This year I volunteered to be a counselor for the 4th grade girls' cabin and Dave volunteered to stay home with Emily. Having never been a camp counselor (or having ever even GONE to summer camp before) I was nervous. I had been instructed that each cabin should have a theme. So I took my trustee mentor, Alexis, out to dinner to discuss possible themes and camp in general since she was a pro, having been to camp 5 times already herself as a camper. After an hour of throwing around ideas like Hawaiian, 50's, Western, etc, we noticed that mostly we had been talking about our favorite places to eat, our favorite desserts, and generally how much we both liked to eat. The light bulb went off and that was it. Our theme was FOOD! Not knowing exactly what the status quo was I stuck with the Mythbusters matto of, "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing!" We had: personalized aprons, personalized hot pink water bottles, paper plates to line the ceiling, a giant cupcake, cupcake ice cream cones, popcorn, chips, pixi stix, 2 lollipop trees, sugar cookies hand decorated with each girl's name on them, snacks galore, and even a pinata shaped like an ice cream cone!
Here are the "Sweet Tarts" as we affectionately called ourselves. Me, Yana, Hannah, Ariel, Madison, my mentor Alexis (dressed like a tacky tourist on purpose) and Kiara.
Our paper plate wreath!
Madison with Emily. Although Em spent the weekend with Daddy, they were able to spend a considerable amount of time at camp since Dave helped out with field activities. My girls were GREAT with her!
Did I mention she is somewhat of a monkey. :)
Yana with Emily. She thought she was hot stuff getting on the top bunks with the big girls.
Bumper canoes.
Emily rode in the canoe with us Saturday and Sunday. She LOVED it but was happiest when her hand was dragging in the water.
Saturday and Sunday afternoons from 3-5 was pool time. We had a very difficult time keeping Em out of the pool. She acts like she is 15 years old! Constantly running for the big pool and jumping in regardless if Dave or I was in the water to catch her. She constantly put her face under water and came up smiling everytime. NO FEAR!
She did spend a little time in the kiddy pool but mostly just to hang out with the cute boys. This is her and Ezra one of our favorite little guys! For comparisons sake, he is only 8 weeks older than she is.
Our fantastic camp director and fearless leader Mrs. Ami TaterTot Catfish Coley. Rockin' the rain boots like a champ!
Hilarious! Part of our food cabin was three jars I had filled with M&Ms, Skittles, and Jelly Beans. My sweet campers literally sat down and tried to calculate the volume of the jar to figure out how many candies were in each jar. It didn't work, but was great to see them using their new found knowledge. For the record there were 826 M&Ms, 777 Jelly Beans, and 567 Skittles. I tricked them with the Skittles because I hid two plastic Easter eggs in the middle of the jar to take up space. Dave's devious idea.
This is where we had morning devotion and where the children could get up and share their prayer request. There is nothing sweeter than the prayers of a child! This is also where we memorized the camp Scripture, Matthew 28: 19-20, "Therefore, Go and make disciples. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Field day with Hannah, Yana, Madison and Emily
This is my future son-in-law, Travis. He was showing Emily all the frogs he caught. What a charmer!
Canoeing Day 2 with Ms. Sherry. She was far more frightened than Emily was!
Ms. Sherry caught this one on her camera phone. That face is PRICELESS!!!! Like, "You're going to make me get off this canoe, really?!?!"
Our great friends the Samuels having fun on the lake with their kiddos Elyana and Ezra.
OK, now for the good stuff. Every night after dinner we would all get together in the lodge. We sang worship songs, practiced our memory verse and played this little game called "Pass The Trash." After dinner our camp staff would take a trash can with a clean trash bag and go through the buffet line, putting a little bit of everything into the trash can. One night was Macaroni and cheese, BBQ sandwiches, salad, corn, and soft serve vanilla ice cream. Then they stir it up and pass it around sort of like musical chairs. Except this game you don't want to get caught holding it when the music stops. Because of legal reasons they can only subject the counselors and mentors to this fun little game, mostly since we are the ones who have to sign a release form! So each night the counselors and mentors take turns and if you eat a handful you get 1,000 points for your cabin. Luckily I did not get caught with it either night. But on the second night there my wonderful campers told me, "Ms. Jennifer, we know you love us because you put so much effort into the cabin. Please don't eat the trash!" Oh, how I love them!
Mr. Jon's cabin of Jedi warriors even rapped for us one night to some Christian rap song that repeated, "Let the force, the force, of Jesus rule you." Hilarious. He was actually pretty good.
This was Charlene, the frog who camped OUTSIDE of our cabin each night. Frogs were a big thing at camp. Everyone was catching them, even my little Emily was petting the frogs.
Here is my little bunch of campers plus sweet Scarlett Woods. She kind of adopted us the last two days of camp and we were happy to have her.
This picture was taken about 5 seconds before I got in my car and drove away on the very last day of camp. This is Ami and Becky and I. They were none too happy about having to take a picture. I told them they were going to smile and be happy about it. They love me! Ami is Travis' mom and our fearless camp leader and Becky is our pastor's wife. They are two of my best friends here in Memphis. Like Ami pondered as we took this picture, why didn't we get a picture on day 1 of camp when we all had some sleep? I don't know. And yes I know my shirt is on backwards. I meant to do that!
This picture was taken about 5 seconds before I got in my car and drove away on the very last day of camp. This is Ami and Becky and I. They were none too happy about having to take a picture. I told them they were going to smile and be happy about it. They love me! Ami is Travis' mom and our fearless camp leader and Becky is our pastor's wife. They are two of my best friends here in Memphis. Like Ami pondered as we took this picture, why didn't we get a picture on day 1 of camp when we all had some sleep? I don't know. And yes I know my shirt is on backwards. I meant to do that!KampRock was an amazing experience. I am looking forward to going next year and many years to come. It was a great time to worship God and lead young girls to a closer walk with Christ. Plus it was a LOT of fun! Until next year...
