What French Fries?

Last year I went to the Wyoming Alliance Kidz Kamp for the first time as a counselor. This year I felt God calling me back. The two experiences were quite different...let me show you the final paragraph of my blog post from last year:

Overall, it was totally worth every bit of sleep deprivation, whining, lack of privacy, etc. Am I glad to be home? You betcha. I cried when I got to wrap my arms around The Prairie Kid again. Would I do it again? You betcha. But I would do my best to recruit more adults to help because we were short on staff and that made it a much harder week. (emphasis added)

And recruit I did! I talked and touted Kidz Kamp all year with my fellow adults at church. And even with some high schoolers that I worked with. And God called many others to go and serve. YAY! It did make a HUGE difference and so did many other things...like a responsible counselor-in-training, and an amazing group of girls in my cabin, and the experience of having gone before and having a bag of tricks in my back pocket. I never could have imagined how far a bag of nail polish and nail stickers can go in changing the atmosphere in a girls' cabin! : )

So, in a nutshell, I HAD A BLAST! The only true reason I was ready to come home was so that I could get some decent sleep! I mean it, I wasn't even at a place that I wasn't really missing the rest of The Prairie Family yet. Of course I loved being with my two Prairie Men again but I could have stayed at camp for several more days. We were having so much fun that a group of us counselors would stay up late and hang out in the nurse's room. Just like I told the campers, I am not at liberty to discuss whether or not McDonald's was snuck into the dorms after lights out. I loved getting to know some of the people from my church the way we got to by getting into a caravan of SUV's with a bus full of camp-crazed kids and communing together for 5 days at the state fair grounds.

I hid behind a camera much of the week. I also put together slide shows every day which was a fun project. I don't have many pictures of me at camp since I got to hide behind the camera but there were a few. I am planning on downloading the bulk of the camp pictures at church tomorrow because they were all stored on the director's laptop. For now I will just post a few that I actually ended up in.

This is my incredible cabin. Tanya the Tremendous was my co-counselor (she's the beauty left of me) and Andra the Amazing was our counselor-in-training (she's the beauty with the little one leaning over into her lap). We shared our week with 10 great girls: 4 from Cody, 4 from Douglas, and 2 from Saratoga, Wyoming. These girls were awesome! Our cabin name was Shoshone River. (Shoshone means "stinky water" but I brought an air freshener for our room and it helped! Hee, hee)


This is a picture of us passing out chocolate cake to two of the girl's cabins during a rotation.


And here I am enjoying my favorite activity of the week: floating the North Platte River. Weird picture of me...must have been talking or laughing...oh well.

Here we are trying to get out of the river. My feet got planted in inches of black, thick mud and for a bit I wondered if my Teva's would make it out of the river with me!

Maybe I should have asked them if I could have kept that cool life jacket. What an accessory! Don't you think it is stylish?

And here we are stinking up the bus with our lovely river smell...and thanks to the crazy guys sitting in front of me (who were the worship leaders for the week) we got to sing fun songs like "She'll be coming out of the river when she comes" and "The wheels on the bus"...but my personal favorite was this verse in "Old MacDonald" graciously provided by one of the campers:
"Old MacDonald has a farm, eee-i-eee-i-o. And on his farm he has a lousy wife, eee-i-eee-i-o. With a nag, nag here, and a nag, nag there. Here a nag, there a nag, everywhere a nag, nag." Wasn't that a nice contribution the camper added to the camp experience? I am so touched.

The theme of camp this year was "Friends of God" and focused on the fact that God does desire a friendship with us. He is the Friend that sticks closer than a brother. He is the generous, unselfish, committed Friend that we can count on like no one else. He gave the ultimate sacrifice to be friends with us. I loved seeing this truth come alive this week. I loved hearing the kids talk about what God has already done in their lives and hearing them sing praises together. It is a wonderful sound to hear kid's voices together praising God.

I will probably have another post or two about this week in the near future. Meanwhile, I am hoping to get some rest and kick the cold I got from Rodeo Bible Camp that is still hanging on and filling my head head with, well, let's not go there!

The Family Pictures

Here are a few family pictures from the wedding. This first one is of The Prairie Daddy with his parents and siblings. All of the siblings were in town for the wedding!

And here is The Prairie Dad's oldest brother, his wife, and their daughter and her boyfriend

Here is The Prairie Dad's oldest sister with her two sons

Here is the whole clan that was at the wedding

After looking at this above picture I realized that the little guy in the front had an accident! Oops! He wasn't the only one, though, The Prairie Kid had one in his tux pants after the ceremony.

And The Prairie Kid with is twin cousins that are his age, hey, there's those Wranglers with the tux top! I think the little guy on the right is covering up the accident! : )

The next day we all celebrated some birthdays out at Mom and Dad's. One of our nephews is a great musician and he borrowed The Prairie Daddy's guitar and sang for us. It was fun!

His audience...
And the 3 year old mosh pit! I bet he's never had a preschool audience before!

