Monday we started the week off with Gold Miners and 49ers. Now me and Nikki knew exactly what this meant because we're from California, but the other girls and some of the campers thought it meant we were doing 49er football week. We had to explain the gold rush to them and teach them how to spell miner, not minor. :) Once we got all the facts together we were ready to start our week at Camp. I was in charge of Sports club again, and we played tag football. I was on the little kid team and instead of playing for real points, we played for fun; we got way more fun points!! Luckily I didn't have any injuries which was nice, and we headed to small group time. Unfortunately, my group gets smaller and smaller each week. I had 3 kids on Monday. 2 of them have been coming all summer, Becca and Austin, but this week I had a 13 year old from Pennsylvania! He was telling me all about living on a farm and getting up at 4am to milk the cows. I was very impressed with his lifestyle and how well mannered he was. He was only at Camp for one week which was disappointing because he was so nice. After lunch, we packed up for the church and headed over where I played a game called Clean Up Your Own Backyard. The kids had fun with the game when they understood the concept. :) Once we were done doing our rotating activities, we went back to the park so the kids could do a treasure hunt. Robyn had put together a fake language that the kids had to decode to find out where the treasure was. Each group got their own secret location, and when they found it, they all got a piece of candy from the hidden treasure. Next, we went to the baseball fields to play some high active games, which was stressful! There were a couple of incidents with two of the kids and I had to raise my voice a bit. (Apparently, a couple of the kids told Mr. Jimmy that, "Miss Skittles had a bad day!") Whoops! haha Anyways, we ended the day and headed home. That night, I went on a little casual date with Jon that night as well, which was nice. We watched a movie and then he drove me home.
Tuesday we headed to Jacob's Aquatics. As usual it was fun, but I didn't go on the diving board. Instead, our 4 year old girl, Harlie, took me on the slide about 15 times :) Unfortunately, the day at Camp came and went pretty quickly. When we got home, Nikki and Kristen headed off to soccer while Robyn and I went on a 5 mile bike ride to another beach up the road called Coco Plum Beach. It felt a lot longer than 5 miles though because I WAS DYING!!! But along the way, we made a pit stop because I saw my exact same car parked outside a restaurant, so I just had to take a picture!
Wednesday was a little bit hectic. At the start of the summer, Mr. Jimmy said we would have to work an ADA celebration sort of thing, and that was all we knew. Miss Ali said to not worry about any of the games because she was going to do it, but when we got to Camp on Wednesday, Miss Ali said that she didn't plan anything and that we would have to. We had no idea if it was just for our kids, a whole set of new kids, where we were going, how much time we had to fill, or anything. It was CRAZY stressful. While we scarfed down our snacks, we tried to come up with some fun events for the kids to do, with the help of one of my older girls who had gone to the event in past years. We got some great ideas, and we gathered the kids and headed over to an elementary school across the street for the event. When we arrived, we saw Miss Ali had organized the whole outside portion of the event with activities for the kids to do . It was a little frustrating because she had put all this stress on us, when she in actuality did the entire event!! Anyways, we went inside to the cafeteria where we had the kids sit down and wait for lunch to be ready. Each kid got a hamburger or hot dog, mac and cheese, beans, chips and a soda. All the food was great, but the boys I was sitting by were the most rambuncious group of boys we have. I nearly had to force feed them because they were too busy goofing off and not eating. Eventually they ate their lunch, and they each got a cupcake!! It was one of the boy's last days, so I let him get away with smashing his cupcake into his own face. While we ate, there were teenage kids singing with their guitars which was really cool because we got to see the local Marathon talent. They also had the board members of the ADA (American Disability Act) come up and speak about awareness. I don't think the kids fully grasped what the event was about until we headed outside to do the activities. After the kids got up and danced for a couple songs, we went outside with Miss Ali where we had a blindfolded taste test, drawing with no hands, dressing yourself with no hands and sports with lost limbs games. All around the kids had fun and it was a pretty easy day for us. The end of Camp was a little sad because we had to say goodbye to one of our boys who had been with us from the beginning. He was always full of life and made us smile, so it was sad to see him go, but he left us with a smile on our faces when he decided to sing God Bless the USA as his last song. He straight up BELTED it out. (I got in video so everyone can see it when I get back) When I got home, I got to Skype with my mom, Julena, and my grandma and grandpa. It was great seeing everyone's faces and hearing their voices. Later on, I found out that one of my favorite bands, The Cab, is coming to San Francisco the weekend after I get back. I got so excited because I have seen them every summer for the past two years, so I figured it would be an awesome way to end my summer before going back to school that week. I found out from Twitter, that the people putting on the concert were giving free backstage passes out to the "biggest fan" of the band who were playing. In order to win I had to tweet why I was the biggest fan. So, true story, last year when I met the boys in the band I invited them over to the apartment to do laundry because they live in their van and don't get to do laundry very often, so I thought it was a nice gesture. Unfortunately, they didn't come over....but, I tweeted my story and the people "favorited" my tweet before I went to bed. (More to the story is below!)
