Fantastic Family Camp

 After a pretty smooth sailing first week of school (pics from 1st day above), we left school/work early that Friday and headed to Ridgecrest for our long awaited (and long paid for-- ouch!) family camp adventure.  Our friends had been going- and trying to get us to go- for years, and we finally bit the bullet!  In total, we had 4 families from our neighborhood there, and found another family that used to live in our neighborhood too!  

The first evening we had dinner in the dining hall, followed by a Campus Crusade-esque meeting that included camp songs, worship songs, a short message, and games with some funny guys who would be the entertainment of the weekend... Hugh and Jarms from the invented country of ARM-ania, where they were obsessed with bicep muscles.  They dressed in track suits, had theme songs, balloon-stuffed sleeves, accents, and lots of funny bits.  These meetings were fun and they did a great job with the simple direct message that God loves and makes his promises to flawed people like all of us.  I also enjoyed singing the worship songs surrounded by lots of families, who no doubt are trying to be faithful as parents and followers of Jesus like we are, and needing lots of help and encouragement.

After that there was a game in the dark where families competed (one half of camp v. the other) to "mine" various materials on another "planet".  Basically, we had to run around and pick up glow sticks and return them to the properly color-coded location around camp.  The kids loved this and got really into it...though partway through, when we actually had grasped what we were supposed to be doing, we figured they couldn't possibly be counting all those glow sticks and we realized they were just taking the filled buckets and redumping them around the ground so they could be picked up again in an endless cycle.  No matter.  Allie loved following the girl with the armfuls of glow sticks and collecting them back up again.  After that we had ice cream and attempted to settle into the cabin for bedtime while the boys headed to play basketball in the gym.  The first night of attempted sleep, we were super hot and then cold and all a little too out of our norm to sleep much.  There were glowstick distractions, boys coming in late with slammed cabin doors, the sounds of all of us tossing and turning.  We woke to the sounds of "Here Comes the Sun" and a rousing "Good Morning" from the camp director and headed off to breakfast.

Saturday after breakfast we had another worship meeting and some family questions to discuss before driving over to the neighboring boys' camp (most families stayed at the girls' camp) for Sock War.  I thought this would be similar to our Christmas "snowball" fight where we just try to throw the fake snowballs at each other, but no-- this was much more.  First there was a dramatic skit in the dark of a gym to announce each team's leader- Batman and Darth Vader, then after a brief explanation of how this was more like Capture the Flag, we headed off to our base to fill our socks with sawdust and prepare to defend/attack.  The boys and Julia ventured out and had adventures outside our base, ultimately returning with a small group of teammates and the other team's flag to end the game.  Allie and I hung around the base, I predictably got hit with a sock, only hit someone once (a kid who had already been hit and was on his was to "prison"), and chatted with some other folks.  It was fun though.  We were served lunch after that and changed into swimsuits for water fun.  They fed us sooo much food on this trip.  It was wonderful to just show up for meals and not cook!  But we had more than our share of sweets and were feeling pretty stuffed by the end.  

It was super fun doing water activities on the lake that afternoon.  I loved watching everyone do the blob and rope swing into the water and Matt and I enjoyed a trip down the zipline together.  The boys did axe throwing and also got really into a big game of dodgeball at one point, which ended up being one of their favorite activities.  And then there was Allie.  I had forgotten her swimsuit, but she didn't want to get in the water anyway.  She was content to feed the fish, hang with friends, and go to "canteen" where we could pick a drink and candy each day for free.  She really didn't do much of anything the whole weekend.  She loved the covered shelter where the kids played 4 square, carpet ball, and she could sit and color.  Pretty sure we could make the coloring happen at home. ;)  She is just so cautious about new things, though not so much about new kids.  She made friends with the girls next door (whose parents happened to be at Clemson when I was) and it was like they'd always known each other!  At the end, the kids had a goal of Julia getting "blobbed" by Joshua, who she decided was her perfect weight match for the jumping pillow.  Only issue was that she kept falling off before Joshua could jump down.  It was pretty hilarious.  Gray was trying to get Matt to blob him and had the same issue, but eventually all got it and it was very fun.  Julia had some fears and frustrations to work through with all these adventurous water things that didn't always work the way she planned, but she is determined and kept trying even through tears at times.

We headed back to our cabins and cooked packet meals over the fire, which we had assembled after breakfast.  Unfortunately, I cautioned everyone to be generous with the season salt so they wouldn't be bland and all our food ended up waaay too salty.  We had a campfire with some traditional Christian camp songs (which, when asked to contribute verses, some kids somehow turned into rallies for their sports team after an exciting day of college football) and a short message, followed by an amazing s'more bar.  I tried a nutella s'more with banana slices and will never be the same.  ;)  We got Allie to bed and the other three stayed out later with their friends.  We got a lot of family time together but they also loved the freedom to meet their friends from home and do things together in this sprawling, but safe environment of camp...well, except for Julia's worry about bears after we spotted a baby nearby (against the fence in the pic above).

On Sunday, we woke to chilly and rainy looking skies.  We had the usual breakfast and worship meeting, then had free time the whole day, so we hung out at our camp awhile and I decided to try some new things--I did archery to start, though I couldn't get Allie to join.  The boys and Matt did riflery, which Joshua was super good at apparently.  Then we watched some friends try the "leap of faith", where you climb (in a harness) to the top of a wooden pole, stand up and jump like a trapeze artist to try to grab a metal bar.  The first kid got stuck in fear at the top and much to our chagrin, they don't just say "time's up buddy" and yank you down, so it was quite awhile for our friends' turn to come up.  As Lisa says, you need a master's in psychology to work that station!  It was fun to watch friends young and old try the leap once the first kid got down.  We had quite a few adventurous ones!  Meanwhile, the boys played some ultimate frisbee and Matt got super sweaty, just in time for our last chance to take a nice family photo (really, who is going to look nice at camp anyway?!).  Sleep deprived, dirty, rained on and sweaty we were, but we got our picture made and received that beauty in a frame on the last morning.

After lunch, we headed to boys' camp with the lake and did some four square, which I'm not sure I'd ever played.  The boys did laser tag and the girls watched friends do water activities again.  Julia headed back for the "giant swing" with friends, and Matt, Allie, the boys, our friend Will, and I went and did indoor soccer and trap shooting (it was fun, though I was not good at it!).  

Back at camp, we had a nice bbq meal, which was to be followed by an ice cream sundae luau at the pool.  Only issue was, it started pouring chilly rain about 10 minutes after it started.  We were unprepared, which tended to be our mode that weekend, and it was never easy to just run back to the cabin because everything was really spread out and you had to hike half a mountain to get to our place.  Nevertheless, with the idea of trying new things and making the best of the weekend, we all ended up freezing our buns off in the pool.  The boys played basketball, I held Allie, Julia tried line dances, we talked with friends, and eventually the rain passed.  We ended the night watching Gray and some other friends participate in "Hugh and Jarms' Splash Contest" where Gray attempted to jump off the diving board and make a shot in the basketball goal at the same time.  We went back to the cabin soaked and tired, but big kids still headed out for one last night at the gym.

It began to pour sometime in the night and was raining buckets all morning as we ate breakfast, had our last worship meeting, and hastily packed up and booked it out of there, sitting in wet clothes and shoes the whole ride home.  Not the best ending to the weekend, but more memories made!  As we pulled away from camp, all said they were glad we went and Julia stereotypically urged us to commit at that moment to coming again next year:).