Summer Camps will be here before we know it! For us girls, finding a cute and modest swimsuit that fits is some times near impossible.

LimeRicki has super cute, modest and, bonus since it’s not summer yet, cheap swimwear! Most of their suits are tankinis so you get to mix and match! They have boy shorts and skirts for bottoms too. It’s only online, but suits that aren’t final sale (since it’s end of season right now there are a lot of those) they let you exchange for free.

So, go sign up for camps too! For Clearwater (going into 6th through going into 8th), click here. For RiverRanch (going into 9th though going into 12th), click here. 

The rest of the photos from the trip after the link. 

We put Laura on the horse and it almost fell over because it was hallow.

Huh.

Then we saw people on the side of the road with real horses. I pulled over and asked if my wife can get on their horse for a picture. They said yes and we all got out to ride the horses.

Turns out these people have been on a horse back ride for 13 months so far. Three of them left California and plan to ride to South Carolina. They took off with the goal of praying for America and our leaders along the way.

They wintered last year in New Mexico and the third guy with them fell in love with some girl there and stayed when they left. Really nice couple who let us strangers ride on their horse. Laura is pumped about this. 

Tim is afraid of horses so he wouldn’t ride one. 

We took our group photo on Thursday morning. Here it is. There are a few more in the rest of the post. For many campers this is the first time they changed shirts all week.

We always do a hands up photos, it’s a nasty habit I can’t kick. 

Cabin Three Photo, they all have braided hair. 

Morning devotions going on all around camp. 

This is the Baxter Boat Dock, the place we get the boat from. 

No Hands! 

She looks sweet, but she’ll throw you off without a second thought. 

These guys are dancing after we discovered the radio on the boat. 

The boys are trying to keep from being separated while the girls pulled them all apart. 

This is mountain ball, he can be dangerous. 

While kids go to lunch Laura and I  (and Andria this day) we go get more gas. We saw this huge thing while there so we asked if we could check it out. It has a hottub on the second floor and six bedroom. Very cool boat. 

On way back we stopped and did some cliff jumping. 

Look at the handstand, it’s like he’s doing it on water. Also notice Grant’s artificial leg. He found that thing at Oasis in June and I’ve seen it everywhere ever since. 

This is our dock safety officer. He rules with an iron fist. 

Down goes Tony!

This is Sam pretending to be a sailor. 

This is her Titanic Impression. 

I “pit poked” sam and that caused my dimise 

At the end of the day we busted the big tube so we broke out the backup. It’s little so we’ll be buying a new big one for next year. 

This is Tim and Jenny, they cook all the food and do all sorts of other behind the scene things to make camp happen. Thanks Rackley’s! 

I can’t remember what is going on here, but it was a character of some sort. 

Thomas’

Mallory who used to come to camp really believes Bigfoot is real. We make fun of her for such a ridiculous idea. So we began Bigfoot is Fake Day every year on August 4th, then we throw a fake party. We’ve even got a great cake for the festivities.  

This is Sam giving a Public Service Announcement 

Pastor Jim Baxter taught us Thursday night.

Then we played a night game called Shimmer Bandits. We hid a special reflective Duck Tape all around the campus then we put it on interns and told them to go hide and to run if they were found. The students all went out to find the tape with flashlights in teams. The most found wins. 

We then did the annual Interpretive Dance, only this year there were two competing for best. In the end the Boys wons in a close fought battle. 

These are photos from the evening of Wednesday. Above is Mary-lynn Baxter wearing a life vest we picked up at Baxter Boat Dock. More photos below.

These are two of our helpers, Hat & Andria. Hat was trying to tell people that Andria snores. Andria was trying to stop her saying, “Don’t say it, no body will ever marry me!” 

We accidentally dressed the same as each other. 

Story share time. 

Andria lead our worship music this year since Pastor Jon Dunning decided to just hangout in Kansas City waiting for his wife to give birth. Man needs to get his priorities in order. Anyway Andria and the others did a fantastic job 

Here is all our musical helpers. Andria, Katie, Lindsey, Connor and Sam. 

Tony taught us Wednesday night on the transformation of Peter from before the death of Christ to Him after the resurrection of Christ. I also learned a lot about StarWars. 

Played some Deal or No Deal

Luke made out pretty well even though the “Banker” (Jim Baxter) was pretty rough on him. I think he won 75 pieces of candy in the end. 

Some of our lovely assistants

Our applause signal, you know, so people know when to. 

After the game we made Smores in the fire pit. 

Lots of focus on marshmallows here. 

Two Ba-Shams

Two Campbells

I like how someone’s head became a marshmallow 

Then we pretended Aaron was a celebrity and people got their photo with him. 

