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. 

Laura and I were in the bus driver’s car (Sam’s Grandfather). We took Sam P. And Rudy P. with us on the way and then took their sisters with us on the way home. They fell asleep. 

Then we tapped the brakes and screamed to wake them up. They woke up screaming and shaking their hands. Good times, Good times.

We’ll that’s all the photos from the week that we took. Hope you enjoyed them. Praise God for The Word preached and for the fellowship that was had.

Thank you to everyone who volunteered to drive, come, lead, teach, etc.

Here is a link to the photo sets in Flickr. 

Thursday was our 8 mile canoe trip and the annual Spicy’s Karaoke Dance Party. For those who don’t know, Spicy is what we call Sabre one of the leaders from Heartland Community Church. It was a name mix up the first year that lead to us forever calling her Spicy. So enjoy the photos from the day.

Sarah & Sophie twice dressed the same during the week without planning on it. I told Laura that’s no big deal, Ubuntu and I both had green RiverRanch shirts on once. 

Daniel had a bad sun blister from Tuesday’s trip so our local FauxRNs, Joy & Laura devised this plan to keep “River Nasty” out of it. 

Yes that is SPF 50, yes she does put it on every 45 minutes and yes she didn’t burn like Emily who rejected her advice did. 

Mich rode in this storage bin to “save space” on the bus that morning. 

This trip everyone stood up and tried to be the last one standing.

That’s how you catch two turtles underwater on one breath. It is my only talent.

I caught this one without getting out of my Kayak, just paddled under a log he was on and snatched him off it before he knew I was there. 

Joy claims she can watch herself get new freckles. This was supposed to be the before picture followed by and after picture. We decided this idea was just too crazy and we didn’t want to burst her bubble. 

Jeremy was the steerer, but that didn’t go too well so Emily took over and all was smooth sailing from then on. 

Ubuntu hitching a ride. 

Jon jumping to test the depth. 

This was a handstand dismount or a flip, can’t remember, but this picture turned out pretty great. 

Other Jon doing a little more depth research. 

Sasse and Emily, girls can scream. 

Zesty and Spicy also testing out their lungs. 

Jon was two days late for the pirate game, but sure looks the part here. 

Supposed to look like the bus is about to hit me, didn’t quite work. 

This is a real picture, but looks like the worst photoshop job ever. 

This is Sam jumping out of the water. Actually he is trying to hang from bridge. 

Mich is protecting his melon with a melon. 

We tried out every rope swing we could fine.

After lunch Joy put sunscreen on everyone as they passed her to leave. 

Mich is one of about 4 people who did not do in the river what it looks like he is doing. We took a survey. 

Found this tire, still looking for the rest of the car. 

I may have pushed her off.

I may have pushed him off as well. 

I may have pushed everyone off. 

The ole handstand dismount. 

Sam has a weird habit of pouring every bottle he found on his head. 

Laura had the water camera tied to her arm the whole time so this is the only photo of her on the river. 

So the Gallon Challenge. One of my favorite social experiments. We tell them it cannot be done. Your stomach will reject that quantity of milk. People still insist they can do it, that they are the exception.

Sam B drank a bunch of milk every morning for the previous month or so as “training” Ubuntu last year thought he could pace himself in such a way that he would succeed.

Inevitably people will ask to do it again next year even though it seriously cannot be done. Makes no sense to me.

Dane & Sophie

Munchie

Sam

Right when we set off this man came over to us and asked what we were doing. I explained they were trying to drink a gallon of milk in a gallon without throwing up. This man says, “I can do it in 10 minutes” I asked if he was serious and he was so we gave him Sophie’s milk and she was spared throwing up later.

He is from Charleston, Missouri which is where my Dad is from. Small world. 

Tell me this is not Bob Albright? 

Well, he made it a pretty decent distance, but then stopped and started rubbing his belly saying, “My belly, gibberish, my belly” After a trip to the bathroom he ended up here resting. I tried to explain to him it couldn’t be done, he didn’t believe me. Now he believes me. 

This was the man’s nephew, really nice guy who insisted he could do the challenge in one drink or swig. He did drink about 1/3 of a gallon that way and then wanted more milk. 

