Wolf shirts, clinics and gold rush oh my

Wolf Shirt Wednesday arrived bright and early. Nothing like a good weekly tradition to help you pick out your clothes in the morning.

We watched the Body of Christ chapel this morning. It's the one I performed as a CILT so it holds a special place in my heart. We sang a bunch of older songs today and Anna kept saying, "I love all these new songs!" beside me. You know we haven't played them in awhile when kids think Faith, Faith, Faith and Shine Jesus Shine are new.

I love right at the end of chapel when everyone else dismisses and only the CILTs are left. We all stand on the benches and keep singing the last chapel song together. It's not really a significant time but still one of my favorites.

I'm working on taking pictures all the time, don't want to miss a second of documenting camp life you know. I love having Eliza around all the time. So many younger kids were wearing really cool wolf shirts today. Sophie and I were shorts twins today-- she is the cousin of one of my old CILTs. Maddie told us both that we'd be great friends and she was right.

Team CILT shadowed clinics for the first two periods of the day. I started in the CAC to watch camp crafts, friendship bracelets, clay and baskets. I hung out with these goobers for awhile and was more than entertained. I love these children and just being able to be weird and real with them. I think Braves often get underestimated, they're cooler than most people think.

Two girl counselors and two girl CILTs were playing Lacrosse with a whole clinic filled with boys.

I watched some of the hip hop routine to Toby Mac's "Me Without You" that Brad and Margaux are teaching.

At the pool I got to see so many counselors and CILTs doing great things with campers.

I found french braiding clinic at Fort Disco and got to hang out with Chrissy and her girls for a little while. I'm so thankful that she's here this summer and that we get to keep living this camp dream together.

At the beginning of the week this group made their Team goal for the week to come up with an original chapel for this weekend. We told them that they'd have to have it worked out before Saturday night in order to make it happen. I was pleasantly surprised when they brought it up today after we finished debriefing clinics together. They presented five different ideas for chapels all based off of scripture and then took a vote. I love that they're following through on this.

p.s. Trent, in the red shirt, is hilarious. We love him. So does Henry even if he doesn't like having Trent chew on his shirt.

Emily Peterson brought her ukelele to camp, talk about a rock star. I'm so glad that I get to have her as a camper this year and that I'm getting to know Anna so well.

This afternoon all of the CILTs went over to the pool, aka the weigh station for Gold Rush. All of River Village had been filled with gold painted rocks that the kids ran around collecting. Our area was a giant dance party of CILTs and counselors.

 It was the hottest we've had so far this summer. Everyone was sweating but still playing hard. When we ran out of cups we started lifting up the water jugs so kids could keep hydrating.

Once the winners of Gold Rush were announced the giant Gold bolder was brought out with great pomp and circumstance as "We Are the Champions" played in the background.

All the campers from the winning Brave and Blazer cabin get to sign their name on the bolder. This was a great new addition to this time-honored game. Don't you want to sign your name on a gold bolder?

We jumped into the pool to cool off really quick with the river kids. Back to turtling on beach balls and swinging kids through the water. The CILT counselors had to hop out after about five minutes to go talk to the DC staff about CILT shadow days.

We found the whole staff out in Trader Jims. Almost all of these kids have been my campers and I was so excited to see them all. They quickly made up songs about what they need to remember when working with CILTs. These kids are the cream of the crop and I love seeing what they come up with.

Tonight is my first night off of the week because tomorrow I'm heading off to Wyld Life camp. I'm so unbelievably excited to get to take all of our HSE Junior High kids to Michindoh for five days. At the same time I'm so sad that I've got to leave Tecumseh for that long. I've just gotten to know the Session 1 CILTs and I'm sad I'm missing out on the next few days with them. Thankfully I'll be able to jump back in right when I return for the majority of their second week.

Tonight I'm doing laundry, packing my suitcase and blogging all about this first week of campers. I stayed here to eat burritos with Eel River and see some sweet Pathfinders like Marie, Hannah and Ellie up at Lake. Soon I'll go back down to do devotions with the CILTs. These are the days.