Wednesday morning at breakfast Pastor Tony found himself eating all alone. My theory is they saw he put ketchup on his eggs and just knew he must be insane.

Tuesday half the campers were on boat and dock in the morning while the other half played all sorts of crazy games with Jim Baxter and Steve Campbell on campus. Then in the afternoon the groups switched. iPhotos places photos in chronological order when you mix more than one set so these below are in that order, thus the mix of lake and campus activity.

More photos below.

A little pre-breakfast pong. 

This Sam loving on his cabin. 

Here is Sam’s cabin also being kind to him. 

The battle continued into the middle of a pong game and this time there were two Thomas’

Andria made her pancake a piece of art. 

Getting ready for first day on the lake. 

This was taken when I was on a boat, wish I knew more about what is going on here. Looks like it would be a strange story. 

These are water ballons. That’s an intern. 

So is that, he’s put on a few pounds here. 

This is our boat, goes plenty fast to throw people off of tubes. 

This is the first time either of them have ever been on a boat. So we took a photo to commemorate this. 

Sam tends to go faster than this, but we’re going easy for our first time boaters. 

That’s kinda the official symbol for everything is “ok.” We learned this from the raft. They thought it was odd that the symbol for “ok” required you to take both hands off the raft, seemed like that could cause everything to not be “ok.”I’d like to say this is Katie just relaxing, but it’s not. Let’s just say she was looking for the lever to flush when she got off our stairs. Remind me never to swim in the same pool as her.

Tim ate all alone as well. 

This boat dock floated past us, they were moving is somewhere. 

Sterling serving by cleaning up. 

Sam pretending to have only one leg. 

Old Spice, Matthew, ? can’t quite tell, and Taylor 

You’ll have to watch the video to see how this photo came to this point.

Tony tried to fry and egg. Tony failed. What do you think? Does he make it?

This is Connor and I taunting Laura to go faster, I don’t recommend doing that. 

I’m posting the photos this way to give you a better idea of what the week was like. Upon arrive every student is given this booklet (PDF) which is full of Teaching text for the evenings and devotions for the mornings.

We have a short orientation, get people settled in to their cabins and then each cabin spent some time getting to know each other. Check out the rest of this post to see what else went on Tuesday.

On the bus ride down we stopped at McDonalds for lunch. 

Once we arrived the K.C. students were so warn out from the bus ride we had to work to rehydrate them. You can see Connor being tired here. 

Orienting…

Tim blows up rafts for the next day. 

More hydrating. 

We did the Cardboard Box Boat competition again this year and the boats were much better. Each Cabin gets a pile of Cardboard and three rolls of duck tape. 

The older guys cabin spent much of their time dressing people up with the boxes.

These guys have a plan.

Nathan is executing the plan. 

So is Grant. 

This is Connor trying to explain why thy don’t have a boat yet. 

Matthew my become a duck tape engineer someday. 

This is Spicy’s little brother, Old Spice. 

Sterling tries to fly with his boxes. 

Here is Tim working while Tony just tries to survive. 

Remember that shape test you had to do in elementary school? Well Tim doesn’t. 

Cabin 2 hard at work. 

Cabin 1 ready for a fight? Or a dance off? Is this Westside Story? Did I just admit to knowing the plot of Westside story? 

It’s nothing beautiful to look at, but it is nearly indestructible. 

I had high hopes for this raft. 

My hopes were crushed. 

Maybe, lean to the right! No the other right! 

So close. 

So far so good. 

This thing is solid as a rock. 

The pilot is placed. 

It works! 

So two boats are still floating and we need to determine a winner, Boat Battle!

Third man in gets ejected and 5 minute major to the rest of you. (Hockey reference)

On the way back to the main part of camp we had a few need a ride in the truck. No one passed out, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried that is where they were headed. So we adjusted the evening schedule and made everyone drink tons of water. 107 is just too hot. 

Yes, Andria is on “make everyone drink water” duty. 

Every night we have a time to share funny or interesting stories from the day. 

Love this picture. That’s Seth’s sister smiling at him in the background. 

Aaron Baxter spoke to us on Tuesday Night, was his first time and he did a great job. 

We do game show games at some point each night, here are the assistants (Interns) 

This is Brookie giving someone the look, she was trying to figure out the answer to some strange questions. 

Then it was Nick’s Turn. 

Sam grew some facial hair for playing Campus Wide Sardines 

Then some interns (Aaron & Hat) delivered pie to the cabins.

That was the day one of Clearwater 2011.

Clearwater 2011

Clearwater 2011 Cost $150

$245 less than Youth Front West (High School), that’s not a typo.

Go to Clearwater Website for info or to sign up

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RiverRanch 2011

RiverRanch 2011 Cost $290

($85 less than youth front south (High School)

Go to RiverRanch Website for info or to sign up

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