"Yeah I'm smiling, pretty much."

Started our morning off with a couple Sar and Ellyn pics. Of course J photo bombed in the background.

We had a spontaneous "evolution of facial hair" living art display. Soaps look good their on the end.

We spent the morning and early afternoon with the infamous Michael Brandwein. He is awesome and I always look forward to the time he spends teaching us during each staff training. Today he gave us 36 skills that we can immediately apply with our campers all summer long.

He has great ideas about how to get people's attention, what to do to enhance meals, how to make walks more fun, questions you should ask and things you should emphasize with campers.

p.s. Mags wanted this picture to be on the blog.

This afternoon the CILT Pack led another rotation group through optimist challenge, debriefing and the teams course.

There was a free period for us before dinner so the CILT Pack headed down to the Riv to take car of a couple things. GREAT NEWS- Registration for CILTs 2015 opened at 8am this morning and all 120 spots were full by 10:30am. How exciting is that? We found the new CILT Pack hats in the basement of the Trading Post so we're stoked about that.

It started raining just before dinner when all of the groups reunited. Suzanne is in my cabin this week and I'm so excited about being friends with her all summer. Riley is back for another year and is just as hilarious as ever.

I love Maeve and Rachel and am so excited that they're both on res this summer. I've known these two for several years now and can't wait to see them have their own cabins. I love getting to hang out with them this week.

Tonight the fearless coordinators along with the other summer leadership folks are meeting to figure out where everyone will fall into place this summer. It takes a long time to figure out all of the units and partners for the whole staff. I've got faith in these people to make great and thoughtful decisions. Maggie and Todd, Dayna and Pippin, Jimmy and Becca, Dillon and Becca get to start leading their units tomorrow morning!

The rest of the staff met at the flagpole before going on the first mud hike of the summer. 

Once the staff mud hike begins my general strategy is to get to the mud pit, rinse off and get back to the cabin as fast as possible. So Smoon and I started running through Lake Village with a team of about 15 other runners. Everyone kept up, including Alli Kenney, and we made it to the River Village in no time. To our shock and dismay Keith told us that we had to wait for everyone else to catch up.

Soon everyone was there and chanting, "MUD HIKE! MUD HIKE! OH! AH!" We did end up getting broken up into shifts and luckily my cabin got to be in the first one.

The new mud hike pit for the summer is behind the hole. It was a huge square of dirt when we ran up and we all just stopped in our tracks because we didn't know what to do. After a few minutes of spraying the dirt with sprinklers we had a mud pit worthy of a mud hike.

While some people got covered head to toe, others got a smaller splattering of the stuff. You know it's summer when you're willing to jump into a pile of mud.

Our group headed all the way up to the lake to clean off. Arielle, Smoon and Alli were clearly thrilled about the state of things.

After we all got cleaned up we got to have a wooden name tag and ice cream party back in the Lodge with everyone. So much potential on this table...

I love just getting to hang out with these people and seeing tables of friends getting closer. I got to sit for awhile and talk with Steph, Claire, Abby and Abby about growing up at camp and my counseling career. Steph apologized for basically interviewing me but I love getting to talk about those things.

I led the devotion tonight in my cabin with the song My Lighthouse. We talked about following his light and how his ways and plans are better than our own. No matter what happens with partners or units tomorrow, God will still be in control and still lead us through the summer. I love being able to share in conversations with these women about their lives and their faith during this week.