"I'm going to trash these old pants on the mud hike. Bye bye little princesses."

I love Ava Baby. Even though she's a Warrior I still get to see her every morning before her OT cabin walks up to Lake Village. After making our wooden name tags we had a little human log roll.

Sarah came and found me before lunch and just squatted in my lap. This child makes me love being a counselor. I'm so glad that I get to keep seeing her grow little by little every summer. She says the funniest things some times and loves sticking by my side.

GRILLED CHEESE DAY! And tater tots and my fav Tecumseh salad for lunch.

Ellyn got a dinosaur cookie cutter in the mail from Noelle and we tried it out at lunch today. Smooney was a professional at cutting out the dinos for us.

We played Capture the Flag after rest hour with all of the River Village kids. We're split up into four teams in Main Field and had a dance party while we tried to get other people's flags.

CILT counselors have so much fun all the time, even when we're just hanging out giving people water. I'm going to miss seeing Finney baby all day next week.

I love playing with Molls and how I know she'll always ask me to play a Taylor Swift song. I love Kiley and Bridget.

We love having Gummy here this week in the Riv.

I'm such a big fan of Chrissy and Sophie-- they make camp fun.

Victor and I really miss Ellie Pearl. Kayla is so fun with her kids.

I love being best friends with Smooney and hanging out with Erin and Riley being hyper and Molly doing bridges.

I love how Hannah is SO fun, Finney and Fish have been together for three summers now...

Courtney and Smooney love each other and Chrissy and Whitney are so close now.

We got to run the TRADING post tonight. In order to get anything they had to trade us something. I'm a huge fan of the bartering system-- perhaps we should think of going back to that for awhile. The kids all dug through their backpacks to find some goods.

Some things I could bet on getting every single time-- band aids, pencils, gum and hair ties. But others are more of a surprise, like Kaitlyn's bracelet with all the little pictures of saints around it.

We were cracking up as we traded stuff and even got a ridiculous trade from Brian that we just had to give back.

We ended up with an orange bandanna, 3 crazy straws, Powerade, a cupcake, 4 red Sour Patch kids, a 'Merica and LiveStrong bracelets, bubbles, a race car, band aids, a pocket brush, 2 pencils and three types of gum. Not bad at all.

Camp kids Sophie and Reagan are both in Catawba this week as first time resident campers and I love seeing them playing so hard all over camp.

I love when Sarah finds me and runs up to give me the best hugs and tell me a new story.

I'm continually impressed with Mary Brody and how she makes camp so fun for every kid. Tonight she was playing with just one girl and being silly with a pair of goggles. Next thing I know she and the girl are doing the butterfly stroke on land. They looked like they were having so much fun that the entire cabin joined in hopping across the grass and spinning their arms like mad.

The Blazers unit game Car Wash was tonight and the CILT counselors got to help out. While Alex filled buckets in his rain coat, Smoon and I passed out cleaning supplies and sported our very fashionable trash bag shirts.

Right now we're into overcoming the boring and making everything as fun as possible. Rule #4 take opportunities. Live today well. You know the drill.

All the Blazers hiked to Ghost Creek and had five minutes to get their counselor as muddy as possible. It's hard to even recognize Mary and Moose.

Then they parked their counselor in a hula hoop and were given two larges sponges, four small sponges, two towel squares, one cup of soap, one cup of shampoo and one refillable bucket of water. The kids had just five minutes to get their counselor as clean as possible. This game is hilarious and so awesome.

Since we're so into living life as an adventure and making memorable scenes right now we decided to sleep out tonight. After the girls were showered I went into each cabin and yelled, "YOU'VE GOT FIVE MINUTES TO PACK UP AND MEET ON THE PORCH FOR A SLEEPOUT!" I expected some groans but was happily surprised when almost all of them screamed in excitement.

All the girls laid out their sleeping bags on the side porch of the River Lodge. It's the perfect spot for us and I can't believe we've never slept there before. Big enough for all of us, we could see the stars over the river shining bright.

Jamie led a sweet devotion about being in community with God and we had ten minutes to spread out around the lodge and just pray by ourselves. We don't often get to do that here but it's so important in life.

Everyone got zipped into their sleeping bags and fell asleep to the sounds of crickets, frogs and my voice reading a chapter about 10-year-old adventures in Love Does. Sleep-outs are always worth it.