Summer Camp

Well, we've returned from Family Camp and we are all still alive and well but very, very tired. It turns out when you go to family camp, you get to spend every minute whether awake or asleep with your family. I love my sister's children with everything I have but having to be "on" with them all the time wears a girl out.

Mum, Colby and I picked the two older boys up from their regular kids camp on Thursday afternoon. Family Camp didn't start until 5:30 p.m. Friday but the camp was good enough to let us stay the extra night so we didn't have to drive all the way back to Edmonton and then back out to camp the very next day. We unloaded the car into our cabin and got ourselves set up. We loaded everyone in the car and drove to Red Deer for supper. We went to a Smitty's. The service was poor and the food even worse. The kids were tired from their earlier camp experience and were snipping at each other. Altogether not the best of times.

Everyone slept in the next morning and the kids were much more pleasant to be around. We drove to the town of Bently for breakfast but as we didn't get there until 11:20, the boys and I had lunch. Mum wanted breakfast so she wound up at a different diner then us. She claims she had a delicious breakfast, a good cup of coffee and enjoyed the paper without us but it still felt weird seperating. We drove into Red Deer and went to a church-run thrift store. Their book selection sucked but the kids picked up a couple of board games. We went back out towards the camp and stopped at the Lacombe Corn Maze. This is the oldest corn maze in Alberta and was very, very fun.

We spent an hour in the first half of the maze. Mum had never been before and she says that although she enjoyed walking through with us if she had been on her own, she would have sat down in the middle of the maze and cried. The Lacombe Corn Maze has a whole field full of fun things to do besides the actual maze. The kids spent the next hour or so jumping on the "jumping pillow", racing rubber ducks, standing under the mister, sliding down the massive slide, checking out the goats and pigs and riding the carousel of tire horses. We left at 5:00 and arrived at camp to officially register before the 5:30 supper.

We had our first worship session that evening which included a half-hour of singing and then a half-hour lesson. The kids were sent to their own group for the half-hour teaching sessions and the two times this happened a day became the only times we were ever without the children. The schedule had the kids going to bed at 9:00 and then adults could meet at 9:30 to hang out. This did not work so well for us as our guys are used to staying up much later and putting them to bed and leaving would result in bloodshed as they were likely to kill each other left to their own devices. We stayed at the cabin but had a battle with them every night as we, adults, wanted to quietly read until we were ready for bed but the kids claimed they couldn't sleep with the lights on. (Ironically, when putting them to bed at home they can't go to sleep if you turn all the lights out!)

Saturday was wet and cold as it rained intermittently and the wind blew steady all day. We had breakfast, worship, session and then skills for the rest of the morning. We signed up for archery which happens to be a favourite of mine. We spent 50 minutes shooting. The older boys had both tried this before during other camp experience but Colby didn't even understand what it was until we got there. All three did great and we had a really good time. Our second skill was the low ropes course. Cameron had requested this option and so we went. This is an obstacle course that involved balancing and climbing tasks. I didn't even try it as I suck at both of these things. I followed Colby around offering a shoulder or hand as needed. It started raining, the course was difficult and so the boys quit pretty quickly.

After lunch, the schedule had Beach Time for two hours and Family Time for an hour. It was much too cold for beach time so the staff instead invited the kids to go to the gym and play games for an hour and a half making family time a full hour and a half as well. I misjudged the time and took the kids to the cabin to play one of our new board games until games started. Unfortunately, we had only set up the board, read the instructions and taken one turn when the games started. I tried to stop the game and send the kids to go play but they begged to stay and continue playing. I didn't think it was worth the fight so I let them stay. Mum had gone to Lacombe after lunch to buy the boys new socks because she couldn't stand the sight of the ones they had. I spent three hours with those kids in that cabin. Eventually, the boys announced that this was kind of boring to which I pointed out if they had gone to play the games we would only be killing 1.5 hours instead of 3! Stupid kids.

At 4:00, we left to go make a craft. We were given a large disc of wood (a chunk of tree trunk) to paint however we wanted. We painted it in quarters and then each of us wrote our name in a quarter. We didn't have a space to put Grandma on there so we theorized that she wasn't one of the people to make the craft so it was okay. She didn't see it that way later and quickly pointed out a way we could have included her name without too much difficulty. Oops!

After supper, we had a wide game. Cameron had been excited for two days about the wide game. We played a game called civilization. It is much to difficult to explain the game here but the kids loved it and mum and I did very poorly at it. I was never good at wide games. Not fast or competitive enough. We had our second session of the day, ate snack and then back to bed.

Sunday was a beautiful day. We followed almost the same routine in the morning including going to archery. Instead of the low ropes course though the kids went to the bouncy castle and spent a half hour jumping and wrestling. After lunch, beach time was again scheduled. This day was warm enough ao we all got in our swimsuits and off we went. Mum and I brought down our lawn chairs and books looking forward to just relaxing as the kids played in the water. Turns out one of the rules was kids under 8 needed to be with someone older then 16 with them at all times. I wistfully looked at my poor neglected book, shucked my clothes and spent the next hour and some in the water "playing". Not really my idea of fun. I made the kids get out at three as there was a scavenger hunt scheduled for 3:30 back at the main camp. They boys didn't want to go but I insisted so they very slowly and reluctantly came along. In fact, they dragged their heels so long we got back just as the bell rang to meet for the hunt. We went in our wet swimsuits which the guys were fine with but I found uncomfortable.

The scavenger hunt was fabulous. There were only fifteen things on the list and they were a bit difficult but not impossible to find. The twist was there were four secret challenges that required us to complete a task to receive a piece of a map. One clue was a riddle (which was tricky and I feel stupid for taking so long to get!). The second challenge was the climbing wall. Daniel attempted to go first. He got half-way up the wall and froze. Cameron tried next. He got all four limbs off the ground and then froze. Colby tried next. He got half-way up and was told that he could continue or come back down. He chose to come back down but I believe he could have made it all the way up if he wanted. Our third challenge was at the archery range. All we had to do was hit the target with a single arrow. All of us had practiced archery for two days and we could all hit a hay bale like nobody's business but hitting the actual paper target is a lot more difficult. Eventually Daniel hit it and we were off to our fourth and final task. We went to the camp's gym and played a warped game of dodgeball. Finally, we went to the "Keeper of Knowledge" to turn in our objects and our maps. He accepted our items including an aero chocolate bar wrapper for an "arrow". He put our map together and drew an "x" on it. Also he gave us a slip of paper with a combination on it. We found a locker at the X and discovered a Bible verse about hidden treasure and two different kinds of candy that we could take. Altogether the scavenger hunt took us an hour and a half and we finished in just enough time to get out of our swimsuits and into our western wear for supper.

We had a wild west themed supper and then a talent show. Some families sang, some danced, some did skits. Some camp staff did some improv. Our family watched and clapped. It is what we are good at. We had another worship time and session. At 9:30, one of camp staff hosted a coffee house style concert. We all went. He is a very good song writer and has a strong sense of musicianship but not the best voice in the world. It was fun to go to though and the kids were very impressed.

Monday, we had breakfast, went to session, made a craft (paperbag puppets), packed up the car, cleaned the cabin, ate lunch, cleaned up the dining hall and went on our way. The kids slept the whole way back and although we had a great time we were relieved to drop them off with their mother.