A little something about the up front games.  They were based on a TV show apparently- Minute to Win it.  On one rainy morning the worship and teaching times were held inside and so we even got to see the blueprint for the game, chocolate unicorn:

If I recall, my team actually won that one though nobody completed “the task”, even with the required number being reduced to six.  Another up front game involved bouncing quarters into a bin that my cabin had happily colored for Miss Lisa, another leader of our church’s kid’s ministry.  No pie-in-face surprises that I know of like last year happened.

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One of the biggest changes from last year was the elimination of the morning competition in favor of a longer instructional time.  In some cases this new, longer instructional was two normal related instructionals tied together in the longer time, such as archery/riflery and wacky water games (actually two competition games from last year that didn’t count for points this year).  There were some new instructionals too.  On Tuesday was one of them- outdoor survival.  This was actually a combo of an older instructional, fishing, with a survival extension to it.  The first thing that happened was Jim, a leader in my cabin from last year, caught a bass which the first group cooked up while my group fished.  He later caught a trout for our group just before we switched.  For outdoor survival the instructor demonstrated cutting the fish, hopefully dead of lack of air by that time, and then taught how to start a fire with a magnesium block (with a flint strip on one side), a little paper and more natural fuel like leaves and twigs, and a pocket knife.  It looks like I failed this course as I was unable to help one of my 5th graders start and maintain a fire.

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A night event turned instructional was a hay ride.  Well, there was hay in a stack elsewhere in camp but not on the trailers.  One trailer was pulled by a 40s-era tractor, and ours (the “boys” trailer) was pulled by something a bit more recent- a little bulldozer like one of those Bobcats, but somewhat larger.  This was in one of the longer morning timeslots so this was a lazy time with a couple of stops, one at a big sand pit.

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We later returned to sand pit in the afternoon bike/hike instructional, though the kids didn’t get play time there this time around, being a shorter instructional.  We had the first day so the assigned instructors were still working out a few bugs such as taking the smaller group biking first, which would have been fine except we were to meet the hiking group along the way instead of back at the tent so there were not enough bikes for the second group- some of us had to run back to the tent and retrieve extra bikes.  I hope my advice of taking the larger group first was followed the rest of the week.  For the hike we walked through the woods for a time, off the literal beaten path.  And mostly downhill.  Did I mention the bike/hike met at the top of a very steep hill?  Well, at least we ended up back near the boys cabin area, so we were able to easily get ready on time for the flag-lowering.  Well, as much as my cabin was able to be on time anyway.  I learned quickly that I needed to organize their bathroom and changing time better.  Not that I did said organization in a timely fashion mind you, just that I learned it needed to be done. 😉

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In any event, this post is getting kind of long, so… more to come.

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PS- A couple sand fort pics! Note: Click on any of the pics for larger versions.

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Whew- what a scorcher this day was!  I am certain temperatures were in the 90s…  The kids certainly got no breaks at meals with drinks other than plain water.  Normally, they have to drink a glass or two of water at lunch or dinner, and then they can have punch or lemonade but for most of this week it was just water.  Of course they could get pop or Gatorade during canteen time, but for meals it was all water because it was so hot for most of the week.  It was so hot, they moved the normal Wednesday evening game to Thursday!

So today, the teaching was on the ears in the morning.  As for the ears, it is what we choose to hear: (1) What do we listen to, (2) Who do we listen to, and (3) How do we listen.  For (1) a big thing is music.  At their age it hasn’t become such a big deal yet, but we talked a little about it anyway. (2) involves what people they choose to listen to- besides their parents.  We will blissfully assume that they do listen to their parents. 😉 )Mostly this is about other kids or so-called role models who model inappropriate behavior- will they listen to such people or remember what the Bible says instead?  For (3), even if we listen to the right things, what do we do about it?  As the Bible teaches, we must be doers of the Word and not hearers only.  The evening message was about a crowded heart, one where Christ’s teachings are there, but crowded out by other things in our lives like TV, sports, internet (er- including this blog 😮 ), hanging out with friends, etc.  These things aren’t necessarily bad, but if there isn’t room for God then something has to go.  The memory verse was Proverbs 12:15: “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,  but a wise man listens to advice.” Speaking of verses, today we added all the key verses around the room- the five memory verses and Psalm 51:10, an all-encompassing verse for the week (I’ll let you look that one up- you don’t expect me to do all the work for you, do you? 😀 )Incidentally, we won cleanest (boys) cabin for the second time this week!

Of the two game times, I unfortunately have no pictures for you.  In the morning, we played our nemesis team, the Biohazards- nemesis because we were the top two teams all week, dukin’ it out for first place.  The game was the obstacle course.  I really didn’t get any pictures here because I was helping out our team at one of the stations.  The stations included going through a tire, swinging across a hole with water (and a “6-foot leech”), navigating balance beams (logs) and stumps, going across tall monkeybars, a “meat grinder” (old wire/cable reel), going over a couple of walls, and going across steel cables (my station).  The kids had to help one another, and many came back when they were finished to help Diego out.

The evening game was against the same team.  It was another course to navigate, this time in the game field.  I have a video of just the course- I suppose I could upload it to Youtube or something later but it’s really not as exciting as I had hoped.  This time I didn’t help out at a station, but I only took videos with my camera this time around- no pictures.  We won this game, but mostly because we had less people on our team.  I have no idea who won the obstacle course but I suspect the other team got the nod making the two games a wash.

Today the kids got to do the all-time favorite instructional- the zipline.  Now, you may be thinking, “what kind of crazy camp allows children to use a zipline?”  Well, aside from the obvious answer that our camp does, let me explain that this zipline is not the sort where you hold on to some sort of handles while sliding down the cable, letting go when near the bottom onto a net or something soft.  No, these kids are strapped in and attached to the cable- there is no way they can fall, short of the cable breaking, and I am sure by law the camp has to make regular checks of the zipline to prevent that from happening.  At the bottom they are stopped by two burly staff members- one slows them down, the other stops them entirely and unclips them from the cable.  There are two lines, so two kids can go at once.  They had time to go down about a dozen times each even though three cabins were there (normally there are only two cabins at an instructional- I’m not sure why they did it this way).  The other instructional was biking, though this year I think they got less instruction than previous years.  The biking, by the way, was at the top of that hill I talked about in a previous post.  I think it is only 40-45°, but it feels more like 60-70° when climbing it!  By the way, it’s named after a student who went down this hill on a bike when she was in junior high.  She got to the bottom, flipped, and broke multiple bones.  Needless to say, bicycling down the hill is no longer allowed…

Well, I think that covers all the main stuff.  The afternoon canteen was at the swim front as it was every day, but hot as the day was, would you believe that only one of my kids hit the water?  Unbelievable.  I even joined him for a short time- the first time in all my years I have gone in the water- I have always been paranoid about wearing contacts in the lake.  Even this year when I did go in I made sure to wear goggles to protect my eyes, which worked for the most part.  I’m thinking of combining the last two days into one post to get it over with- what do you think?