Family Camp 2014

Last week was our week away from home at Fort Wilderness. We had a great time, as always. This year, one of Rosie Girl’s friends came with us. She’s a real “horse person”, so she and Rosie Girl did lots of horseback riding. Since Rosie Girl only rides when she’s up at Fort, she was pretty sore for a couple of days. They also enjoyed plenty of gourmet coffee and card games in between horse rides.

Wild Man indulged his need for competition in the archery and carpetball tournaments. He won first place for his age group in archery and third place in carpetball! And, of course, enjoyed his prizes – treats from the canteen. He also really enjoyed the teen Bible study for the week. It was taught by a young man who is in seminary and is a totally theology geek – but has a crazy afro and is psycho for coffee and tea. Wild Man just loves this guy’s passion. He taught about several men through church history who have followed Jesus in a big way and what happened in their lives. Some of them were Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, Tyndale, and Bonhoeffer (I probably missed some in there).

I did a good bit of reading and some knitting. I’m working on a pair of socks that start on the sole of the foot. The pattern is in one of the more recent Interweave Knit magazines. Unfortunately, I had several days of bad migraine, so I missed going on Wrangler Breakfast with everyone else. Other than that, I don’t think I missed much. PWM did a good bit of archery and was in the tournament, but didn’t shoot as well as he would have liked this year.

Grandma (PWM’s mom) joined us again this year. She loves to make campfires, so we had a fire most nights except for the ones when it rained. She made some homemade firestarter (using wax and woodshavings from PWMs workshop) which got things going more easily this year.  Rosie Girl also taught her friend and Grandma how to spin wool with a drop spindle on one of the rainy days. Rosie Girl has gotten quite adept at spinning and Grandma and M were making quite a go of it.

I made a new friend this year, one that I really hope not to see again. He was hopping up my leg when I met him. In fact, he was hopping up toward an inappropriate area and I finally had to pick him up because he didn’t respond to my verbal commands to leave me alone. “NO means NO, Froggy!!” So, I deposited him back in the woods with a strong admonition to leave human females alone and find himself a girl froggy to hang out with. I didn’t see him the rest of the week, so I assume he decided that trans-species romance was out of the question for him.

We had a great week. If you are looking for a fun way to spend a week with your family, I highly recommend Fort Wildnerness! It’s fun in a Christian environment for the whole family in the beauty of God’s Northwoods!

Fort Wilderness Memories 2012

This was our tenth year of going to Family Camp at Fort Wilderness and it was wonderful, as usual! Here are some highlights.

• Rosie Girl and I picked up Wild Man from camp on Friday and the three of us stayed in Rhinelander, went to see Brave, and did Wild Man’s laundry.
• Wild Man had a great time at Built to Live Camp where he got his Hunter Safety certification. It was incredibly hot during the week of his camp, so they spent lots of time swimming and playing games involving water.
• On Friday night, I did an assessment of Wild Man’s injuries – sun rash from his first day which was just fading, blister on his little toe which looked like another toe, various bruises. But, he didn’t complain – he said it was a great week!
• PWM stayed here in town until the shop closed and then drove to camp. He made it just in time for dinner.
• Stuart and Jill Briscoe were the teachers for the week. I felt smarter just listening to them because of their British accents! Well, they’re really smart, too!
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• It was also pretty cool that they both taught. Jill would start each session with a few thoughts, then Stuart would do the main teaching, then Jill would wrap up.
• Both kids stayed in the sessions with us to listen to the Briscoes instead of going to the high school group. They like the guy who does the high school teaching, but they preferred listening to Stuart. And I thought it was pretty cool to be all together.
• The Briscoes taught on holiness this week. Lots of good stuff for everyone.
• We met a family this week that was there for the first time and they have just moved to Milwaukee from England. The kids (even the two year old) have adorable British accents)!
• I am still following my migraine diet, although I did loosen things up for the week we were there. I only had 1 piece of bacon on the mornings when it was available. The only chocolate I had was in mint chocolate chip ice cream. And I did have a couple of Cokes. Overall, not too bad.
• On the headache front, though, my headaches weren’t any better, despite the Botox. I had two definite migraines along with the daily headaches. One of them was Thursday night, so I missed some of the last session. On the upside, though, the kids did all the packing. (Really, though, I’d have been happy to pack if I could have avoided the migraine!)
• Rosie Girl made a basket on Tuesday. I actually don’t have a picture of it – bummer. Anyway, take my word for it – it’s beautiful with blue and green stripes.
• PWM and Wild Man were in the carpetball tournament, but both were beaten pretty early this year.
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• In more important news, I beat Christopher in carpetball!! He proceeded to turn around and beat me right back, but I have the satisfaction of beating him once in my life!
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• PWM and Wild Man did lots of riflery during the week. PWM, Wild Man, and Rosie Girl all did some archery and Wild Man won the tournament, receiving a coupon for a double scoop of ice cream!
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• The weather for Wild Man’s week at Built to Live camp was awful – temperatures in the upper 90s with high humidity. He said that they went swimming a couple of times a day and had water breaks every hour or so, no matter what they were doing. The day that Family Camp started, though, the weather improved dramatically. For Family Camp, the highs were in the 70s to low 80s and the lows were in the 50s to 60s. Absolutely perfect!
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Now that we are home, we have embarked on Laundrypalooza 2012 and resting up for Family Camp 2013!!

