ups and downs

Hey all,
I thought I was going to post every day....

then I had to work a lot. which is also tough, because Courtney lives 50 minutes away. I had to stay in town 2 nights this week. The 1st to mow the lawn and work. The 2nd for worship practice last night.

anyway, even though i could say more about ups and downs, i want to jump to camp highlights.

One day i went blobbing. That is where you jump off a platform onto a big thing filled with air. If you are on the end, and someone jumps, you get catapulted in the lake.

Anyway, there was a long line, and I got bumped off right away, so blobbing was kind of overrated for me. But that isn't this story.

The story is that I pack a bag of clothes every day. I drive into the camp, and usually get out of my car and eat dinner or whatever. Well, after the blobbing, I took a shower. When I got out of the shower, I realized that my clothes were still in my car about half a mile away! the only clothes I had were wet with lake water. I had the fan blowing on my shorts, and eventually had to go commando and retrieve the rest of my clothes.

I've played ultimate frisbee two Fridays in a row. This time I played barefoot, and my feet were so dirty!

Then I went to the Friday campfire for two Fridays in a row (Courtney is working with the volunteer teenagers, so I'm not talking about campers). Last week, a girl dislocated her shoulder while swing dancing right at the campfire before it started. So the nurse came by, and then Courtney left and went to the hospital with the girl. I, meanwhile, was still at the campfire, with people I didn't know, and it went on till the wee hours of the night.

I think those are the highlights.

pool party

Other new camp developments are walking 1/4 mile to my car every morning, since I can't just park in front of the cabin. (It takes away from the rustic feel for the campers). Watching the pool party for the campers - belly flop competition, and "jump or dive". Jump or Dive was changed into "make a letter of the alphabet" or "make an animal shape". So Nick Pick and the other guy were running this, and yelling out things like 'apostrophe S', 'tab', 'backspace'. And animals like 'wooly mammoth', 'Chuck Norris', and many other funny things. I stated that night that it was a blog-worthy event.

Note: Jon Philgreen got married, and we went to his local reception on Sunday.
Note2: Wedding pictures are great! We still need time to look at all 950, and then I'll be posting some!

long stretch at home

I have spent six nights in town, and I will be heading back to camp tonight. First, we had Mo's party, then a Friday wedding, then the weekend. Monday, Courtney was supposed to have a night off, but ended up being busy. I had to stay here and mow the lawn. Then last night was Courtney's new night off, so we stayed in town.

Saturday, we had Ben and Maris Deaver over at our house, and they brought their friend Daiki. We all went to Starbucks together as well.

Last night I got 7th place in my division and age group in the Mile Run of Corporate Challenge, gaining 2 points for StrategicOne!

Seeing people we know

We went to a wedding, and we saw Jeff Beruan. He happened to be the brother of the groom, but I had no idea. Jeff was an acquantance in high school but he went to a different school. Our barbershop quartet (the 4 C's) beat out his to win a comptetion. And we got to sing at the esteemed Kansas City Music Hall and get the attention of all the ladies. And then we both went to the Summer Choral Institute at KSU as high schoolers. He has the deepest singing voice of anyone I know. He sang 3 songs in Italian, and is is going to be an opera singer. He has long hair, and he's really smooth, but he used to be tall and lanky and not smooth.

Courtney knew him from YouthFront camp, from high school. It was really strange that we both knew him from different places, and that we went to the wedding of his brother.

Then we went to Sheridan's Frozen Yogurt after that was all done. A lady saw Courtney and said "Are you Courtney?". She didn't know her, but it happened to be the parents of a teenager in Courtney's ministry. the teenager was working at Sheridan's, and her parents came and embarrassed her incidentally.

Then I saw Dean Berrens(?) from KSU, and his wife Jenny, and a couple of other acquaintances from college. That was still at Sheridan's. They are interning at Christ Church here in town.

We saw some other acquaintances, but they weren't as random.

super party and seeing my nieces

Courtney and my sisters Michele and Mary and my mom threw a surprise party/shower for my other sister Monique. She got accepted into med school, and so will be financially stressed, so these ladies had it in their hearts to have a shower to provide for some of her needs. It made me happy to see the love in this event. A cousin and cousin-in-law and aunt and pastor's wife were there.

It was a ladies only thing, so I showed up later and got to see my 2 nieces. I saw Sophie first, who is looking more and more like her dad. She has a tight grip with her fingers and a good smile. We got to see her when she was a week old, so she has progressed a lot in the last 6 months!

Then I went to down to see Avery in the crib. She didn't spend much time with her uncle, except I unknowingly broke the baby strategy when I took her out of the crib. The strategy is that you leave them there so that they sleep. I didn't get to see her smile, as she was crying very loudly. But I got to sing to her and scratch her back, which calmed her down.

Earlier, Michele and Mary went to lunch with me, and they got to see my office. They expected it to be boring with the cubicles, but they found some nice people inside, and they were impressed with it all.

starting out with a tick

I found a tick on my body Wednesday morning. That is another thing that is new about living at a camp.

Since it was pouring down rain yesterday, I got to see a rainbow on my commute home. That was wonderful - I saw both ends of it.

Courtney made some gluten-free banana bread that is excellent. I ate some last night when I got "home" and said it doesn't get much better than this.

Then since staff from both camps were over at our camp, a few long games of dodgeball were played. I watched at first from the balcony, but then I joined in.