July 4th Fireworks

Awesome fireworks!!

Looking across Lake Tippecanoe. You can see the 5 pontoons loaded with fireworks in position!

The lake house and the guest house!!

the boys

Josh, Josh, Heath, Me, Alex, and Theo

Fireworks!!

Saturday means up early (7:30am) and out to cart luggage from the cabins up to the tennis court for parents to pickup. Then I supervise the whole of the camp cleanup. Make sure everthing gets cleaned and picked up etc etc. This is all done by 11:30am hopefully and then we have a short staff meeting and lunch and are off for 24 hours! Normally I work on looking after the few campers that stay over Saturday nights but last weekend I had Saturday off. Home to shower and sleep and watch TV (Wimbledon). Around 7:30 most of the staff meet and car pool 5 mins down the road to the Schwartz house. (Rachel is on staff) She lives on Tippecanoe lake and they have a great house with a big lush front lawn going down to the lake. They have a big party every year for July 4th with all 130 of their employees and family members there. We got some great food and hung out, then we watched as police boats escorted 5 large barge pontoons into position in the lake. Another boat further away played music which could be heard clearly right across the lake. Hundreds of boats swamped the lake their lights making the lake look like a sea of stars! It was incredible!! All around the lake shore on all sides their are houses with fireworks going off. At 10:30pm the show started and it went for 30 minutes! It was the biggest and most awesome fireworks I have ever seen! I was right out on the dock in a deck chair and the booms were huge and the fireworks massive and impressive! The finale was huge with so many going off all together! We ate a lot of really nice pie-apple pie, blackberry pie, pecan pie, and strawberry pie. OOoo it was good! It was such a cool nite and they were great hosts!! Thanks Rachel and your family!

Thursday & Friday

Thursday

Sleep in! Yay! Woken mid morning by my friend Molly texting me. Laxed all morning. After lunch and a quick catch up in the office, I finished putting tents away from the campouts earlier in the week. They were finally all dry. Then I started writing mid summer evaluations. I like doing them but don't like the time it takes thinking them through! I have to write evaluations for the counselors that work with me in the teen program (Challengers). Thursday evening I spike my hair up and emcee Mock Rock. Each cabin sing/dances/performs a song and we have judges and select the best boy and girls cabins. We alternate weeks with the Mock Rock and a skit night. They can be a lot of fun with some hilarious acts. I am kept on my toes doing all the music and announcing each act. Praise God for Ipods! I am also MOD on Thursday nite so its another late night.

Friday

Write some more evaluations and then find there is a volleyball class today so rush out to teach that. Kinda hard with 8 kids of varying ages and abilities and Fridays are really a recreational class rather than a teaching class. We have a pretty decent beach volleyball court and I got new outlines, a new net and proper beach volleyballs so that all helps! Back to the evaluations. There are always plenty of interruptions along the way to doing anything. Someone to help or get something for. 4PM I load the station wagon with the food etc for a banquet at the North Village. This is a pretty cool event. The teen boys arrive there early and clean the pavilion up and set the picnic tables putting candles on them etc. We have a big new grill there and so we grill Italian chicken breasts putting pineapple and cheese on them as they finish cooking. We serve bread sticks, corn on the cob and raw baby carrots. Followed by watermelon. The teen girls dress up for dinner not knowing what they are going to or where. Their counselors take them to the dock where they get on the pontoon boat and are transported to the North Village. At the dock there waiting are some of the boys and a counselor playing guitar. The girls are escorted to the pavilion and given drinks. Once all the ladies are there 2 of the older boys say grace and explain to the girls that they want to be gentlemen to them tonight. The boys wait on the ladies tables and there is live music and a fire in the fire pit. I am kept busy helping cook on the grill and overseeing everything else as well. The ladies have a great time and the boys hopefully learn something! I clean up after it all and take stuff back to the main kitchen and clean some more! Read over some of the camper survey forms just filled out and then catch the end of the closing ceremony. Help clean up after that and after talking to 2 boys who have been fighting with each other head home for a shower and some icecream and to write this and watch the Letterman show!

