baked beans

Messy games at Camp Ridgecrest are always a-may-sing. We invited the Chippewa, out sister "village" at Camp Crestridge over for a day of craziness. As usual, I was stressed. (Sidenote: This morning, in our tribal leader meeting, we were read the scripture that says, "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power, that is at work within us, be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, forever." I was glad to know that God will do more than I can imagine, because I'm not imagining so well these days.) Now let me just say that 7 and 8 year old boys and girls do not interact particularly well. They look at each other disdainfully and refuse to touch. However, we did everything in our power to break their resistance and encourage integration of the sexes. The Apache tribe sings "The Beaver Song" relatively frequently at this camp and one of our children asked if we could sing that song for the girls. Adam, my inappropriate staffer who attends the God-forsaken "educational institution" in Chapel Hill, turned and said, "Hmm, appropriate." I just found that to be humorous. We began the games by playing Egg Roulette, in which 1/3 of the eggs are hard-boiled and the others are raw. Each camper gets an egg and smashes it on his/her head. The raw ones sit down, and this continues until one child wins. Watching girls voluntarily smash raw eggs on their heads is just plain awesome. We then did an egg toss, which was really just stalling as we prepared for "Decorate Your Staffer" in which the kids used a number of kitchen products to decorate their favorite staff member. By the end of the activity, the staff was covered in nast. But we pulled out the 120-foot slip and slide and covered it in everything we could find. I believe the final combination included: chocolate syrup, pancake syrup, water, baby shampoo, baked beans, margarine, whipped cream, watermelon, and eggs. By the end of the day, it looked as though someone had vomited on our collective group. Sick-freakin-nasty. But the kids loved it. We started to play a game of steal the bacon with a greasy watermelon, but then we realized that we were essentially sponsoring "syrup wrestling" with the boys and girls, so that game came to a decidely swift demise. That is not a very good story to send home to mom and dad. We took the kids down to the lake, washed them off, and then had a picnic on the Middle Green. I wish I had a picture, because it was an exercise in sex-based segregation. Those kids didn't even want to look at each other. Oh, cooter... I mean... cooties. Oh... the picture up top was a kid who got a bloody nose in the middle of messy games. I mean, what an inappropriate time. Ugh. Today should be fun. Campfire is tonight, which is when we have the most decisions for Christ. It's awesome. So... ima go holler at some stuff in the office. Holler back, yungun.