Day One: Thursday
-God-breathed car driving manuals
:: It's never a good thing when driving to close your eyes and swerve when a car is coming at you on a gravel road. In fact I'm pretty sure it says that in all of the car driving manuals. And if it doesn't then it should somewhere. I'm sure God would say it. So it should be in car driving manuals. Like God-breathed scripture but this time it's God-breathed car driving manuals. Don't worry, it wasn't me driving. Just in the passenger seat grabbing the door handle and screaming like a girl.
-Space Cadet Tent
:: So every year Jim O and I sleep in tents. Mostly cause there's no room in the cabins but also because we get to set our own bedtimes and don't have to worry about tiny children. We set up our tents next to each other - this year right next to the campers - and spend about an hour each night venting and joking around until we fall asleep. After using the same tent for more than 10 years he got a new one this year. It looks like something NASA would use on the moon and took almost an hour to set up by itself. Mostly cause we weren't going off the instructions, but still! Anyway, the whole time we're setting up I'm thinking about all the bugs in the trees right next to us and started yelling about ticks. He says ticks can't fly so they wouldn't be in trees, when I said they could climb he went oh, yeah.
-Rubber Bandit
:: An awesome name for a super villain came up with after attempting to use "rubber band" as a verb.
Day Two: Friday
-French Toast
:: Huzzah for French Toast. Same breakfast every year along with about 5 cups of coffee within a 2 hour period. But at least I was conscious for the mandatory meeting and registration. Which went well, though apparently 10:30 actually means 11 in counselor terms. For the second year in a row, maybe we should just move it back. But then they'll show up at 11:30.
-The Theme Song
:: Mentor wrote the theme song again as she does every year. This year's was a little different though because the verses don't rhyme but they caught on fairly quickly. By teen camp I had the whole thing memorized and I'm sure I'll be singing it while working just like I do every year for the two weeks following camp. Along with The Bear Song and HeeHaw.
-And Rhonda has no Honda
:: Campfire was my saving grace, as it is every year. No matter how stressful camp can be campfire always redeems it. Our male leader for skits and worship gets really into it, especially There's a Hole in the Bucket, along with the rest of the band. We kept renaming ourselves, but "Destiny's Step-Child" was the clear frontrunner. Though none of the kids understood it since they only know of Beyonce as Beyonce and haven't heard of Destiny's Child. Which makes me cry inside. Anyway, we sang our Pharaoh Pharaohs and King Jesus is All, and Mentor came down to help lead Flea and Pizza and all was well. We had two kingdom workers who came and helped out this year and taught the kids some new stuff. Stupid Rhonda and her crashed Honda were stuck in my head for the rest of camp. I literally fell over when they said that line and my teen helper had to check on me to make sure I was okay.
Day Three: Saturday
-"Does it say 'Blazer' on the back? Cause I don't know what one looks like."
:: Girls and cars.
-The Vote
:: I wasn't aware that even though I'm in charge of skits I have to get them approved before the kids perform them for their parents. Apparently I need to take a vote first because my skits are stupid. Even though I've never had complaints in the what? like 12 years that I've been doing them. So, youth camp sucked. Which is why there are virtually no highlights whatsoever and the blame for that lies entirely on one individual gunning for my job. Which she will get when she pulls this laptop from my cold dead hands. It is literally my favorite time of year and she killed it. Plain and simple. She didn't like HeeHaw and tried to sway my kids - IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SESSION - against it. Like, I'm handing out the lyrics and she comes up and says that's not a skit, here's a skit. The irony is that she recited a skit I'd already done with them two years ago, so apparently not all of my skits suck. Just the ones she doesn't like. Why she did it then IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SESSION still confuses me because she'd already pointed out that she hated it before camp started and knew I wasn't going to change it so what was the purpose of interrupting me in front of my kids other than to make me look bad? But that's okay, just gives me motivation to find skits she hates even more for next year.
I still don't know what I did to deserve the hostility as she didn't just criticize that but also everything else I was in charge of this year. Not saying anything negative to mentor about her song, Cheri about her crafts, Jayne about her cooking, Pastor about his bible studies or Steve about his games. Nope, just me. It's okay though because for once I stood up for myself. And I had Pastor and Jim there to back me up. We'll see what happens next year.
