Mays' Missive: Summer Camp

Wow! It's October and the last time I posted was after the 4th of July! I guess I'll be posting furiously until I catch up! I do know how it happened, but it's kind of a long story. The short of it is incredible busyness coupled with a computer crash or two or five.

I might as well start with camp since that accounts for much of the busyness. I started the summer working the front desk at camp answering phones, helping with general office "stuff" like organizing and ordering supplies, keeping in contact with work teams and keeping the lost and found items organized. That was actually a lot of fun, especially catching up with a lot of the work teams that I have known for a number of years now and then getting to know the counselors and seeing them interact with their campers.

Then somewhere about the time of my last post I was asked to help out with some of the bookkeeping, mostly scanning in bills, receipts, etc. Pretty simple, right? Guess I wasn't paying attention! Someone said something to me about "becoming a VERY busy woman" and it sort of sailed right over my head. I've actually taken over much of the Victory bookkeeping, with a few parts of it parceled out to others. I can't say I don't enjoy it. It's been an interesting challenge and the attention to detail fits me pretty well. It has kept me incredibly busy though, leaving readers (and my parents too) wondering if I'd fallen off the edge of nowhere. I'm happy to tell you that I have not! If I manage to catch up all the posts I think you'll see where the time has gone!

I might as well start with camp since we're sort of there anyway. One thing I love about Victory is that everyone pitches in and does what needs to be done to make camp come together. Some of the bigger camp weeks leave us a little short-staffed in other areas when people who are not normally counselors get pulled in to be counselors for the week. On one of those weeks I offered to take pictures since one AV person was supposed to try to cover the entire camp's activities. I was so thankful I did! I got to see parts of camp that I'd never seen before! The climbing wall is one of the camp favorites:

I'm not sure if the air rifles or "Katniss" were the attraction, but it did seem to be mostly boys there...

The slack line was COOL!!! The slack line is sort of like a balance beam, but a lot harder. It is a line a few feet off the ground and you are supposed to try to walk across it. Most of the kids didn't get more than a few steps. They were beginning to think it was impossible until "Mulan" got up there and showed them how! She walked all the way across!

This is what most of the efforts looked like, with minor variations:

There were also quieter activities, but not too quiet with "JackJack" around! The activities staff helped me greatly expand my tie-dye collection! :)

Summer was almost over before I FINALLY got up to see the end of week horse show! They do such a great job! It is different every year.

"Sherlock" on the knee board wasn't too sure about horses, but by the end of the summer she was having a blast!

This was a crazy skit by "Cletus" and "Jedidiah". That poor stuffed critter is what they were hunting.

Sergei and Austin were in a race here. I'm thinking that Sergei should pick on someone his own size! :)

Kacie and Evelynn were enjoying the show too!

This was the summer for babies walking! If you remember the three babies born last fall, then add Evelynn and Cassidy to that mix, there were/are FIVE little ones all learning to walk! Such fun! Evelynn is walking like a champ now, but at this point she was still hanging on pretty tightly!

Nicholas is my little buddy! Probably because he has the same little naughty streak that I have! :) He cracks me up!

Cassidy is Nate and Maggie's granddaughter. Their daughter Bonnie and her husband Brad came up for the summer to help out with the pack trips. We've had a great time getting to know Brad and Bonnie and trying to talk them into staying on longer at Victory! Cassidy is such a character! She is so much fun! Here Austin and Charity are teasing her with the beloved keys. She wanted them sooooooo badly that she would take those dreaded steps to get them!