To the contest continued. I’ll warn you they all throw up so yo might want to skip this section if you’d don’t want to see that. 

Sam here has three cups left. 

Ubuntu comes to help him with encouragement. Sam says he needs a trashcan and then it’s over.  

Meanwhile these girls are continuing their weekly Bible study. 

HERE IT COMES. WATCH OUT 

People skattered everywhere. 

Weird thing is people feel great immediately. Well people drinking milk do, everyone else feels more sick afterwards. 

It got on Spicy

Sam did something I had never seen before. After throwing up he had three cups of milk left and he went back and drank them to finish what he started. And of course threw up again. 

Next Dane threw up, Check out Nathan and Sophie in the background.

This is Phillip’s rock that is bigger than Sam’s rock. 

Munchie had a rough time. He felt sick, but couldn’t drink any more milk. 

Ubuntu did this last year and felt empathy for him. 

So he kindly gave him the him the Heimlich as we theorized, it worked.

In pictures this all seems crazier than it is. 

Chris and a turtle

Setting up Karaoke

Spicy’s Dance Party

Here is Ubuntu actually working during the Dance Party

No clue what is going on here.

Mich doing air guitar. 

This is another tradition that just wasn’t right without Roxie leading the way. Tim will do one dance a year, The Macarena 

Even Laura gets into the line dances. 

Tim of course can’t get away from the Spreadsheets for long. That’s 6 or 7. 

Nathan’s Photo Bomb

Yes this is Mich doing more air guitar. 

Sam rapped amazingly to lecrae, a Christian Rapper.

For some reason rap makes everyone do this with their hands. 

I may live to regret that photo. 

As will Joy that photo.

We end singing Tom Petty’s Free Falling. Chris put one of these fly catchers on Nathan’s head during the week. Nathan got him back on the very last note of the song. Only this one was used.

This picks up where the last post ended.

Follow link below.

Racing to April and back to finish relay. 

And then we shaved him. 

That’s Sam’s intern. 

Not gonna lie, that almost made me throw up. 

Morgan, morgan, morgan. You didn’t really think you would pull off staying clean did you? 

Sam’s unofficial contest to find the biggest rock in the river. 

Westminster Abbie, get it? Like Westminster Abbey.

2 v 2 Tourney

Fans

Teammates. 

All balls that go out of bounds belong to the girls team no matter who knocked it out. All calls go against guys, fairness will not be found in this game, funny to watch though. 

Pretty sure that forearm shove is against the rules of this game. 

Sasse was tough. I though she was going to get broke, but nothing stopped her. 

For awhile I was thinking this might be an upset. 

Jon Dunning and I (Brian) played just Chris in the first round. I would like to say we went easy on him, but we didn’t. I would also like to say we crushed him, but we didn’t. He beat us. 

I blame Jon for never learning to dunk. 

That’s legal, right? 

Seriously? You can’t push people’s heads down in the middle of the game? That makes no sense. 

Sam was the other one man team. 

He did sign a player after going down by 4 points though, very wise. 

Chris learned from Sam and signed Ben Jensen up. Ben comes to play. 

Laura kept taking pictures of Morgan during the game. Girls…

This was the ref. He used the can of shaving cream to mark lines on the ground when there were fouls. He also called advantage during the game which is more of soccer thing, but people went with it. 

Brothers Chris and Cam Earnshaw in the final. Our ref kept us up to date on the score. Earnshaw up 6 to 4. Not so helpful. 

Here are the 2011 2 v 2 Champs with their trophies. Congrats!

Really it should not be this hard to take a picture, but here are the 6 takes it took to get this to work.

Spicy and I jamming out on the 4 chords we know. 

I have no idea, but Jurassic park comes to mind. 

Smores!

Munchie Munching

Didn’t joy tell you that would burn you!

Here are these photos plus many more. Seriously we take too many photos. 

Wednesday we are not on the river, it’s a little slower at times and a little more hectic at other times. We have our anual relay which the New Hope Intens put on this year. We also have our anual shaving cream war and this year we put on the first ever two on two basketball tournament. Any two people can enter which makes for some interesting first round games.

There were so many photos for Wednesday that we’ve divided this into two post. Enjoy.

