SAM Camp: Day 1

This week, my mother is putting together her usual children's musical and day camp at our church, and I have the privilege/misfortune of helping all week. I do enjoy helping, I just don't always have as much patience as it requires.

For my jobs this year, I am helping with the musical rehearsals, the drawing and calligraphy classes, hand chimes, and I have a group of kids to keep up with at lunch. The musical went well, I think it'll be a lot of fun! And although I enjoyed helping with the drawing and chimes, calligraphy turned out to be my favorite class, because I got to sit there and learn and practice with the kids! You'd be surprised how difficult it is to make nice, even strokes in the correct order, direction, and size! But it was neat to practice, and maybe by the end of the week I'll have something to show for it.

I ended up feeling rather awful by the end of the day, and slept through the last hour of rehearsal on the most fluffy, pillow-y youth sofa imaginable! I may just spend the night there this week, seeing as I have to be there so early anyways..

Tonight, I think we are under some sort of thunderstorm warning, which always gets me excited. I don't enjoy the damage they bring, but I am left in awe after watching clouds and rain and storms, they are magnificent! It's not really reached us yet, but it started raining with the sun shining through the clouds, like something out of a painting. Amazingly, my camera actually captured the sky decently! Now I may have to sketch or paint it, or some variation of it.

This is pretty much what I actually saw, while the next one is my extreme just-for-fun editing, and not remotely what it looked like :)

Dayspring!

To answer your question, Petr, in laser laser tag, at least the version I played, you have a laser gun and a vest with sensors on it and you just wander around shooting at other people's sensors. It records your score, and then prints out a score card. Very simple, but it can be quite fun.

As mentioned earlier, this last week was camp. It was totally amazing! First off, all of the girls from our church were in on cabin (there were two different rooms), so there were about 30-40 girls in one building having way too much fun way too late at night. The best part was how we did role call every night. The first night, when our name was called, we made animal noises (and gestures if we wanted). I was a lion, so I jumped over a few beds whilst roaring. The next night we died dramatically, the next we played the game where the first person starts a story and the next person adds on and the last person finishes it. The last night we played the no teeth game, in which you have to hide your teeth with your lips and then make the strangest noise possible without showing your teeth. It was good fun.

My small group was great this year. We were all focused so we didn't have to worry about staying on topic, and we had lots of good discussion. There were all different beliefs represented, and people were very open. I loved our leaders, they were very good about getting us onto good discussion topics.

I did manage to wear my ankle out the first day so I had it wrapped the whole week, preventing me from swimming, hiking, playing ultimate or volleyball and I wasn't supposed to jump or run. I did do a bit of that though. I injured my ankle playing softball in '06 and I think what happened with it is that when I went hiking on the first day, I worked it too hard, causing it to hurt.

Nat was at camp too, and he did something most of you may not believe. On Wednesday, he shaved his head for one of the games. I knew it was coming, but I still couldn't believe it, and I'm still not used to it. He was pretty much bald when they did it, but there is some hair growing now.

I don't have pictures on the computer yet, but they will be coming shortly.

In other news, this next week is the kids musical camp, and I am going to have to learn all the hand motions today and tomorrow, and I will have to be working from 8-3 all day Mon.-Thur. plus extra on Thursday. I'll have to let you know how it goes!

~Ellentia

So, this has been a long week, but not in a bad way. It just never seemed to end. We have a summer Bible/book study, and last week was a big bonding time for us. It isn't something to share, but it was an incredible morning, and if everyone in the Church could be part of something like this, the Church would be such a different body of believers. We are reading Acts and a book called Messy Spirituality by Michael Yaconelli. It is about spiritual growth, but it is unlike any book on the same subject. I didn't like the first 4 chapters at all, I disagreed with quite a bit, but the 5th and 6th chapters were good. It is an interesting read, at the least.

In two weeks is the annual Summer Arts and Music Camp (SAM Camp) and in preperation for it, Mom and I went to Dallas on Friday to visit a camp similar to ours that did the same musical that we will be doing, Go, Go Jonah! It was a fun trip, and we got to go into the different classes. I went to a handbell class and a quilting class, which was fun. That night we got to see the performence, which was good. The main kids did well, except that they didn't know the lines perfectly. The singing was good (thankfully) and overall it was very enjoyable. There was a bit of excitement during the show, about halfway through the fire alarms went off and we had to evacuate the building. Thankfully, there was no fire, one of the sensors accidentally went off, but we had fire trucks there and everything. The kids weren't shaken up too bad though, so after 10 minutes we went back in and finished the show. We got to our hotel about 9:30, and we had been up since 5am, so we were very tired. The logical solution? Stay up reading and watching Food Network, of course! Needless to say, we didn't leave very early. We did get to stop at DQ, a rare treat because the only one in OK is far south. It was a good trip.

On Tuesday my small group is going to play laser tag (my first time, can you believe it!) so I will let you know how I do. But until then, goodbye!

~Ellentia

Microwaves, Plays and Pink Oranges

It's surprising how you don't realize how much you need something until it's gone. Our microwave quit working on Tuesday, though it had all the appearances of working. It is much more time consuming to use the stove or oven to heat up leftovers than when you use a microwave.