So, how has your summer been?

Fun Facts About My Family – from the 2010 Vacation

1. J (my 3 year old nephew) is “scared of Aunt Catherine”.  Yeah.  Not so scared when I’d sit on the floor and play his Thomas the train set card game with him!

2. Wild Man fished almost every day using live bait without asking anyone to bait the hook or take the fishes off after he caught them.  (You might recall that I was nominating myself for Mother of the Year after I did all his icky stuff when we fished at Fort Wilderness.  Time does fly!)

3. Rosie Girl enjoyed playing her ocarina outside.

4. E (my 8 year old nephew) and Wild Man “slept” in the same room.  I’m betting Wild Man will sleep quite a lot over the next few days and nights!

5. I made sauteed green beans with grated kohlrabi for our veggie dish one night.  Sauteing green beans takes far longer than I expected.  But, I only added the kohlrabi at the end, so it didn’t get mushy.  It is a weird combination.

6. On Thursday or Friday, Wild Man and E discovered the laundry shoot in the main floor bathroom.  Oh my.

7. I beat each of my kids separately at Sequence (in spite of the headaches).

8. While PWM was reading, Wild Man got PWM to say “Ollivander” the way that Jim Dale says it on the audio recordings of the Harry Potter books.

9. Everyone enjoyed my “beet brownies” (brownies to which I’ve added pureed beets).  It’s a good thing because I’ve got 5 more beets to deal with this week.  Do that many people around here love beets?!

10. By Thursday night, we had three clowns in the house.  The picture only shows Grams and Wild Man, but E also had a pair of giant sunglasses.

11. E described the elephant ride at Circus World as “bumpy”; Wild Man concurred.

Our Wisconsin Full Family Vacation of 2010

We just finished our mini-family reunion of 2010.  This time, instead of the four of us driving down South in blistering heat, the family came up here.  And, thankfully, the weather (mostly) cooperated so  being outside was really a fun thing.

We rented a lake house about 30 minutes from our house.  The lake house sleeps 10 people easily and has a game room in the basement along with the usual living room, dining area, kitchen, and 4 bedrooms.  PWM and I  and Rosie Girl got the big room upstairs because the toilet up there doesn’t work right now.  Sadly, Grams (my mom) and Grandpa (my dad) needed to sleep downstairs so PWM and I got the king sized bed upstairs while Rosie Girl had a mattress that we took from another bed.  Not that I’m complaining about the king sized bed, mind you!

