FC: Thursday

After a late night out we were ready to get up extra early for the Hayrack Ride to Breakfast! (Yeah right!) Well, we made it out the door on time anyway and climbed on the wagon for a ride with a bunch of other sleepy-eyed campers. We rode off into the woods and were greeted with a warm breakfast. Yum! The featured item on the menu was "heart attack toast." Bread toasted on a griddle with generous butter melted everywhere is the best way to describe it. The camp chef held a pair of tongs in one hand and a full pound of butter in the other and held the butter to the griddle before placing a piece of toast down in the pool of butter. The butter melted and dripped everywhere and by the time the bread was done being toasted it was a delicacy that I look forward to enjoying the next time we go to camp! And I understood why it was famous. And also why it was called "heart attack toast." (Although, for the record, I believe that the white bread toast was actually worse for our health than the butter. And no one seemed to care whether it was good for our health or not!)

In the afternoons the kids worked on crafts and their model rockets with Miss Courtney while David and I retreated to the air conditioning. There was a funny twist of words at the camp, where the AC stood for Activity Center and had NO air conditioning so was often even hotter than the outside temperature. (Daily high temps were never lower than 85 and sometimes as high as 92.) The only cool place to hide was our room. The kids couldn't settle down to rest in the room because of all the opportunities for other fun activities in other places, like the game room in the AC. We all truly appreciated Courtney's help when the parents wanted to go one way and the kids the other, and she was able to make it happen.

Shelly fell asleep in my lap at supper and we took her back to the room for a little nap before the rest of the evening's fun. (Meal time was always hard for her, the noise and heat was difficult for her to tolerate and it took an extra measure of patience for David and I to understand what she wanted or needed when she wasn't speaking clearly and we could hardly hear her through the noise.) I think this is when she picked up the Camp Cold. (More on that later!)

Thursday's big event was the Men and Boys' Adventure. The girls had a tea party while the boys were across the street doing manly stuff and suddenly we heard loud yelling and chanting and then I saw the big group go running into the woods with only a few of them armed with flashlights. Shelly didn't really eat any of the snacks at the tea party which was a big clue that something wasn't quite right - she never passes up treats! The boys had their adventure in the woods and the girls met them when they came home from rescuing Pastor Paul. And we all fell asleep pretty quickly after our big day.