Last night, Mom, Jc and I went to see Newsies at a children's theater. It was not, however, Disney's Newsies, it was written by Mark R. Morris Jr., the owner of the theater. There were about 20 kids ranging from 4 to about 16-17 (Mr. Morris' six kids were in it too, and his wife was the choreographer). It was a pretty good show, not badly written, but they needed tons of vocal help. They had very little problems saying lines and no problems projecting, and most of them had a good stage presence, but they did more shouting than singing. They did mostly sing in tune, but they were singing as loud as possible and stretching and straining their voices. It was almost painful to listen to! One of the boys was naturally loud, so when he sang as loud as he could, it was overpowering! He was one of the better singers though.

I went backstage a little ways during intermission and the building reminded me of Lamp Light. However, they didn't have half the junk and clutter of lamplight. I miss being in shows there. I wish that I had been older when we lived in Nac, I could have done a lot more shows at Lamp Light, and I would have been in the "adult" chorus, which is way more fun than the kids chorus.

Have you ever heard of a Pink Orange? Sort of an oxymoron. Mom got some at the store the other day. They taste a lot like normal oranges (slightly different), but they are pink. The picture below doesn't look very pink, but the oranges we had were a grapefruit color, except orange-sized.

~Ellentia

Kings' Dreams and Schemes

Well, the music camp is finally over. I can't wait to see the video of the show! The performance was last night and to tell you the truth, those dear little campers did fantastic! The show was of course a huge success. The song with the black light worked really well. We practiced with the black light before the performance but there were lights on that we couldn't turn off so the effect in rehearsal was not nearly as neat. During the performance we had the room completely dark and we had a few extra black lights and all the kids started oohing and ahing on stage when everything started to glow. Us three stick girls had fluorescent pink dowels and they really popped in the black light.

For the Daniel in the lions den song we had five little kids dressed up as lions. We hadn't ever practiced with the costumes or even put them on the kids and one boy was way to big for his costume. However, they all looked really cute! There were lots of things in the musical that were really cute and funny, it was probably a good thing that I was running the words in the back because I was laughing too much to have been backstage.

I am glad it's over though. It was fun while it lasted but if it had been much longer, I probably would have collapsed!

~Ellentia

Kings Dreams and Schemes, the story of Daniel

Wow, it's only day two of the children's music camp and I'm already exhausted! I have been helping those dear little campers learn to play hand chimes correctly and many of them are resisting my well meant suggestions. If you tell them to set the chimes on the table they bang them on the table. If you tell them to quietly pick the chimes up they promptly try and ring them and seem surprised that it makes a sound! However, when they are supposed to be playing, half of the kids suddenly lose their desire to ring the chimes and the other half seem to feel it's their duty to ring twice as loud and often to make up for the kids who aren't playing!

After four such sessions with the campers, we take a lunch break and then get to watch the little dears run around outside. Yesterday they played kickball and one of the kids hit a homerun, passing by all of the fully loaded bases and managed to be the only one who came home that play.

I have also been running the words for the songs on the projector and attempting to learn hand motions that involve a long dowel. During one of the songs three of us "teen leaders" are going to add to the effect and kneel on stage and wave dowels around. It will be dark and everyone (including those darling kids) will have white gloves on and there will be a big black light to make the gloves and dowels glow. This is going to be fun...

~Ellentia

Fish tales, fish tales, fish tales are stories that seem to good to be true!

So this last week Sunday through Wednesday our church had a musical camp for kids going into 1st-5th grades. And since my parents were running the camp, I was of course drafted. It was kinda like VBS except it was from 9:00 to 2:00 so it was a lot longer. The kids learned how to play orf instruments and how to play hand chimes while learning a musical called Fish tales. I will be singing the songs for weeks.

I got to help teach the kids how to play hand chimes. I thought that it would be relatively easy because we only had about 10 to 20 kids in each group and we only had each group for 30 min. Boy was I wrong! Getting the kids to listen instead of talking and dinging the chimes was next to impossible! The funny thing was that the older kids were the most difficult! The younger kids mostly did what we asked them to, whereas the older ones wouldn't do anything you asked them to!

I'm done complaining now.

I was amazed at how well the performance went! The kids learned the songs and the hand motions and the lead parts learned there lines and the whole production went off almost perfectly! Some of the soloists bobbled because they were nervous but other then that it was great! I am so glad the whole thing is over!

Last night we had youth and I played volleyball. I was terrible! And the worst part was that every time I made a mistake (which was quite often) jc complained at me! Even so I had a lot of fun being terrible! Well, I have to go now!

-Ellentia

Seussical

Well hello everyone, it has been a while since I posted but I am back now. Yesterday was the audience dress rehearsal at Lamp-Light for the Seussicle and it went very well. There were a few small mistakes but overall it went really well. I play a who and I am also a water friend in one scene. Tonight is opening night and amazingly I am not one little bit nervous. I have had fun in this production and I will be very sad when it ends. The main story is based off the book by Dr. Seuss called Horton hears a Who. The main characters are Horton, The Cat in the Hat and the Mayor of Whovill's son JoJo. In the story Horton hears the whos on their speck of dust calling for help. He puts the dust on a clover and vows to protect it at all costs. The inhabitants of the jungle say he's crazy because they can't hear the whos. The story continues on with JoJo being sent off to war and three monkeys stealing the clover with the dust speck on it and Horton being sent off to the circus McGurcas while sitting on a nest with an egg in it. Now, do I have your curiosity aroused? Well, thats all you'll get from me! you'll just have to come see the production or read the book Horton hears a Who by Dr. Seuss. Well, that's all folks!
-ellentia

By the way, I got a profile pic! Check it out.