Celebration
Last night’s carnival was shockingly great; a game changer; a high water mark; a new standard for this (already great) program. It was a blowout celebration for camper and counselor alike, everything that we hoped it would be. The kind of carnival that is certain to be an epic memory of “over the top” camp fun.
This is my list of the things that combined to make it perfect:
- No Picnic… instead we simply let the girls wander. Food was eaten as they liked… getting as much “real” food as they want (we limited junk food consumption per person). It was so much better than the traditional way of starting the night with a bbq picnic (which was good, but not this good) and led to no long lines (we served the food all night long in booths set up in a food court).
- Wood Fired Pizza by the slice… we cooked 160 pizza’s, home made with the finest ingredients. Imagine getting a big pizza slice hot out of the oven. We finish each pizza with good Parmesian cheese, fresh basil, and a drizzle of olive oil. Our new mobile pizza oven made this possible and it worked better than we even hoped.
- French Fries… nothing is better than hot french fries, we served them in cute paper bowles piping hot. We even had roaming french fry counselors (taking bowls of fries to the girls in other lines).
- Funnel Cake… continued to be the favorite food item.
- Grilled cheese… getting a hot grilled cheese right off the griddle, then getting some fresh BBQ (served in cute bowls with slaw and corn bread)… put the bbq on the grilled chese sandwich… YUM!
- The weather was perfect (it rained briefly at the beginning of the carnival, providing a lovely rainbow.
- The timing was as good as it gets (we finished at 8:20, giving lots of time for showers afterwards).
- The rides were awesome (three new inflatable rides, each one a big hit).,
Spirits were high throughout the night. It was a GREAT occasion of celebration and the girls took full advantage of it!
So today we begin the one week countdown. One week from today will be Banquet Day, a fact that catches everyone off guard. That means each class now has a laser focus on finishing projects and passing levels. Each night will celebrate bigger and bigger EP’s, each one requiring a lot of preparation and representing a lot of talent. Camp is going great and we are loving every minute!
We finished our rafting trips yesterday, with lots of good reports coming from the girls. For the first time I know of we had a bus driver seek out Ellen Anne after returning the campers at the end of the day to thank us for the campers. Apparently it was a long ride home (traffic on I-40, the cookies ran out, the video wasn’t working right) but the girls were so polite and nice about everything (they shared cookies, sang songs, picked up their trash, and almost every camper thanked the driver when leaving the bus). He said it was the best group he had ever driven and asked us to request him as a driver for any future trips. Pretty impressive!
Tonight we will celebrate the birthday girls of camp… any camper who had or will have her birthday at camp get dressed up in their finest camp wear and take a seat at the head table with Dr. Margaret and me. The Head Staff serve us and we end the meal with a HUGE birthday cake. After dinner the birthday girls continue their VIP evening as the guests of honor at our nicest EP of the session… the Camper Talent Show. It will be a great show (we have a very talented camp) and a memorable evening.
Thank you for keeping up with things at camp. We are grateful for your support and appreciate your love!