-"Boobs in Training"
:: One of the girl counselors is a friend of mine and since Megan couldn't make it this year she went around on night patrol with me. Apparently all of her girls were excited about training bras which we don't understand cause they suck. And we're confused as to why they call them "training bras" in the first place. Are they like training your boobs for the race of their lives?
-Train Honks
:: So apparently, when trains come through towns they have to honk a certain way. Like in a certain pattern. Weirdly enough I learned this at camp, not from growing up in a train-filled household or from dating a traingeek boyfriend. Remember how we were camped in tents and can hear everything? Including whoever it was that kept walking by our tents but we ignored them and continued to joke around cause we're goofy like that. Anyway, train honks were one of the many things that kept us up at night, along with owls, crickets, air conditioners attached to campers, stupid happy birds and one particularly loud toad which we were convinced was actually a moose.
Day Four: Sunday
-Out of the mouths of babes
:: One of my favorite quotes this year came from a young camper to a teenage counselor. The teen was putting on makeup when the kid came up to her and asked what she was doing. When the teen said she was putting on makeup so that she would look pretty the kid asked, "do you think it's working?"
-And that's what makes it all worth it.
:: So, try as she may to sway my kids and their parents they still had fun with HeeHaw, especially screaming and spitting in each others' faces during the last refrain. Even though it's tradition and I'd like to keep it going if it's going to cause this much drama I'll replace it with something else. I'm sure she'll find a problem with that as well, but hey, she'll just have to get used to it cause I'm a camp lifer and that won't be changing anytime soon.
-Damnit, Rhonda and your stupid Honda
:: Get out of my head. I don't need to be singing about you in the grocery store or in the car or anywhere else. It's amusing because I always lay out the outlines for these camp posts on my phone as they go and on each of the days somewhere "damnit rhonda" was written.
-Let's get pigs feet.
:: Umm, let's not and say we did. Grocery shopping with Jim is always an adventure. We buy far too much and always find things that weren't on our list. Like toys. And ice cream - though that was on our list this year, just not this much of it. I have two gallons in my freezer. Huzzah for mint chip! Anyway, we went grocery shopping two times Sunday, three times Monday and then once again on Tuesday. Plus our Thursday night adventure to get props. Walmart and Rays love us.
-Stray Dog
:: Every year we place bets as to what time our teen camp pastor will arrive. Scuba Steve won this round I believe. Anyway, we thought he was there a lot earlier than he got there because we saw a dog running around and he always has his dogs. This one, however, had bloody paws and when we looked around Pastor was nowhere in sight. Since the teen campers love dogs they cleaned her up, gave him a makeshift collar and a leash and we called animal control. Who wouldn't come get her cause we were outside of city limits. The campground managers called in a favor and a few minutes later the county sheriff's car showed up to pick her up. Ah, memories from the last time that sheriff's car had a dog in it at camp and we were up all night ranting about happy birds.
-Thomas Edison = Earthy cause he's in the ground
:: Gotta play Apples to Apples. Not as fun without Noel but I had my sister and Scuba Steve who picked the right cards. We could always tell who played what card though because of the references made. Scuba Steve played Thomas Edison for earthy and my sister picked it as the winner. I found it highly entertaining. Though it didn't work for me during the next game when I tried Beethoven for the same category and it got rejected for something actually earthy.
-Crapsuck Campfire
:: Any campfire where you can't see anything just spells disaster. So, the teens couldn't see the songbooks and they couldn't see us and we couldn't see our music books and it was just a disaster that ended with a horrible horrible offkey version of Someday. It's only redeeming grace was when Thomas screwed up the lyrics to There's a Hole in the Bucket so the women actually won it. I said it would have to go down in history cause I'm pretty sure we will never win again. Though we did say at little kid's camp - in order not to have to sing it two nights in a row - that we broke down and bought them a new bucket. Though apparently they drilled a hole in it just so we could sing it again at teen camp.
-Pitch Perfect
:: Every year we show movies on the wall. This year instead of our usual cheesy space movie (though we skipped it last year as well) we watched Pitch Perfect for night one. Had a huge crowd all singing along with the music. Pastor had never seen it before and was laughing at Fat Amy. But who doesn't laugh at Rebel Wilson? If you haven't you should really watch this video:
"yeah and so will the cops!" She's highly entertaining.
