Camp WOW!

Last month, the kids and I went to church camp.It was so much fun! Camp Wow-which stands for Walk on Water-definitely lives up to its name. We all had a blast! The girls went to camp last year, but this was Landon's first time and my first experience with being an adult "sponsor". It was an amazing experience and I'm so thankful we had the opportunity to go. Here is just a little of the fun we had.

The kids were divided into six teams. On the first day, we met with our groups and came up with a team name and a cheer. My team was the Purple Champs. Landon was on the Orange Cheetahs (also affectionately known as the Orange Cheetohs). Sierra's team was the Green Angels. Cheyenne was on the Blue Thunder team.  We also had the Black Rolling Thunder team, and the Red Lightning. Each day, we met with our team for morning devotions, to work together on the low ropes course, and to compete against the other teams in rec games. 

 While we were having kids' camp on one side of the campground, the teens were having youth camp on the other side. It was basically two camps going on at the same time, although we did overlap with them a little during mealtime. Dakota was at youth camp while the rest of us were at kids' camp, so I didn't see her much. Their teams were named with letters from the Greek Alphabet. I believe she was on Zeta Phi. Next year, I'm going to have to make sure I go over there and get some pictures of her, too.

(Most of these pics aren't mine. Thanks so much to our pastor's awesome wife, Shinista, for letting me use her pictures!)

This was the spider web. The challenge was to get your entire team through to the other side only using each hole once. Harder than it sounds when you have first and second graders as the majority of your team-ha!

Here's Landon doing the trust fall. I remember doing it when I was in high school. It's an amazing feeling when they catch you.

Here's my team doing the trust fall. This one wasn't sure she wanted to do it after she got up there and saw how high it was. It took a little convincing but she did it!

This is Sierra and her friend on the trust vee. There are two wires in a vee shape. As it gets wider, you have to lean on one another more and more to keep your balance.

Here's Cheyenne's team (she's on the left in the black shirt) playing Giant Soccer. The staff member who was in charge of this game was so much fun! During the game, she would randomly yell out "mooing". The kids had to drop to their hands and knees and moo like cows. They could win their team spirit points for this. I'm proud to say that our team won the spirit points for our game.

Trying to balance this giant seesaw was tricky. The first day we tried, it didn't work very well because everyone wanted to be the person in middle and the kids on the ends kept moving around. The second time, though, they got the idea and we were able to balance it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Once rec games were over, we had a little bit of down time before the kids had their afternoon free time. During free time, they could play basketball, volleyball, go to the snack shack, or go to the rock wall/zip line.

Cheyenne hanging out in the cabin on the first day.

Sierra's favorite place to be during free time was the volleyball court, but not to play volleyball. This girls LOVES to play in the sand!

 

 

I didn't get a picture of the rock wall and zip line, but it was a favorite! All four of my kids did it at least once. When it's your turn for the rock wall, you can choose the easy wall, hard wall, ladder, or cargo net for going up. You also can choose to climb the power pole.

The first day, I was in the cabin when Cheyenne decided to climb the power pole. When she told me about it, I promised her that if she did it again the next day, I would come watch and take pictures. She did it and it was awesome! I was so proud of her!

That thing is so tall! I don't think I would ever have the nerve to do it.

Once you get to the top, you have to balance on the tip top of it.

She said it was really shaky at the top.

Just getting to the top was a huge accomplishment, but she didn't just climb it...

She jumped off! She missed the bar by just a few inches. If she had been a tiny bit taller, she would have had it. I still can't believe she did it! She's much braver than I am!

After rec games, it was time for the water front. The lake at Camp Wow is so much fun! The kids can swim, zip line into the water, go down the water slide, swim out to the platform and jump off the diving board, go on the "blob", or ride the tube behind the jet ski. I didn't get any pictures because I was too busy swimming! I didn't brave any of the other things, but it was fun to watch. I think my kids' favorite thing was definitely the tube.

I did get this one picture of Cheyenne ready to head down to the waterfront the first day for the swim test. Everyone has to take the swim test on the first day to see whether or not you have to wear a life jacket in the deep areas. I was pleasantly surprised when I actually passed the test. It's been a very long time since I have swam that far.

All the games and activities were super fun, but the real reason we were there was to help kids grow closer to God. Each day, we began the morning with a short worship service and each evening we had another service after dinner. I loved getting to worship with the kids at camp! It touched my heart every day.

Cheyenne and her friend waiting for service to begin.

Kids worshiping God together (that's me at the back on the left). Can you see Landon down front? He's the one with both hands in the air.

At the beginning of each service, there was a boys against girls ice breaker game. For this one, Landon had pertroleum jelly on his nose and had to use it to pick up cotton balls and move them to the other end of the stage. It was too funny!

The best part of every day.

I had such an amazing time at camp (have I mentioned that already?). I think I had more fun than the kids! I can't wait to go again next year!

4th of July

Where in the world did June go? This summer is flying by! We're still plugging away on the end of our school year, but there's finally a light at the end of the tunnel. Landon, Sierra, and Cheyenne have finished their math books, Sierra just finished Language Arts, Landon has two days left of reading, and Dakota has just about 4 days left in her math book. We officially still have 28 days left that we'll be filling with science and history along with some reading and math games.

Our 4th of July celebration was a little different this year. Daniel found out on Saturday that he was going to be leaving Sunday evening on a two week trip for work. (He ended up only being gone 5 days! Yea!) Since he wouldn't be here on the 4th, we celebrated with him on Saturday night.

We started with a trip to the fireworks stand. The kids had fun picking out their own little bagful of fireworks. It was funny to see their different personalities when it comes to spending money. A couple of them went through and bought whatever they saw that looked cool until their money was gone and a couple of them worked really hard to get as much as they could for their money. They all ended up with some pretty cool stuff.

