"Stop crying! It's not over! This is Tecumseh! We might wake up tomorrow and it'll be week 1! You never know! Stop crying!"

We're into mixing things up around here and adding creative twists. Instead of getting a free donut in chapel this morning you could win a FREE WEEK AT CAMP! My girls flipped and screamed their heads off. The counselors that would get a free week were already planted in the audience but the kids didn't know that. Much later in the day Sophia said to me, "Sarah, my throat hurts so bad from chapel. I really wanted that free week."

In Nature Discovery this morning we got to watch the snake eat two mice. Did you know that they can unhinge their jaw and swallow it whole? It's pretty intense to watch. The huge mass just moves down their body as they start to digest it.

Friendship bracelet kids made the V this morning but we were more focused on just being friends and hanging out. I love getting to play in the CAC with kids and counselors.

We practiced our drama skit through once before Adam came to watch for our audition. He laughed through the whole thing and then gave us the thumbs up, "You get to be in closing campfire!" We flipped out and jumped up and down and hugged each other and high-5'd. Then we all raced out, like actually all ran, to Closing Campfire so we could practice a few times on the stage and going behind the fence for scene changes.

We had one more pre-lunch time to hang out with kids. This is the life. I realize that in just a few days I'll get over 100 new students to love and be with all day long, but it's just different at camp. Here we don't have to worry about homework or being quiet or sitting still. At camp we paint faces and scream at the top of our lungs and dance for no reason at all. Maybe this year I'll have a random face paint day in class...

I don't want to have to say good-bye to any of these people. I want to keep being real life, every day kind of friends with Annie. I want to keep hanging out with girls like Lauren who love camp and their counselors and life so well.

I want to see Alli and Kendall multiple times a day and drink Diet Coke together and give hugs and play with kids and never have to really say good-bye.

Ellyn and I both finished our Parent Letters early so we got to play this afternoon. I visited Brave Capture the Flag and talked with Evan and Burke on her porch. I met my girls at pop stop and sat with them on the porch one more time. I don't know if I've ever had a group of campers that love pop stop quite so much.

We all got dressed up fancy for the Oscars tonight. My girls all put on fancy dresses or borrowed them from my dress up box. They had so much fun putting on eye shadow and lip gloss. Ellyn wore a dress from the costume closet so she could host the meal and present awards. I joined with a crew of other counselors as part of the red carpet.

After flagpole every one walked the red carpet into the dining hall. There were paparazzi along the side and kids tuning in from home in their pajamas with buckets of popcorn.

Paige went as Emma Stone. I pulled this dress out of my costume box and she said, "Oh this is perfect. I've seen her wear a lot of dresses that look like this." I love this child.

Alex and Ellyn hosted the awards together bringing people up for best dressed, leading role in a movie and more.

 

Choctaw girls are sassy and classy. This cabin is hilarious, pictures don't do them justice.

We got to play during trading post one more time this summer. Every thing is for the last time at this point which is just really depressing. I found Burke and Mary sitting on the ground with kids which is one of my very favorite things.

Do you know the line of Tecumseh that says, "But the greatest treasure of all is the glow that we feel when a child reflects our love in his face"? When we sing it, I picture these kids and ones that already went home from CILTs and my Warrior cabin.

More things I love: this little girl Liv and how funny she is, Ellyn and how much Ellyn loves red bull...

drinking a Red Bull with Ellyn before campfire, having Sweeners visit...

Sophie Millsaps and Kat showing up on the Longhouse porch and coming to campfire with us...

CHOCTAW CABIN!!!!!!!!

We got to do the TECUMSEH list at the beginning of campfire, a week 9 tradition. Each of the counselors on stage steps forward and reads a list of campy things that starts with their letter.

On my turn my list included "E is for: Erie, Evan, E-L-L-Y-N, Enoch, early morning polar bears and road runners, extra blob time, E-Z gymper on the am form for $1.50, everyone's friends, experiences that last a lifetime, everything making us cry during week 9."

The drama skit was AWESOME. River Camp and Lake Camp kids worked through their differences to come together as one despite the Capture the Flag Fiasco of 1982 and the baked oatmeal snafu. I really loved when they broke out into, "We are never, ever, ever getting back together. You go stay at your camp, stay at your camp, we'll stay at ours." Martin Luther Joel came out blowing his whistle to stop the pandemonium and then read his I Have A Dream speech. They finished with singing Tefunseh  together.

The rest of the campfire was dynamite. I loved the hip hop routines and LV show choir. Both stomp clinics were pretty unbelievable. Chris Bell lead a new skit with LV counselors and I died. I got to sit with Paige on my left and Sophie on my right and it was perfect. When we sang Tecumseh at the end of the night I couldn't sing along but just held on tight to my girls, watched the counselors up front and thought about how much I loved this summer.

I walked back holding hands with Paige and McKenna. Inside the Longhouse all of the counselors and kids in Hopi were bawling so I joined in too. Then Ellyn came in and started screaming at us, "Stop crying! It's not over! This is Tecumseh! We might wake up tomorrow and it'll be week 1! You never know! Stop crying! I'm going to go eat an apple if you don't stop and I'll die!" We momentarily stopped so Ellyn wouldn't go eat an apple.

It was so strange to do devotions with our girls for the last time and then read the Puppies chapter to them. They're my Puppies too but because the chapter is about HS girls I pictured Young Life and CILT and Day Camp girls that fill up my life. I miss all of them so much my heart physically hurts. If only we could just all play together and not have to miss anyone.

I got to sit out on the Longhouse Porch with Ellyn, Smooney and Grace till way too late writing PLs, eating chips and drinking bug juice, telling stories and getting distracted. I wish we could just stay up all night but that's just not really possible. So eventually we had to go to bed even though we really didn't want to. But Ellyn promised there was a real possibility that we might wake up and it would be week 1 again.