Click link below for more pictures.

We begin every day working through devotionals that have been written by Pastors (and previous student this year) in our presbytery. 

I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is not his t-shirt. 

It rained early on Wednesday which lead to some fun inside games.

It also lead to some awkward hugs. 

Banana Grams

More awkward hugs

Mario Kart 64. We bring the N64 every year in case it rains and it never rains. Finally we broke out the N64. 

Catch Phrase, Cam looks personally insulted by the phrase, “Smile!”

We introduced our Wichita friends to Birdman.

Some played in the rain anyway. There was no lightning at this time. Reminds me of rain in Houston, no threat of tornados or 100  mph wind. 

Wits & Wagers. Joe Bartu eventually owned the bank. 

We ate ice cream. 

Tim seems to think his fuel pump went out so he bought a new one and insisted he put it in all by himself because he is cheap frugal. 

Laura and I went to help him out because we know so much about cars. I took look under the thingy, looked good to me. 

We found this toilet, it doesn’t work very well. 

While Tim stressed on the phone Laura got under the hood to see what she could do to fix things.

There Tim is working. Three or four days later and about 100 trips to O’Reilly’s later his truck worked. But now the gas gauge is broke. I think this makes 5. 

They used every single letter. 

So proud. 

This is Bailey ball. Actually very fun. You must bounce the ball once on ground as it heads towards a chair with a cup on it. You should take turns and you get a point for knocking it off. 

Of course Bailey ball turned into Dane ball, where the cup was now on Dane’s head. Hope the rain stops soon. 

Rain stopped, time for relay race. This nasty thing has to be eaten by the whole team. It has fish of some sort on it. New Hope interns are grosser than our Intern, Rick a few years back. Rick went for messy, these two went for throw up. I’m impressed the students made it through this. 

April approves of these sandwiches. She actually took a bite just to see how they tasted. 

Clearly he is on team III…or team Canada. 

Jake, jake, jake…

This is the updated “Sophie Face” version 3.0 of course. 

Facial hair grows very odd in these parts. 

Jake let me do his make up. 

I gave him a uni-brow 

Perfect. 

Nice chin beard. 

Team 3!

First challenge, make a place to throw an egg without it breaking using toilet paper and shaving cream. 

Fly egg, fly!

Make a basket with a volleyball. 

Or a basketball. 

Find a tennis ball. After awhile Emily asked, “Ben, how deep did you bury them?” Ben responded, “I dunno, 4 inches or so.”

“I think two were never found, but sure was fun digging for them.

Now, don’t drop this stuff on you, it smell, hmm, well not good. 

Now swim to the lifeguard and back. 

Make a pyramid. Anyone go to cheerleading camp in 2004?

Here comes the champ. 

Now the War. 50+ Cans, go!

Lok at facial expressions on their faces as they eat this thing.

Ashley loves these sandwiches.

Loves them. 

What is Nathan doing? 

Click on link below for all the pictures/post.

We began every morning singing This Is The Day The Lord Has Made.

Chris came in late Monday and opted to butter and jelly his biscuit instead of gravy it. 

Jessica and Nicole go with cereal. 

That M&M bag makes me hungry

Here Nathan calls his shot, “Over the river, off that turtle, under Ray’s truck, off that beaver, hole in one.”

Scuba Sam prepares for the 5 mile canoe day. 

The theme Tuesday was pirates. We had fake tattoos and eye patches. We also handed out a tennis ball to every student. Whoever came back to camp with the most tennis balls gained during the day would be the Pirate King. 

The 1984 East Germany Gymnastics Team. 

Does my eye brow look right? 

This is Sam’s intern applying a tattoo to Jonathan. 

If Charlie Chaplain had been a pirate. 

All removable, no worries. 

Sam puts on tattoos like Beckham (my five year old), I do it this way too, the more fake ones the better.

On the bus to our drop off. 

We often play games on the bus, this one requires you to run from front to back and then return again without falling over as the bus goes around corners. Most people fail. Abbie made it, but fell at the last moment. 

Pirate Sam prepares. 

Not sure what is going on here. A completely unrelated bit of information is that there are no bathrooms along the river. 

Nice, they even have a flag. 