 

While we were there, we had plenty of time to play around the lake despite all the outings we had planned.  There were a paddleboat and a canoe for our use, along with the dock for fishing.  Wild Man did a good bit of fishing and caught several very small fish.  He had one bigger one, but the line broke, to Wild Man’s great distress.

 

There were some glitches, though.  When the family arrived, Grandpa already had a pretty bad cold, so he and Grams skipped church on Sunday morning.  I had a headache the entire week, so I missed a few outings.  Grams developed the cold on Tuesday and was pretty much in bed for Tuesday through Thursday.  CC (my brother), KC (his wife), PWM, and all the kids, though, stayed nice and healthy.

Monday morning was the hike at Skunk Lake.  Grandpa, Rosie Girl, and I didn’t go hiking, but ran errands instead.  The rest of the group loved the hiking trail because it’s beautiful and has lots of ridges and moraines (which is a little valley with lots of big rocks left by a retreating glacier – learn something new every day!).  And the weather was perfect – in the 70s!

Wednesday morning was cheese morning!!  We all (except Grams) went to Union Star Cheese Factory in Zittau and got a tour.  J (CC and KC’s 3 year old son) wasn’t quite as thrilled with the tour since it was mostly standing around and listening, so he and I played outside in the grass for a while.  All the kids got cheesemaker hats and we, of course, bought plenty of cheese and cheese curds!

That evening, we decided to have dinner at the Wheelhouse and then dessert at Scoopers – a plan everyone approved of.  (Although, Grams and Grandpa didn’t make it because Grams was still feeling pretty rotten.)  Wild Man tried to teach E (his 8 year old cousin) to cross his eyes.  I’m sure KC will thank me for that one day!

On Wednesday, everyone except me and Grams went to the EAA Museum and Pioneer Airport.  (But, Grams and I have both seen the EAA Museum before, so it was a minor loss.)  Wild Man and E both got to have their Young Eagles flights on this trip.  I’m not sure it was quite as big a deal for E because CC is a licensed pilot and takes E out in his flying club’s plane on occasion.  Rosie Girl did a great job of taking care of J  when he fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon!

Circus World in Baraboo was our activity for Thursday for everyone but Grams who was still feeling sick.  My favorite part was seeing the museum, old costumes, and old interesting musical instruments.  The kids rode on elephants.  We saw a great magic show and a very cool tiger show.  Unfortunately, it was really hot and I got a migraine, so PWM, Rosie Girl, and I left early.  The rest of the group got to see the Bigtop show – apparently, it was quite good.  Grandpa, it appears, splurged for some clown get-up for Wild Man and E.

Thursday night, we made a fire in the fire pit, which the little kids loved.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have the makings for S’mores.  The excitement of the evening was that Rosie Girl fell down the bottom two stairs of the deck and twisted her ankle pretty badly.

 

Every night, PWM read to us from the first Harry Potter book.  We had thought about bringing Artemis Fowl, because we love those books, but Artemis is still mostly a villain in the first book, which might not be great reading for the 8 year old!  In any case, E had already read the first chapter of Harry Potter, so this might entice him to finish the book at home because we only got about halfway through.

On Friday morning, everyone but PWM, me, Wild Man, and Rosie Girl went to the Paper Discovery Center.  They made paper as well as making things out of paper – like air rockets.  My kids had been before, so they weren’t terribly interested.  Besides, I took Rosie Girl to the clinic in the early afternoon for an X-Ray of her ankle.  Thankfully, nothing was broken, but we did get an air cast to help splint it.

Rosie Girl and I said our goodbyes on Friday afternoon and then came home.  We were quite the pair – Rosie Girl with her foot up and ice on it and me with an icepack on my head!  Nonetheless, the rest of the family was up and out before 10am on Saturday!

Overall, we had a blast!  I really wish that no one had been sick all week, but this stuff happens, so we make the best of it.  I am pretty glad to be home right now.  Everything’s a mess since we just put the bags in the middle of the living room.  I’ll clean when my headache finally calms down.  In the meantime, I’ve still got school planning to do!