopy is looking a little bit gray in the muzzle, but also much slimmer since last time I saw her.  And Happy… well, Happy is herself, I guess – hyper and happy to see my kids, I wouldn’t expect any less!  We visited with my mom  for a little while, and then it was off to lunch, which my husband and I had carefully orchestrated.  My mom was nice enough to watch our girls so that we could enjoy a little time out with just the baby, and after all that driving + the morning’s (more than) two hour tantrum, boy, did we need some time to ourselves!  So we went to Sweet Tomatoes – a restaurant that specializes in an ultra-fresh salad buffet, my husband’s favorite, and I don’t think he was disappointed!  They also have 6 kinds of soup and 3 kinds fresh hand-tossed pasta – YUM!  We drove around for a few minutes after lunch searching for a dollar store or two – next to zoos and cuisine, “exotic” dollar stores are my favorite things to see while in different areas,  but we couldn’t find one, so we went to a Petland instead.  So I put aside my opinions that Petland is a leading trader in  puppy mill pups, and we went for a visit.  And this Petland had LOTS of animals with very nice habitats.  They did have a huge bunch of puppies though, and almost all of their “getting to know you” puppy rooms were taken (let me just vent real quick by saying – why can’t more people consider shelter dogs so we can reduce the amount of homeless pets in the country!!!)  And I asked the staff members a few questions – some to learn things but most to test their knowledge on subjects – and they passed.  They no longer sell seahorses  because they require ultra-clean water and exceptionally large tanks.  I was glad to see that Petland was no longer putting the lives of seahorses in jeopardy just to make a quick buck, but they lost me when they offered to order me some – oh well.  There were the cutest little Robinsky hamsters – about the size of a silver dollar – and they were in constant motion.  They are so fast that they kept flipping each other over in the hamster wheel and making each other go upside down!  They were adorable, but how anyone could handle having such a busy pet is beyond me – you couldn’t even pick them up since they were so fast!  Here is a picture of someone who actually got one of these things in their hand:

So then it was on to my nephew’s first birthday party – he is only 2½ months older than my son, and the two of them together were SO cute!  My son is on the left, birthday boy on the right:

The party was lots of fun, and it was nice getting to spend time with my family and my sister’s in-laws, who we don’t see very often.  We had to leave a little bit early to try to get on the road at a decent hour, but before we left, my kids did a good job of trashing my sister’s house.  One of them clogged the toilet, one of them crumbled their birthday cake all over the floor (requiring my brother-in-law to haul out his Shop-Vac!), and one of them had too much cake and ice cream and spit up all over Grandma and the floor.  I bet they’re glad we don’t come over very often!  Just kidding, I’m sure it was understood that with 8 kids at one party, something was bound to get messed up – but why did all the messes have to be traced back to my kids?

After the party, I dropped my husband off at a Walgreens for some clearance shopping – his favorite! – cuz I wanted to stop by White Castle and get a case of slyders to bring home.  White Castle is an institution in Chicagoland, and one of the things I miss that we don’t have here.  For those of you who aren’t familiar, slyders are what locals call the little hamburgers that White Castle sells – the secret to the awesome flavor is steamed onions.  My hubby must love me a lot to put up with the smell of steamed onions for the 4 hour drive home!  And no, the frozen ones they sell at Walmart are not the same as the ones you can buy at the restaurants – which is why I try to bring home a case every time I go!  But on Sunday, I kept getting behind slow drivers (what happened to the drivers in Illinois?  I swear, during this trip I was the most aggressive driver I ran into, what’s happened to all the a**holes that used to be on the road over there?  Could it be the red-light cameras?), and then they took forever at White Castle.  And what do I do?  I drive off with only my drinks, forgetting my cheeseburgers.  So I get back in line, and of course I’m behind the slowest lady in the world – I was in line for 20 minutes, just to get food I had forgotten!  By the time I got back to Walgreens, my husband was ready to put out an APB on our van.  And of course the baby cried the whole time because he was tired and wanted his bottle, and I couldn’t reach the spot in the car where he had thrown it.  So I was flustered by the time we finally started for home.  Luckily for me, we achieved a quadruple pass out though, so the drive home was peaceful.  We got home around 1 am, and much to our surprise, our pet sitter and great friend Carol was still in our house!  The kids started to wake up, so we rudely hushed Carol and brought the crying kids upstairs.  Luckily we only had one straggler who stayed up for a little while, and I apologized to Carol for my rudeness (and my stench of coming off a 4-hour drive sitting next to steamed onions with baby spit-up on me).  We were more than happy to share the White Castle bounty, and my husband drove poor Carol home since her car had died and she was trapped at our house – I felt badly getting in so late!  I was so tired that I forgot to call my mom to tell her we made it safely – I don’t think that’s ever happened, oops!