You can see Jake doesn’t paddle, he rides cause it’s more classy. 

Here you see the last ever raft on the 5 mile canoe ride. It took them at least three weeks to complete the river this day. Jon Bouma was nice enough to stay with them to make sure nothing attacked them.

They did manage to get nearly 20 tennis balls though. A few of them they gained from, and I quote, “We bought them from a River Hobo” Perhaps Jon could explain to us what that means or perhaps they mistook Jon for a “River Hobo” we may never know. 

This is Chad our speaker. 

Jon Dunning took a wrong turn and here is trying to figure out how to get back on course. Jon, down stream, always down stream. 

Last year the river took from Ubuntu his Cubs hat, not this year though. It helps when you don’t take your Kayak down giant rocks and cliffs. 

Taller, but shorter Sasse and Sara tipped about 45 seconds into the day with lunch on board, but never made that mistake again all day (as far as I know) and lunch turned out to be fine. 

Jon swears these were white water rapids. 

See they are all better, Chad helped them pick up the pieces and move on. Laura helped by taking pictures. It’s the river equivalent to slowing down for an auto accident.   

This bridge is not very high, but it starts to feel high once you get up there. We stopped and jumped off of it. After one parent saw the photo online she said, “Would my son jump off a bridge just because all his friends were? Yep, he would.” (or something like that, someone should invent simi-quotes for when you are know you are close, but not perfect.).

I believe this is a pirate raid being witnessed by the river paparazzi, aka Laura.  

Zesty and Gabby 

Don’t walk the plank! 

“So when the river splits, which way should we go?” Jon, one way is up stream, the other is down stream, that is not exactly a river splitting. 

Here they put Sophie to work pushing them in the shallow water, she pulled Mr. Ubuntu a few years back.

You can’t tell, but Emily and Annie are holding on to the other canoe so Sophie is pushing 2 canoes. 

A fast moving section. 

Me I think, going after a turtle. 

College helpers, Joy & April. 

Mauks. 

Stopping to do a rope swing. 

Notice the shirt in the background. They were catching minnows with it like a net.

Hitching a ride. 

Tim on the river. This is the only thing he drove this week that didn’t break down. That’s 4. 

The classic double. 

The whole tribe leaving the rope swing. 

There is the turtle raft slowly making it’s slow way down the slow river. 

The intern and Jonathan Baxter bracing for something. 

The Nepali boys had never seen a turtle so we gave them one. Looks like they dropped it. 

Going down the shoot. 

Right before we left for lunch. “Put your life jacket on!”

Chad relaxing. 

Morgan sits back and drinks water while Andria drags who through the shallow water. Chris looks up to no good, not sure what he is about to do though.

And that’s how you do it. Dive out of boat, open eyes and follow the fuzzy green moving thing running from me.

Squatters here found a nice beach setup abandoned. So they did what Squatters do, they moved in. 

Like I said not bathrooms on the river. 

Mich tuckered out. 

Here were the winners of the pirate contest. The pirate King and Captain. 

Ahh, much better. 

What guys read, what girls read. 

What happens when Ben reads Katie’s cheesy Christian romance novel. 

Golfing. 

Ice cream!

Best wiffle ball game ever. Trash can is the strike zone. If you pitch into the can it’s an automatic out. 

There is a new captain in town. Just don’t tell the old captain about this. 

This is first base after a nice hit. 

Joy is oddly really really really good at Wiffleball. 

The hotdog eating champ wins this hat. Looks good on Ubuntu though. Nice shirt. 

The hotdog contest this year came down to Ben (Wichita Ben), Sam Basham, and Munchie.

Here is Sam’s assistant who brings him hotdogs with the right amount of ketchup and mustard. 

Now I’m the captain. Just don’t tell the previous guys who named himself the captain. 

Still eating. 

Ben is starting to feel it. 

Helps to have an assistant. 

And we have a winner setting a new record with 5 hotdogs and one bite. Ben was in second with 5 hotdogs, Munchie was in third with 4 hotdogs.

That night Sam gave a speech thanking his 3rd grade and teacher, his mom and his assistant. 

First and second place. 

Cards outdoors, fun. 

Emily Chillaxing. 

