Sunflower A

Ava and I really lucked out with our cabin mates.  These girls and their moms were super fun and great to be around.  Without books, Ava was quite the socialite and made some great friends with the girls in our cabin.

This was the picture we took right outside our cabin on our way to perform our skit at the campfire tonight.  All the cabins had the opportunity to come up with an original skit that demonstrates one of 7 leadership principles the girls are working at school.   Our skit was 100% original and made up by the girls alone.  We were selected to go first and it was for the best, as most of the other skits either didn't include one of the leadership qualities or was written by the leaders not the kids.

Teepee Practice

Jack, Ben and Norah will benefit from one of the camp activities, teepee building, since they all want to build one with the plethora of dead sticks laying around the cabin.

Working Hard

I think Ava is an incredible student and apparently a sleepless night doesn't get in the way of that, as she continued to keep a positive attitude and complete her assignments well.  She wasn't nearly as chatty as yesterday, but then again, no one was.

After lunch there was another activity for the girls called the race through time.  I missed most of it, as I had to hike to the camp entrance to meet up with Kyle to retrieve my emergency inhaler so I could breathe the rest of the trip and hopefully sleep a little tonight despite all the allergens that are present here!

Rise and Shine

I'm not sure anyone wanted to get up today after staying up late and not sleeping great. We managed though, and after braiding most of the girls' hair we headed to breakfast at the dining hall and then to meet our instructor for a wilderness walk/language arts lesson.

Late Night

After a long day of communication and team building activities, we ate dinner, had an hour of free time and then headed to our last activity.  It was fun to be outside in the dark, but the hour was late for school work and brain usage.  We made it to our 8pm end time, though and headed to the cabin for showers and some hair braiding.

Sunflower Archery

After arriving at the adventure camp, finding our cabin, unpacking our bedding and eating lunch, our group of 9 girls and 5 moms made our way to our first activity-archery!

Ava and I were able to make it onto the target a few times, it was really fun to test our skill.

We're Off

After weeks of feeling like I couldn't possibly go to 5th Grade camp with Ava and leave Kyle with all the other kids to sleep in a cabin with a bunch of rowdy girls and eat cafeteria food while walking miles and doing schoolwork with Ava and her friends-I relented and paid my $175 fee and volunteered!

We packed our stuff up last night and made it to school on time today to load the buses.

Primary Program

We have been practicing our Primary Program speaking parts and songs both in and out of church for months now and it really showed today during the program.  The kids all memorized their parts, spoke slowly and clearly and knew most of the words to all the songs.  So fun to see them do so great after so much hard work!

Date Night

Kyle and I are really good about going on dates, tonight was no exception.  We love to see movies, and eat popcorn, so see The Martian together was pretty much a great end to our week!

School Pics

Another example of why school pictures are never purchased.  I'm not sure I've ever seen Ben make that face, and what's with the ill placement of the fall foliage.  Additionally, Ben said he doesn't like them at all!  Amen!

Really!!??

As we were pulling away from the gas pump at the gas station in Amarillo on our way home, this happened!!  Not sure what our car is made of, but with this kind of damage, its amazing we are called safe while driving in it!  Kyle is estimating about $7000 worth of repairs, but we are only responsible for our deductible if we are found liable.

The scariest part of the whole ordeal was hoping the car was still operable so we could drive the four hours back to McKinney.  The tire was being rubbed by the wheel well that was torn up, so we drove it to the home depot about a block away (hello tender mercy!) and ran into an off duty store manager who hooked us up with some free bungee cords (hello more tender mercies!) that held things in place until we got home and brought it to the repair shop.

It was a little unnerving driving the car like this, but we were all fine in the end.

Wasted

We have been awake so much at night during this trip, its been a common sight to see this guy zonked out on one of the drives through the canyon from Angel Fire to Taos.  I'm hoping after we get some bunk beds in the cabin to replace the queen beds and blow up mattresses, we can all get some real sleep on our visits to this beautiful place.