I found this little poem by Dallas Clayton that seems more than a little in keeping with the theme of this summer.

SOCIAL

Sure, making friends is different now
than it was at camp
but it still holds true
if you can’t be bothered
to get out of the corner
and ask those folks
if you can play with them
no one is ever going to give you a cool nickname
like “Lightnin” or “Magic.”

It’s the end of week one and I’m exhausted.  I started the week with 10 sweet girls between the ages of 8-9 and ended with 9 kiddos (after a bout of “missing homeness”… yes, that’s what we’re calling it these days). It’s been tough, they got here at 2 on Sunday and they just left at 10 today and we’ve been going going going in between.

Roughly, the schedule is this:
7 am. WAKIE WAKIE!
7:45 meet at the flag pole, sing some songs, wake up
8  go in to eat eat eat!
8:50 clean cabins
9:15 chapel
9:45-12 hiking/archery/river swim/horses/climbing tower/drama (chose two)
NOON LUNCH!
1-2 quiet horizontal time
2-3 pool
3-5:20 games, or two of the previous activities
5:30 Flag
5:45 dinner!
6:30 ….. alright, well, it gets fuzzy from here. There’s a couple hours of activities involving games, running, challenges, then an hour or so of campfire and then embers which is where we reflect on the day and then bedtime by 9:30.
The girlies are usually snoring instantly. I’ve been reading a Dr. Seuss story about yawning or something every night (back by popular demand) and it puts them out like lights every time. I don’t know what counselors did without Seuss.
On Tuesday all of the pioneer campers and counselors went camping out on the beach. That means that we run them as hard as possible during the day, then take them down to the beach and let them root around in the sand for a few hours, feed them s’mores and then pack them into their sleeping bags. There are a couple of kids crying about bugs, a few are cold, they all need to pee constantly and then there’s the sand. However, they all fall asleep eventually and so do we. Fast forward to 2:30 am. Rain. Yes, rain. It started to pour so we had to wake all 45 of the kids up, load them up with all of the stuff they packed in earlier and march them up a rather steep hill and over about ¼ of a mile to the cabins.  I had one camper collapse on the hill in a tantrum, crying crying crying. Keep in mind that I’m exhausted and sick, trying to keep track of 10 kids and keep them moving. Oi. That was a very very long day.
Favorite quote of the week:
“My brother is all natural, so I could just compost him too!” while we were talking about the compost pile during our environmental activity.

News has invented a new day called “moustache Wednesday”…

Heck YES those are some sweet ‘staches. Later that night I sang a song in a giant, adult sized onsie. Complete with ‘stache.
And here’s the cabin with Ruba (she works in aquatics and sleeps in the cabin with us) right before the dance. She decided that getting them dressed in funny costumes would destract and deflect from boy talk (yes, some of them talk about boys) and it worked pretty well. I’m developing a bag of tricks and this will definitely have to be one of them.