The Wedding...Finally

Okay, finally, some time to post The Wedding. I will start where I left off in the Sneak Peak:

The Prairie Kid was "primping" in the nursery...

Here we are with my in-laws

Here is The Mother of the Groom pinning The Grandmother of the Groom's corsage

(this would be my sister-in-law and mother-in-law)

And The Ceremony finally got started. Here is the Best Man and the Maid of Honor

And the Groom and the Pastor

And now for...The Kids...

This picture shows the onset of sheer panic that the Flower Girl had

That panic proceeded quickly into a screaming, crying attempt to find her mom...which quickly led the Ring Bearer into confusion, panic, and an identical frenzy. Which led to the two moms rescuing them from the aisle and taking them back to their seats where the quietly calmed them down and allowed them to sit until the end. I did shove The Prairie Kid back out into the aisle after The Ceremony and had him walk out with the wedding party.

So, the kids made for great pictures before The Ceremony but that is about it! Oops!

Here is one of the only pictures I got of the ceremony due to the child that was in my lap

After The Ceremony, the Ring Bearer was shot. He hung out in the nursery by himself playing for awhile. Then I discovered that he had wet his pants...and he ended up in Wranglers with his tux top. I wish I had a picture of this transition, cause he looked so cute, but it didn't happen.

And now on to The Reception

Enjoying a good story from the Maid of Honor

Our Nephews

The Dance

Our nephew Will from Milwaukee teaching Jake how to Electric Slide

Cake Cutting

Off go the newlyweds!

Except they can't get in their car yet!

The Prairie Kid's final wedding attire

The 3 inches of snow we woke up to the day after the wedding!

I will post some family pics in another post. What a weekend!

RBC Day 2

I am currently trying to recover from RBC to regroup for next week's adventure. On Monday morning I head out for Kidz Kamp! Do you remember that I went last year? It was a great week but we were really short-staffed. I made it my mission this year to recruit more people from church but I wasn't the only one. Last year from our church the pastor in charge of kid's programs, his wife and I were the only ones that went. This year there are 11 of us going! YEE-HAW! I will have a co-counselor! YIPPEE! AND a counselor-in-training! WHOOP!

I didn't want you to miss out on some other awesome pics from RBC though. So, here are some from Day 2. I tried twice to upload some of the timed events to no avail. I don't have any from Day 3 but we did have a great jackpot rodeo for the kids that afternoon that was all captured on video.

World champion bull rider Matt Austin encourages this local little guy after a fall

Would hate to be in this predicament!

Uh, I think you're hand is caught...

I am so amazed at God's provision for safety at this camp after I look at all of these pictures. GREAT pictures Angie and Christie! Not one injury this week (other than some minor bruises and scrapes)!

Rodeo Bible Camp- Day 1

Today was the start of this year's rodeo bible camp at Cowboys With A Mission, the local ministry so many of my friends work at. My job is making sure video is being taken at each arena, collecting it and getting it set up to be played back for instructors and campers in the late afternoon. I also collect still photos to put together slide shows for the programs...which is fun when the computer doesn't crash on me (like it did today).

There were some amazing photos taken today. Most of these are of the rough stock riders. The mud makes for quite a scene! Thought you'd enjoy seeing these...I cannot imagine how these boys' mothers would feel when they saw their boys mid air like some of these! May The Prairie Kid never choose rough stock!

Sneak Peak

I hadn't told you, although many of you know, that The Prairie Kid was asked to the ring bearer in our nephew Jake's wedding. Well, the big day has come and gone! Due to the great amount of fun still left to be had with the remaining family in town, this is just a "sneak preview" into the day's events. Hope you enjoy!

Getting The Ring Bearer Ready

Oh how much fun it was!
Picture Time!

Little Cuties

The Wedding Party

Blurry but still cute

Here is the Best Man (yep, that's Jeremy, The Hero), The Ring Bearer, and The Groom (Jake, Jeremy's older brother)

Oh I love this one! He has his grandpa's ornery, toothy smile!

Seriously waiting

One last pic before the ceremony

The Prairie Family (yes, he is sticking his precious little ring bearing tongue out!)

There is much more to come...including the great story of how the kids did (or didn't do) in the ceremony! You'll have to check back tomorrow! : )

A Cute Story

I was ready to leave the children's area at church on Sunday when the husband of the preschool teacher said, "Kim has a funny story for you about The Prairie Kid." (Okay, he really didn't call my son The Prairie Kid.) I was thinking "uh-oh."

So I went in to her room and she said, "I was talking about the trinity and we were also talking about a triangle. All of the sudden The Prairie Kid whispered to her "Miss Kim, we don't say 'butt', we say 'bottom'."

She had said "but" in a sentence. : )

And, no, Kim did not call him The Prairie Kid either!

And did you know that there are new lyrics to the song "Row Your Boat?" On The Prairie it goes like this...

"Row, row, you're a boat." I didn't know I was a floating, wooden vessel. Hmph. Who knew.