Joy Chillaxing. 

Spicy was stung by a bee, so Katie went to get meat tenderizer, which of course she carries with her everywhere she goes. 

Spicy was not so touch during this procedure, but was healed all the same. 

Here are all the photos from Tuesday in our Flickr Set.

Monday morning we met at 7:30 AM to head off to the 5th Annual Heartland Presbytery Camp which we call RiverRanch. The Basham’s grandfather volunteered to be our driver this year and he did a great job.

See all the photos in the rest of this post, by clicking on the link below.

Here Older but shorter Sasse (Caroline) is saying goodbye as she heads out on her first RiverRanch.

Emily & Annie saying their goodbyes.

This is taken before they realize that it will be a three and a half hour drive with no air conditioning.

On our way down we took a detour to see some of the Tornado destruction in Joplin. It was mostly barren land now that clean up was underway.

Tim Rackley is a kinda a Jon Meyers number guy and likes to count people and things and dollars and cents and how many time you make fun of him. So far, 1.

The first day right after we settle into our rooms we take a one mile raft trip down the river. It’s about 4 to 6 people per raft and usually results in pirating of oars and the occasional whole raft after occupants have walked the plank. Here we are getting ready to go.

The bus we take over had seats against the wall so we tend to see how long people can stand without falling over. For the raft ride Laura, Tim and I were getting on to people telling them not to miss the bus. Of course we missed the bus and had to have a special ride with only ourselves and Mich.

Here is the  Pirate Ship raft. Sarah B., Emma H., Emily Buck (New Hope Intern), Nicola L. and Katie T.

Madeline and Rebecca

Dane, Peter, Trevor (All Christ Covenant PCA guys)

Sara, Caroline and Kaitlyn

Off we go.

Tim Rackley gets in a raft like this. It’s about 18 inches of water. That’s 2.

Moments after a failed attempt to push Tim out of the raft.

Witness a pirate attack.

Joe is actually in the middle of taking over a boat and still had time to pause to pose for this photo.

Here they are with the goods, it is more difficult for other boats to paddle when they have no paddles. River tends to move slower that way.

I believe that is Peter hitching a ride.

Home at last.

Here you can see just how deep it is when you dive off the swim dock. Good thing there is a no diving sign.

Mich all tuckered out.

Playing a little yard golf.

That’s going to take awhile, “Intern!, I could use a little help here!”

Jake came prepared….for snow. 

We required all 79 people to hug Tim before they could eat dinner. We quickly regretted this requirement. That’s 3. 

I don’t think he likes it.

Nerds doing shots of nerds (candy nerds). 

Photo bomb by a Stud Muffin. 

To learn people’s names we play a game where one team is on each side of a sheet. One person from each team gets close to the sheet and then the sheet is dropped. First person to say the name of the other person wins and gets a point. 

Notice those finger signs Spicy is putting up. It may be cheating. 

More possible cheating. 

More signs, could be more cheating. 

That’s creative.

No cheating here.

There was some accusations that this sheet was see through. I don’t see it from my angle. 

There is a sign, clearly April is involved in tipping off that team.

What’s this? Whose fingers are those? 

More signs. 

Lok, Sanjeet, Dilli

This is Ray, he’s tough to photograph, like Bigfoot. He is also a lot like Chuck Norris. He knows when you skip turtles like rocks and where everyone is. Not sure how he does it yet.

These pictures are of River Ranch from across the river looking back. 

Before evening worship begins.

This is our speaker, Chad. He did a great job.

This is a bunch of pictures, but really only a small amount of the 197 photos taken on Monday, you can see the rest in our Flickr set right here.

It’s our off the river, fun around camp day and it’s raining. Looks like rain will clear up around 2pm and we’ll be back on normal schedule. Here are some pictures from yesterday.

We made it here safely. The photo above is just before our time of worship together. We’ll try and put some photos, but our internet connection is so slow that we can’t post much. On Friday when we get home we’ll start uploading all the photos so look for that.

Anyway it’s been a great time so far. Today we had our 4 mile canoe ride and now is a sweet time of rest. Please continue to pray for our hearts as we are taught the transforming power of the gospel again tonight. I’ll try and put a few more photos below.