We came home and hung out a while until it started to cool off a little. Daniel fired up the grill and cooked us some yummy hot dogs for dinner. While we were waiting for dinner, we played with a few of the daytime fireworks. 

We did some snakes,

 sent up some satellites,

(boots and shorts-he dressed himself!)

ran through some smoke bombs,

and made a huge streamer mess with party poppers.

After dinner and dishes it was dark enough for the fun stuff.

I took about a million pictures of the kids playing with sparklers. Here are a few of my favorites.

I love this picture of Sierra!

Sunday morning, we all went to church. It was the first time in a really long time that Daniel's been able to go with us, so it was extra special. After church, we went to Grandma Debbie's house for lunch and homemade ice cream. We hung out there until it was time to drop Daniel off for his trip. 

On Wednesday, we started our celebration with some "fireworks" pancakes. Yum!

I'm trying to get us through these last few weeks of school as soon as possible, so I didn't want to miss a day for the holiday. We did a 4th of July version of our school day. We spent most of the day watching a documentary about the Revolution and talking about it. Then, we did some 4th of July worksheets and coloring pages and watched a video of God Bless America on Youtube.

At lunch time, I tried a version of the red, white, and blue drink I've been seeing all over Pinterest . I used slightly different ingredients, so mine didn't turn out quite as cool as the examples, but they weren't bad. Cheyenne told me they tasted like gummy worms. Mmmmmm!

Here's a version without the red.

That evening, we headed out with Grandma Debbie to watch the fireworks at the fairgrounds. It was crazy because we somehow missed the memo that they were changing the location of where they were going to set the fireworks off. For years, they have set them up on the softball fields to the west of the expo center, so we were all set up to watch them there. When it got dark, there were fireworks going off behind us. It's not unusual for people to bring their own fireworks and set them off while they're waiting for the big show, so we didn't really pay attention the them for the first few minutes. We finally realized that they weren't stopping and figured out what had happened. We missed the first 5 or so minutes (well, I think the kids actually were watching them, just the adults missed them) but the rest of the show was great!

When the fireworks were over, all the kids loaded up with Grandma Debbie to spend the night at her house and I went home to a very quiet house.

We missed Daniel a lot, but we had a pretty good day. 

What kinds of fun things did you do with your family for the 4th?

I hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday!

Country fun-planting pumpkins and watermelons

 Some of you may remember a few years ago when we decided to plant a garden and ended up with a pumpkin patch instead. Well, we've been saving the seeds from our pumpkins since then and finally decided that this was the year we were going to plant them. 

While we were working on school work one morning, Daniel went down and started preparing the garden spot. Then, in the afternoon, we all loaded up in the buggy and went to help finish smoothing things out and get rid of rocks and sticks.   

Here's the "before" view of our pumpkin patch. Just a tiny bit bigger than the last time.

We made a few rounds with Daniel in the buggy and then hopped out to watch while he finished up.

...you might be a redneck. Ha! Whatever works.

While we were waiting, the kids took pictures next to this big machine thingy. Not sure what it's called, but it's big and it's cool.

Here's a view from the other end.

Butter was on hand to supervise.

Once Daniel had everything nice and smooth, it was time for the kids to get busy ridding the garden of rocks and sticks. I really wanted to help, but I couldn't. SOMEONE had to operate the camera!

This poor tree became the target for flying rocks and sticks.

Sierra kept coming over and saying, "Take my picture with this one!" So I did.

 

 

With all the seeds we had saved from our first "garden" plus the seeds we saved from our Halloween pumpkins last year, we must have planted about a million pumpkin seeds. We also bought some seeds for white pumpkins (casper, I think) and a couple of kinds of watermelons. Yum!

Daniel's grandma said later that she thought maybe you're not supposed to plant watermelons next to pumpkins because the watermelons will take on the flavor of the pumpkins. Oops! I guess we'll find out!

Graduation/promotion

A couple of weekends ago, our homeschool group had a graduation/promotion ceremony to celebrate the end of the school year. It was an exciting day for us because Dakota graduated from 8th grade! It's so hard to believe that I'll have a high schooler next year. I know these next few years are going to fly by. My prayer is that I will remember to take the time to enjoy them before they're gone.

I'm so disappointed with the pictures I got. My camera's batteries were dead, of course, so I was using Cheyenne's little camera. To make things even more difficult to shoot, my kids apparently were nervous and were moving a super speed so they could get off the stage as fast as possible.

Even though they are terrible, I'm going to share what I got anyway. You'll get the idea...

 

Sierra did actually pause and smile, but very briefly. I couldn't quite get the focus right.

Cheyenne stayed on stage the longest. At least it's mostly in focus.

Landon and Dakota were sitting next to me, so I did manage to at least get a picture of them with their certificates.

 

After the ceremony, there was a fun reception. We had a chance to sit and visit with some of the other moms and dads while the kids played in the indoor playground and the gym. I love spending time with our homeschool friends! 

It's been so much fun to watch the group grow this year. When they started, there were four families. By the end of the year field trip, we had over 40 in attendance. 23 students participated in the graduation/promotion ceremony. I can't wait to see what next year holds! We're talking about some co-op classes and even more field trips. It's going to be so much fun!

I'm so proud of these kids! They've worked hard and learned a lot this year!

We still officially have 39 school days left before our (very) short summer break. The first week of September we will begin our new school year with a 9th grader, 6th grader, 3rd grader, and 2nd grader. Wow! I'm so thankful that I have the privilege of being their teacher and their mom! I wouldn't want to do anything else!