the party's on, the spirit's up

This past weekend was a great weekend. Why? The Winter Retreat. (or Fall Retreat, since it's not really winter yet) Anyway, about 50 children came to camp this weekend for a jam-packed weekend of summertime fun, just in weather about 60 degrees colder than what we experience in the summer. I love these retreats- I love to see the campers who return and I love to see staff who travel (some of them hundreds of miles) to volunteer for the weekend.

This weekend we played games, ate food, made s'mores (in the oven), watched a christmas movie, ate some more, went ice skating in the snow, heard the gospel, laughed a lot- you get the idea. As for the organized games this weekend, someone thought it would be a good idea to put Ben and I in charge. We are not funny and we are not hip. But we gave it our all. If you've ever been to camp you know that games, these days, include a theme and a set of "game-masters" whose job it is to run and hype up the games while wearing some ridiculous costume. Hence why not being funny is a challenge.

When Ben and I were given this task we knew one of the first things to do was to pick a theme and a set of characters. Being a middle school teacher, Ben polled his class to see what they are into/what they find to be entertaining right now. The popular vote was Twilight and Degrassi. I don't have to explain why Ben and I weren't dressing up as a set of star-crossed vampire lovers, and I don't even know what that second thing is. Then my talented and slightly-more-funny-than-me husband said Rock Band is pretty big right now... and do you know what version of Rock Band came out just months ago? The Beatles. I can do Beatles...

There was the tiny insignificant detail that Ben knew little to nothing about The Beatles other than that there were four and they were kind of a big deal. On Friday night Ben and I had a little crash course- I will always love and respect The Beatles, but when I was in middle school I was relatively obsessed. I blame that all on my annoying shadow-like personality when it came to my relationship with this girl. So I pulled out my 12 Beatles albums and together Ben and I got in the spirit (I'll admit, it rekindled my love for them...)

So, our theme for the weekend was The Beatles. We aptly named the 4 "teams" that the kids would be a part of: I Want to Hold Your Hand, Octopus' Garden (because I think Ringo is grossly overlooked as a Beatle), Ticket to Ride, and (of course!) Eleanor Rigby.

Ben dressed up as John, Paul & Ringo (sorry George, there were only 3 games) and I just picked one girl to pose as for the weekend. That's right, Yoko Ono. It wasn't too tough- I just wore black clothing and walked around saying ridiculous things like "We are all butterflies, we are just inhibited by hatred"... and "Give Peace a Chance". Paul and Ringo kept calling me Wacko, and Loco instead of Yoko, and a few Beatles-saavy campers yelled at me for breaking up the band. One kid asked if we were Sonny and Cher... but all in all, it was a lot of fun.

You have to excuse the zero-budget camp prop closet clothes-- but, here we are!