Hoodoo?
Dan and I have been laughing all afternoon from the entertainment our older boys have provided. We got home from church and they were musing about whether or not Aaron and Julie received any "camp host questions" while we were gone. They were joking around and broke into an impromptu dialogue acting as "camper" and "camp host."
Dallin (asking with a goofy, dizzy look on his face): I have a question. Can I move from campsite 2 to campsite 10 in the horse camp?
Ty (pretending to look in a book, and acting very serious): Hmmm, I don't know, let me check the official camphost guidebook. Yes, it says right here you can move three times and then we kick you out."
I guess it's time to move on so the kids can pick up some other life-skill now that they have camp host under their belts.
Jacob - Where did my baby go?
Can he be one already? This has to have been the shortest year of my life! We invited some friends to come up to the lake and have cake and ice-cream to celebrate. I made Jacob a little cake to eat on his own, and made cupcakes for everyone else. There's just something gross about sharing a cake after someone has blown all over it that I can't handle. We put Jacob in the middle of the picnic table, sang happy birthday, and presented him his cake. He really surprized us when we put the cake in front of him. He is usually so excited about his food we thought he would dig right in, but we learned that he has some shy tendencies. There were so many kids staring at him, he was too intimidated to even poke at his cake. After everyone else started eating, he poked at it a little bit, but he never did eat very much.
After the cupcakes were gone, we all headed down to the lake for more fun and more friends. There were some other friends from the branch at the lake that had come to play. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the water and building sand castles.
When the Dad's away...
Dan will write about his hike climbing the North Sister with a group of friends. I'll tell the story of how the kids and I entertained ourselves while he was off playing. We dropped Dan off at his meeting spot and then met a group of other moms and kids at the Liddell's pond. The pond is the perfect size for the kids to put on their life-jackets and swim, take out a kayak or pedal boat, or zoom across the pond from the zip-line onto the island. For the little kids who want to hang out with the moms, there is a mini-trampoline on which they took turns jumping.
Of course, since Dan was gone, that put me in charge of compliance. I loaded up the cleaning supplies into the suburban so all five kids could go on rounds with me as I cleaned the campground and checked payments. We were hoping that some friends might come up to camp, so we hurried through the rounds as best as possible, while Dallin gave a report on the clouds. Unfortunately, the clouds won, and the friends stayed home because of rain.
Saturday morning my cheerful helpers loaded up and we did our jobs. We got home and made a fire for "Roman Soldier dinners" (tin foil dinners) for lunch. We were very happy to see Jodi Ford and her children come up to play. Jodi's husband, Barrett, was on the hike with Dan. They had brought their kayaks and were ready for a good time. We met them down at the lake and played all afternoon. The kids built a mote and caught frogs and a snake. The ground was hopping with little frogs by time they were done! I even took out a kayak for my first time. Jacob came with me, and other than not caring for the life-jacket, I think he really liked the ride. I know I enjoyed every minute! It got me thinking about overnight camping trips on an island somewhere for a few days.
We didn't know exactly when the men would come home, so Jodi watched the kids while I started evening rounds. She called Barrett to tell him where to meet us for dinner. Dan got home surprised, but happy, to have a party in full swing when he returned. We roasted hot dogs and smore's until it got dark. What a great way to spend a day!
Thanks Jerry
Just down the road from our campsite all summer was a little store that sold bait and tackle and rented boats. We had intended to rent a boat all summer to take out on the lake and just play around. Labor day we finally made it down to Jerry's boat rental. Since we had been the only neighbors all summer, he was nice to let us take two boats out for no charge. We had a really great time as the two boats played a little pirate game and chased each other and shouted things that the kids thought pirates would shout to one another. (Things like, those land-lubbers are gaining on us! - nothing inappropriate).
Just a small observation (if it's too preachy, just skip this part)
Of all the questions and comments we received all summer, being a bit of a novelty as camphosts with so many young children, many people seemed more surprised that we had a bible in our home than anything else. I was surprised each time someone would mention the bible as if it were a novelty of its own. Has our faith as a community become such that owning the word of God is noteworthy?
School starts again
This school year has had a great start! Without being pregnant, or taking care of a newborn, I find that I really do enjoy homeschooling the children more than I remembered. Natalyn started kindergarten this year, so I was concerned about how we would get all of the lessons taught during a day. So far so good. The kids have been on task, and I have had time to plan and organize fun activities to keep things fun and engaging. My favorite lessons so far have been:
our preposition hike
building an edible oasis
chemistry experiments
building roman pillar ruins out of cookie dough
recording the kids do a puppet show of Sinbad and the Valley of Snakes
We've had a lot of fun, and the kids have had a lot of positive energy.
No comments:
Post a Comment