Day Five: Monday
-Bug Zapper Lightsabers
:: Jim is smart enough to keep me away from sharp metal objects so my job in the kitchen is to kill flies and do dishes. This year Oldest Sister took care of the dishes so I just got the flies. Which is fine with me. In preparation for this big role I bought giant bug zappers and batteries to go with them. Michael and I were using them like lightsabers. I killed 23 on Monday alone.
-Stolen Phone Texting
:: Mean kitchen staff stole my phone and sent my boyfriend a mushy text. Pretty sure he knew it wasn't me cause we don't talk like that, but that didn't stop me from being paranoid about his response. And since I only had signal every other ten feet I was constantly checking it wherever I went.
-That's what a campfire is supposed to sound like!
:: I get really into campfires, actually all of Destiny's Step-Child does, but teen camps are even more fun than youth camp at times because the teens get super loud and dancy. I enjoy all their impromptu motions and some even get added permanently. Monday night's campfire was much better - mostly cause we were indoors and could see - but also because they really got into it and Someday was actually on key.
-Neville for the win!
:: Night two for movie night was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. We had to change it up a bit, don't remember where the idea for Harry Potter came up but it did and I think that was the biggest crowd we've ever had to movie night. We were going to watch the second one the next night but that got overruled.
Day Six: Tuesday
-The slow clap
:: Tuesday is bowling day at teen camp. All the leaders usually bowl together though this year Scuba Steve got sick and napped instead. Each year we bring out the slow clap and it always either leads to a spare or a gutterball. Game number one I got a 105 but game number two was horrible, I bowled like an 80. Not sure what happened between games but whatever skill I developed seemed to disappear. But I only go bowling once a year - at camp - so maybe if I attempted to practice somewhere else I could figure out what the problem was.
-Pizza Pizza
:: After bowling we always get them pizza. We've been going back and forth from Pizza Hut to Walmart pizza. This year Jim was so tired we just went with Pizza Hut then used the boxes to start our campfire after. 34 teens + 6 adults = 10 pizzas plus 3 boxes of cheese sticks.
Add to that the pop and ice cream and they loved it.
-Dance Off
:: Every year the teens have a dance, whether it's organized or impromptu. This year's was a bit more organized than before cause they actually moved the tables AND they used their phones instead of my computer so it was much easier on me. Taylor and I took pictures so that we wouldn't have to dance. See how that works? We made them each do their best moves, they had some good ones.
-Jack the Frog King
:: Found the father of all frogs this year at camp. Compared to my shoe he was huge!
Granted I only wear size 8's but he was still huge. He sat completely still for hours, we think because of the owl we could hear in the trees cause he was gone the next morning. No one would believe me until I took them to him. Then they all screamed. We thought he might be fake until someone threw a stick and he moved.
-"How long does it take to get into my own house?"
:: We watched Gladiator for movie night number three. Though it was an accident, well not really. Pastor wanted to watch Braveheart so the other pastor went to Walmart and found a Braveheart/Gladiator combo. But then Gladiator got more votes we rebelled and watched it instead. I fell asleep, missing the last half an hour. I jumped from him agreeing to talk to the senator to him dead on the ground so I had to watch the rest when I got back.
Day Seven: Wednesday
-Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere
:: Packing up the trailer and all of our junk seemed to take a lot longer this year. Though that's weird because we had even more kids to help. I think we had even more than previous years cause it barely fit in the trailer and then poor Jim's truck was completely overflowing with the rest of it.
-Rock and Roll McDonalds
:: As is tradition we stopped at McDonalds on the way back, though there were more of us than usual. It's always Scuba Steve, myself and Jim though this year Steve left early cause he was sick. Last year Michael joined our gang and this year he rejoined us along with Taylor, Dylan and Pastor with three of his kids. Usually we're all dead tired and say maybe 20 words, this year we were much louder. Michael did a calorie count and actually beat Steve's record from last year. But I guess that happens when you order 3 burgers, fries and mcnuggets.
And that was camp. As is tradition I will post the skits tomorrow.
For now I'm out. Hope you had a good week.
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