Wednesday-Independance Day

There was a bit of rain overnite so the girls camping out got a little damp! Lots of wet tents for me to hang up to dry. Having obtained a soldering iron I also worked on the radio antenna. Got it all put together and after a bit of brain scratching managed to get all the equipment set up and working. Was cool to hear myself on radio when I tested it! 107.9 fm- sorry you probably are not close enough to tune in! Late afternoon and back to the campout site to roll up tents and sleeping bags now they were dry. Then dinner time! Dinner tonite was good! Chicken breasts and spaghetti and garlic bread and corn. After dinner I set up for Party at the Point. I do this every Wednesday night for the teenage campers. The point is a really nice piece of land that juts out into the lake. I set up tiki torches and had Adam build a huge fire right on the end of the point. We have some picnic tables under a willow tree on the point with giant checkers and cards on them. Have hillbilly golf and bocce ball (petanque), hoola hoops and beach volleyball. I set up the portable sound system and lights (red white and blue lights tonite being July 4th). Around 9pm the kids arrive and my volunteers start serving drinks. We had made fruit punch which they served with sherbet icecream and little umbrellas for decoration! After the sunset there were a lot of fireworks going off all around the lake making it a very pretty evening! By the time its all cleaned up and I come home its almost midnite but I can sleep in tomorrow. A good day today!

Tuesday-Honesty Day

One of my jobs at camp is Director of land sports. I oversee all the land sport classes and make sure they have the equipment they need etc. Being Wimbledon week today we got some new tennis balls out! My morning was mostly checking those classes. We have 3 activity periods a day--2 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. After a leadership meeting, I began setting up the radio studio. Our plan is to run our own station so we have basic equipment to send out a signal around camp. This evening the teen girls went on campout so I made sure they had what they needed and helped start 1 of the fires. After dinner I did some office work but had a headache and didnt feel so good--maybe I didn't drink enough water today. Not the most exciting day but still a good day!

Sunday and Monday

Sunday--Up at 8:30 to serve breakfast for the stay over campers. Clean up and tidy up loose ends before my time off starts around 11am. Home to shower, eat and fall asleep on the couch watching sports on tv. Around 6pm I walk over to the Scotts place just around the lake a little bit. (they manage another camp—smaller than Crosley) Eat dinner with them and their staff. They have a small summer staff of 8 and I find it so relaxing going over there and just hanging out. Rebecca Scott is like my Mom over here and always makes me feel like it’s my home. Go to Wallmart, don’t buy anything but going to Wallmart is just something you do when you have nothing to do! Back to the Scotts to watch a movie. Overall a relaxing day! I miss getting to church tho but we are starting week 5 of summer camp so are halfway thru now.

Monday--Aaahhhh sleep in day! I love to sleep in! Up around 10:30am and off to the office at midday. (the end of my 24 hours off for the week) Office work and bits and pieces today and then preparing for the boys campout and taking them over to set up camp. Back for dinner--meat pies!! Wow unheard of in America but our cook made awesome meat pies and they tasted kinda like my Gran used to make them! Tonite I was MOD-Manager on Duty, so that means visiting every cabin around bed time and checking on them, talking to a counselor from each cabin etc. Then locking up the dining hall, staff lounge and office before leaving around 11pm. Some nites it can be a lot later--luckily tonite is a quiet nite so ill be home on time!

A week in my life during summer camp-Saturday

Up at 6am to watch the All Black beat Australia. But the idiots went and handed it to the aussies. How did we lose that? 7:45 and I'm in the truck loading luggage from cabins and taking it to the tennis courts. I organize the crew to move it all and direct traffic and start cleaning camp. 220 campers checked out this morning in about a 90 minute period so kinda crazy! Check camp is getting cleaned and direct the ants to where they need to go. 11:30am staff meeting to close the week off. Lunch, a leadership meeting and then I sort out lost and found and trash and help the 8 counsellors who are looking after the 20 campers who are staying over tonite. These kids are at camp for at least another week yet! Do a general cleanup all around camp putting things away. Take laundry to the laundrymat for campers and then pick up pizza and pop and icecream for the 30 of us for dinner. More odd ends in the evening and some prep for next week/office work. Its a quiet day at camp and kinda nice really!! 11pm now and time to do bed time medications and sign off for the day!