Thursday started off great! When I got to Camp, one of the girls gave me a gold bulldog necklace. I think it was just because she didn't want it anymore, and she offered it to me first, but it was still pretty cool especially because bulldogs are my favorite kind of dogs!
Our field trip was to the Boondock's Putt Putt Mini Golf in Big Pine. It took us about 30 minutes to get to Big Pine where we stopped at a nearby park for lunch. One of the little boys Freddie didn't feel well, so we laid on the sidewalk in the shade while he told me about his Army parents and how he wanted to be in the Army when he grew up. We also got a couple other kids to join us and we played my favorite low active game, "A What?" It's such a funny game because it confuses the kids so much and it's quite entertaining for me. Once everyone was done with their lunch, we got back on the bus and went to Boondock's. When we got off the bus Freddie walks up to me and says, "I don't feel good" right before he threw up. I felt so bad, but I am not good with comforting sick kids, so I called over Miss KitKat to see what we should do. Luckily, she has way more experience than I do, so she made the situation all better. While she was doing that, we got the kids in groups of 4 or 5 and they headed into the golf course. We all got to pick out our own ball color which was awesome for the kids. (They get so excited over the littlest things) I golfed with a group of four little boys. They were 5, 6 and 7 years old, so they had probably never even seen a golf club. Mr. Jimmy helped everyone out at the first hole, so they knew how to stand and how to hit the ball and then we went out on our own. My 7 year old, Alex, got a hole in one on one of the holes. He was so excited; he had me tell every counselor we saw on the way through the course. The boys were very well behaved which was nice because it made the field trip more fun than stressful! Once we were done, we put our ball in this machine, and if you were lucky, you got a coupon for something free. It was really neat, but at the same time it was terrible for the kids who didn't get a coupon. After everyone was done on the course, we sat around for a little bit trying to kill time because we got done in about 30 minutes and we still had hours left in the day. We killed as much time as we possible could before loading the bus and heading back to Camp. Once we got back we played a game or two before heading into the pavilion for the rest of the day because it was so hot. When I got back to the pavilion, I checked my phone, and the people running the contest to win backstage passes announced that I won!!!
Friday was exciting from the minute we woke up because we knew the next day we would be in Orlando riding all the cool rides and having a blast. When we got to Camp, one of our little ones, got us all a giant bag of our own candy. It was so sweet and he was so happy to make us happy.
Camp A in Marathon is like Halloween once a week!
We started off Camp doing our Blitz and practicing for Camp A presents as usual, and then we went into clubs. I played tennis with sports club, and I continued to not be very good, but we still all had fun. Then we went to the Rotary Park and I swung on the swings with some of the kids. I convinced Finn to have us over for dinner, and he said ok. haha After we got back from the park, we showed the parents our songs before chowing down on some BBQ. While the kids were playing on the play structure or playing board games, Mr. Reyes caught a baby iguana. When he came up to the pavilion to show me, I didn't know what it was because of the way he was holding it. At first, I thought it was dead, and then I thought it was toy. It wasn't until I held him that I knew he was a real baby Iguana. He was so cute. I let all the kids pet him, and they wanted to hold him, but I knew if I let one hold him, they would ALL want to hold him, and he would probably get squished or thrown or stepped on, so I was selfish and held him the whole time, until Miss Starburst got the nerve to hold him too. He was so cute. He had little tiny claws that would grasp on like Spider Man, so one of the girls named him Spider Man. Once everyone got a chance to see him and pet him, I sadly took him back to his home and set him free. Miss KitKat said that I looked more sad than the kids did. haha In the 5 minutes that I held him, I fell in love haha.
Afterwards, I washed my hands and we all put on our bathing suits to head over to the sprinklers. I played catch with a tiny football with the kids, we played tag, and pass back with a soccer ball. It was great to just run around, let the kids run free, and cool off. During snack time, each of the kids got an ice cream sundae (counselors got 2!) After Camp was over, we headed home as quickly as we could, did our final pack, went to the store to get some snacks and soda, and made our 6 hour long drive up to Orlando! It was a fun drive. We listened to all sorts of music, shared stories, laughed, and watch some lady do a crazy head dance in the car next to us.
We also took a little detour through Fort Lauderdale trying to find something to eat. Once we found a Taco Bell, we settled and stopped for a bite to eat. Then, we hopped back in the car and finished our drive. After getting a little lost and a lot frustrated because we couldn't find the hotel, we called them, and eventually found it a little ways down the road. We were a little aprehensive because apparently it was like $24 a night, so we didn't quite know what to expect, but it was actually quite nice. Nothing fancy like Embassy Suits (my mom has influenced me too much) but it had a bed and no bugs, so I was ok! We quickly settled in and slept for about 6 hours before getting up on Saturday!!
Sorry this post doesn't have too many pictures, I think I take too many of the kids and I can't post those ones :( But I think it has enough words to describe what I did haha The next post will have A TON of pictures because it is the weekend in Orlando!!! Woop Woop!! Love you all!!
-Live. Love. Laugh. Janise
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