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WARNING – World’s longest post coming up. I have way too many pictures and we had way too much fun to make this short. I have started writing this post three times because I don’t know where to start!
The whole philosophy behind Young Life camps is that they want kids to have ‘The best week of their lives. This year was our 5th year at camp and it is ALWAYS the best weekend of our year. And it just gets better every year!
This year we went to camp with a new family. I knew Lynn from the PTA and I’d photographed their family last year (you can see those pictures here) but Allen had never met Brian and my three girls were barely aquainted with her three boys. Lynn and I took a leap of faith (perfect for Young Life camp) and joined forces for this long weekend. What a great experiment!
Day one had us all involved in Family Field Olympics. All of the campers were broken up by bandana color and this year we were red. Some of the events included the pudding drop (one kid is sitting on their parent’s shoulders wearing a blindfold while they are dropping spoonfuls of pudding into the mouth of a kiddo on the ground), ice block pull (an adult pulls a pre-teen kiddo, who is holding onto a big block of ice, out and around a cone and back), mattress pass (the whole team of 20 participants sits on the ground and passes a mattress with a medium sized child on it back and forth), the shovel pull (a small child is riding on the flat part of a shovel while an adult pull them across the field and around a cone and back), four legged race (three people strapped together at the legs running around cones) and finally there was the flour war.
Darn! I was so busy taking pictures that I just couldn’t participate in this crazy event that involved children with flour bombs (flour in paper bags) and shaving cream hands riding around on adults with the ultimate goal of turning everybody into ghosts. It’s just too bad that I had to stand back to photograph this! (Of course I did let one of the five year olds tag my leg with shaving cream so she would stop chasing me around!)
Day two was the Family Pool Olympics. This is where my girls got involed. Ellie and Jill were waiting for these events because they like the treasure hunt (8-12 year olds swimming around the pool trying to collect toys competitively). Some of the other events included the chicken slap (contestants diving off the diving board while reaching for a rubber chicken on a stick), the belly flop (no explanation necessary), sweatshirt relay (four swimmers trading off swimming in a hoody sweatshirt) and a big finish for the whole team with the synchronized swimming event judged by the grandparents in attendance. (I don’t have many pictures of these events since I was in many and water and cameras don’t mix!)
One of the evenings had a carnival as the family entertainment. The kids could earn tickets throwing bean bags for tic tac toe, throwing the football through a hoop, knocking bottles over with a ball, a ring toss, you get the idea. The tickets could be spent either on fun park trinkets (back scratchers, spinny tops, etc.) or they could be used to bid on having Dad go for a dunk in the dunk tank. Lynn’s boys had no problem sending Brian to the tank. Check out his expression below. That was right before one of his kids got the bullseye and he went for a swim! My girls decided to be nice to their Daddy. They determined that the water was too cold for their dear old dad and besides, they’d rather have the trinkets. Was Allen safe? Nope! One of our friends’ kids bid to have Allen dunked at the encouragement of his own Dad who had been dunked already. Aren’t friends great?
The youngest kiddos in our group were 5 and 6 so we are past the point of worrying where everybody is all the time. The camp is so remote that there is no stranger danger. Probably the biggest threat to the kids is the water and everybody in our group can swim. What did this mean for us? During the free time on the first day when Ellie, Kate and Josh begged to go back to the cabin to play Lynn and I let them go. All on their own. It killed me to think that at camp there was all sorts of fun things to do. Swimming in the pool, swimming on the lake, skateboarding, rock wall climbing, horseback riding and last year’s favorite, running through the sprinkler. What did these guys want to do? They played a keep away game on the bunk beds and had running races outside the cabin. To each his own. At least Lynn and I got some peaceful pool time!
We did get them to come out and do a few fun activites. Namely horseback riding and ice cream eating. Good times.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post about Jill’s time at camp…