Christmas in July Opening Day
Well hellooooo parents and welcome to the camp blog. This is where you’ll find out almost everything thats happening at camp each day (Notice I said “almost everything”….. I can only be in so many paces throughout the day so you’ll have to look through all the pics to see things even I missed….theres a lot going on!). Before I go much farther, let me welcome y’all to 3rd session or as we call it up here on the mountain, Christmas in July! This is the session where we celebrate Christmas in July and Christmas songs are sung just as much as camp songs. So sit back and put a holly jolly smile on your face and lets get in the swing of Christmas!
Todays opening day went really well as everyone was in and out faster than Blitzen making his way form the North Pole on Christmas eve. All the campers got into their cabins and started learning the names and information about all their new cabin mates as they arrived throughout the morning. As soon as everyone was here and had their bunks all made (some with a little help form mom I heard) everyone started playing some get to know ya games so all the campers in each cabin could learn a little something about their new camp friends. It didn’t take long before there were several games of gaga ball, volleyball and even some duck duck goose type games being played and you could hear each camper calling out their cabin mates by their name within an hour of getting here.
After the game time, everyone was ready for some camp tours so they’d know where they are and more importantly, where the different activities they’re about to sign up for would meet on Monday. We don’t want the little darlings to get lost so everyone got the full 25 cent tour of camp and can now tell you just where each activity will be. Speakin’ of activities, your daughters all signed up for their favorite ones today and they filled their schedules full of options like cooking class, horseback, archery, rifelry, circus, fun swim, canoeing, pottery, arts and crafts and more. You guys will be getting a card in the mail with their full schedule and which club they’re in (more on that later…its IMPORTANT!) in a few days. But before ya go runnin’ out to the mail box all Forrest Gump style ya might wanna take a day or two and not rush it. The whole 4th of July thing and the fact things run a little bit slower up here on the mountain, and by things, I mean the mail. I’m not saying the mail is slow, but it takes the mail man an hour and a half just to watch 60 minutes if ya know what I mean. Don’t worry, it’ll get there soon enough!!
Now back to the clubs I was talking about. When your daughter gets to camp she draws a bead to determine which club she will be in and when I say “be in”, I mean for life!! These girls take their clubs seriously and when we have club competitions its as competitive as the olympics with a whole lot more cheering and yelling! The 3 clubs they could be in are the Rangers (blue), Troopers (green) and the Mounties (red). Now here’s a little pro tip for some of you first time parents playing along at home this session. Look at your daughters cabin or club pic and see which color shirt she has on. That will tell ya which club she’s in and thats one thing you just don’t wanna mess up…trust me!!
After lunch it was time for the club drawings, club meetings and finally cabin and club pictures. Mother Nature had little say into how those things went as we had to delay the pics a little bit and let a little shower pass through before we could finish getting them shot. Not to worry though, we got it done and you should already be able to see the pics on our website. While were talking pics, if you’re new to the game we use a great program called WALDO and its really amazing. You can look through all the pics each day (there will be several hundred each day) and scan for your daughter OR….. you can sign up through WALDO and their facial recognition program will find your camper for you and send ya a message on your phone when it does. Waldo charges a small fee for their use so feel free to use it or look through all the pictures for free. Your WALDO join code and camper email code were emailed to you a few days ago so just use them as you want and enjoy the pics.
Since were on the subject of emails guard that email code pretty closely. You’ll need that to send your daughter an email that is printed out each day and delivered to them at lunch. When you send an email, it charges $1 to your daughters spending account so don’t hand it out to someone thats gonna send a bunch of emails each day. Remember, they e printed out and delivered to them once a day at lunch so here’s your super saver tip!! If you want to write a bunch of “we miss you’, “we saw some good pictures of you” or even “hope your day is going well”, go ahead and write all those on a word or pages doc and save them till its time to send them and copy and paste them onto one email. That way your daughter only gets charged for 1 email even though t may have a full days worth of information on it. Emails will be printed out each morning around 09:00 and delivered at lunch so as long as you get it sent in before 9 central time (thats 10 to you folks over in the Georgia area) you’ll be good for the day.
Now back to what the campers did today! Tonight we like to start the session off with some more “get to know your cabin mate’ type activities so we had our cabin fun night where each cabin gets to choose what they want to do just with themselves. Some of them enjoyed the pool, shaving cream fights, hungry hungry hippo (human version), karaoke, painting their counselors faces and of course, since were a girls camp you know we had to have a spa and make over session. The best part was all during the cabin fun night session each cabin took turns coming to the campfire to enjoy some good ol’ fashioned S’mores. At the end of the night all the campers gathered around the campfire for some singing and our night time devotion. This is the only time all session when all the campers will be at the same campfire. After this the older girls across the river at Summerplace and Riverside will have they own campfire with their own devotion and some singing too.
Well, its been busy day and a long night (mainly due to the fact I still haven’t learned to type yet) and we have a full day ahead of us tomorrow and the rest of the session. I’d love to stay and chat with ya but I’m about out of my BRCC coffee for the night so that means it must be time to go to bed. Besides, with it being Christmas in July this session, there’s a special someone that knows when I’m asleep and when I’m awake and I want to make sure I stay on his “nice” list (well… for at least as long as I can). You guys playing along at home be sure to get some rest too. We have a long fun filled session and I don’t want you burned out before we reach the end!
Have a good night and I’ll talk to you tomorrow!!
Merry Christmas!!
LJ
