The Longest Weekend

It was a really long weekend. Part of the reason was because the weekend actually started on Thursday. Another reason was because it was the earliest I've woken up in months, maybe years. No matter how you put it, it was looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong!

The weekend did indeed start on Thursday evening when the area's district Mennonite youth groups arrived at Rivercrest. Before they even came, several of us were working to make enough pizzas, and, despite a pizza cheese crisis, the evening was flawless, even though I had to leave shortly after we began serving so I could visit the Toastmaster's club meeting. Since I was leaving anyway, I had offered to mail out the winter camp media kits. After all, I was the only one that knew HyVee had a fully functioning post office and that it was open that late. (Ah, the joys of being an ex-post office contract unit worker!) And since I was going to HyVee, I was asked to buy one hundred and forty-four bottles of water for the camp. When I returned to camp and unloaded all the water in the kitchen, I discovered the group was playing games in the dining hall, and we'd have to wait until they were done so that we could set up all the tables and chairs for the next morning. We didn't get done until after 10, and since breakfast started at 7 the next day, we needed to be working by 5:30 am!

So I got up at 5:15, didn't change, and put on a hat to make it to the kitchen by 5:30, and I have the battle wounds to prove it! Sometime between making sausage and serving the meal, I got a nice, bubbly burn on my forearm. That's what happens when you haven't gotten enough sleep and you're working with hot stuff!

After we had the chance to eat, most of us couldn't even work on dishes because we had to pack nearly 140 bagged lunches! The group was going to Omaha to do service projects, so they needed food to-go. (That's what the water was for that I picked up the night before!) This brought me back to the days at Lake Bradley, when we made a kitchen assembly line and packed lunches for all of the kids' camps on their last day. I modified that assembly line to fit our kitchen and our ingredients, and it took an hour and a half to finish all that!

After we distributed the lunches, there was a time of peace, since everyone but us staff was away from camp. I decided to bring my computer over to the dining hall, and the next few hours were spent talking about family camp, signing off on Lyvvie's Awana sections, and other small tasks done to avoid my typical day-to-day office work. (Even though it was Friday, it already felt too much like the weekend, and of course I can't do office work on the weekend!) Somehow it ended with me "tutoring" the kids, which involved quizzing Lyvvie on matching the states to their capitols, and spending nearly two hours trying to get Owen to learn his spelling. (He really hated me during that time.) Eventually dinnertime came with dirty dishes to follow. It felt like bedtime after that, but since I live in the chapel building (where sound travels REALLY well), I got the joy of listening to the band practice until 11 pm.

We didn't need to use in-house staff to work in the kitchen on Saturday, but even when I don't have to work with the kitchen staff I still eat with them, and I help out with dishes afterwards whenever I can. That meant I didn't have to get up super early, so I rolled in just as they got done serving and were about to eat. We were running activities after lunch, but, strangely enough, most of the youth groups were excited to visit Omaha. Some were even excited to visit Fremont! (We always make jokes about calling our mall "the hall", but I guess when you come from rural South Dakota like many of these youth groups did, even a place like Fremont can be overwhelming!) So we ended up only running the zip line for about 1.5 hours, and even then the participants were few and far between. After I did something ridiculous (I attached the device to the zip line to make the zipping noise to get the attention of the guys on the other end, but once that thing got going, there was no stopping it... I ended up going with it for awhile until I got to the last point where I could safely let go, and of course the device got stuck in the middle of the line), we shut down early and helped to the kitchen. Several guys came in to work on activities that were last summer's staff, so things got almost to the degree of summer camp craziness. This resulted in us renaming Camp Rivercrest "The North Pole", and we gave each staff member and camp brat (AKA kids of staff members) a role like Santa, a reindeer, an elf (I am the Magical Elf!), or a wise man (if the wise men are so wise, then what are they doing at the North Pole?).

I had a dream that a pianist and a drummer were practicing in my room while I was trying to sleep. When I woke up on Sunday morning, I realized that it wasn't far from the truth- the band was practicing upstairs. Although this was the latest I'd slept in all weekend (8:45!), I was still exhausted. After breakfast, several of us worked to get the kitchen winter-ready, since we won't be having meal-eating groups for awhile. As we were doing this, I looked out the window and thought it would be a nice day for a Sunday drive. I've actually thought this for the past several Sundays, but the cost of gas combined with exhaustion from the weekend never allowed this to become a reality. Then I thought of Mikayla, who is always looking for some driving practice. I mentioned that I might like to take a Sunday drive, and she wanted to do it. We were talking about what to do. I wanted to go west or north, since those are middle-of-nowhere type of locations with a nice looking countryside, although I did cringe at how much a few hours driving would cost me in gas money.  Then Mikayla said she'd buy us both tickets if I let her go to a movie she wanted. I won't mention what movie that was, but I will say it is the final chapter to a series that many teen girls are crazy about. I had never seen any of the previous movies or read any of the books, but I knew she really wanted to see it, so I agreed. Our afternoon was spent first by stopping at Cedar Bluffs (which I've realized that, even though it is closer to camp than the city of Fremont is, I have never actually seen it in the daylight), and then we went over to Fremont to catch the movie. (It didn't make much sense, and I will definitely not become a fan!) After the movie, she took me through some suburban sections that I had never seen before. She then had to go to practice, so I drove myself back to camp. As I got out of the car, Alyssa came up to me with Fredenella in her arms.

(I don't know if I've mentioned the story of Fredenella on this blog yet, so here's the quick story. About a month ago, the Classens opened up the garage door and found a chicken inside. They have no idea how it got in there, and no one surrounding us claimed to be missing a chicken. They thought it was a rooster at first because of its shape. It was surprisingly tame, so it was brought to the chapel where all of us could see it, and it ate a bunch of cereal while there. It was actually just skinny because it was underfed, and it turned out to be an egg-laying hen! Unfortunately, the kids had already named it Fred, so they modified her name to be Fredenella. She's often found pecking around camp during the day.)

Anyway, Alyssa and I followed Fredenella around and talked with each other until sunset. Fredenella, being a very well trained chicken, walked home to her pen right as the sun was setting, and Alyssa soon followed. I was tired and didn't feel like doing much for the rest of the evening.

I often say that weekends are long and/or tiresome, but this one has them all beat! December will be an interesting change of pace, with no weekend groups at all!