Sunday we somehow got up for church, and we got to see some people get baptized which was a neat experience.  The sermon was about Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, which interested me because I don’t have much religious background and didn’t know the story.  But I learned some useful tools that I think might help me during this ultra-trying time that Samantha has been putting us through lately.  After church, they had a program they call KidStuff – they have it twice a year – and Sunday’s KidStuff was about obedience – perfect!  Just the message we need to drill into our kids’ heads lately!  It was a really cute skit about how it’s important to be obedient, and I thought it was very well done.  There was lots of physical comedy for the kids, goofy characters, an air horn (kids love noisy things!), and they stressed the importance of obedience repeatedly.  And, they gave us an orange “O” to put on our fridge to remind the kids about being obedient!  I was so excited to get home and apply these lessons to real life!  But alas, after the pizza lunch at church for KidStuff, Sammie had to rub it in how much she DIDN’T learn from the skit – our friend is a professional photographer and met us at the park to get some Spring pics of the kids.  But our family picture is minus one – Sammie refused to participate in the picture taking.  Even seeing a robin’s nest up close didn’t soften her enough to be cooperative.  So all my hopes about her learning something, even a little bit, from the obedience skit flew out the window.  But the baby robin was adorable – there were two eggs and one that had hatched, couldn’t have been more than a day old.  I’ve never seen one so little, it barely had any feathers or baby bird peach fuzz!  Awww!

Overall, a great weekend.  I call it Hellinois, but I’m (half) joking.  You couldn’t pay me to live there, but there are worse places we could have to visit!  I think we might be going back sometime soon for a very exciting, awesomely fun event – more on that later!!!

I had accepted a grade 1/2 assignment for today due to the trouble I had earlier in the week getting jobs. It’s slightly below my comfort zone because of the 1st grade students. However, had I not taken it I wouldn’t have this to write about! Well, it’s not much of a topic, but it is a little different. Not much really goes into naming kids these days in Western culture. We choose a name usually because we had a relative with that name, there was a role model with that name (such as in the Bible) or we just like the sound of it. Once upon a time, and still in some cultures names carry meaning. But that’s not what this post is about. It’s also not about people who try to change names for special recognition.

What it’s about is why some parents choose to give their kids names that, well, just don’t fit… I once read a story about new guardians who would go to court to get kids’ names changed because their parents cursed them with ridiculous names, like the drug-shot parents who named their daughter Cocaina (guess which was their drug of choice?) or the parents who tried to name their child Friday. The name itself may not be ridiculous, but rather given to the wrong gender. I mean, do such parents regret having the “wrong sex” and give them the name they picked out anyway- like the parents who really wanted a boy so when they had a girl they dressed her up like a boy until she was to start school (and were mystified when she refused to put on a dress for her first day of school)? Of course there are some names that go both ways, at least the shortened version like Chris, Alex, Terry, etc. And I am still getting used to Leslie and Cameron being both male and female names. However, some just don’t work. Can you imagine a girl named Matt or Mike? Or a boy named Elizabeth or Jessica? Well, you may have to have some Hispanic blood to understand this one, but a boy in the class I was in today was named Guadalupe. That’s right. Named after Mary in the Bible as Our Lady of Guadalupe (well, an apparition of Mary, but I won’t split hairs). Apparently a very popular name for girls (click the name for more information). Why?? This is just setting up this boy for future problems with schoolmates. I predict that by the time he is in Junior High he will be going by his middle name, whatever it is, assuming that it too isn’t a girl’s name. I really hope it isn’t for his sake.

Not enough links for you in the above post? Try out these unusual names on Wikipedia. I had forgotten that Nicholas Cage had named his son Kal-El (you know, Superman)!