Boy, did our kids have a blast at English Camp!

Outside of our three, there was one of the Czech Team, Alca's, sweet little baby boy at camp and one family from the Cherry Hills Church.  The Hartman family are planning to move to the Czech Republic next year and be on full time staff with JV.  Their kids were 8, 6, 5, & 2, the oldest a girl with three younger brothers (Caden just turned 7 last week and Hannah will be or is 9 soon!).  Our kids and their kids hit it off really well, like they had been friends for life!

The kids all loved the camp setting!  They loved our room, the main lodge, the games, the students, everything!  They also immediately found a home in the creek that ran along two sides of the camp.  During Free Time the kids walked in the creek the several hundred feet from the man made dam (which was also the designated smoker's corner) at the southeast side of the camp to the natural dam at the northwest side, back and forth, back and forth.  Closer to the natural dam there was a deeper pool and trees.  The kids would slide down while holding onto a tree and splash into the deeper water.  It was cold water but they absolutely loved every minute of it.  We finally had to limit the time all the kids played in the water because even though they had swimsuits they were jumping in constantly and we were running out of dry/clean clothes for the kids! AH! :)!

And in case you were wondering, little kids plus high schoolers can and did mix really well at English Camp in Czech, too!

During English Class in the morning two Czech high schoolers would watch the littiler kids, which would always include Miriam, Asher & Hayes and sometimes include Max and Caden.  It was always goofy but they all had a great time!  One day Miriam and Asher came running through the main lodge shouting over and over, "Cookies!  Cookies!" as a high schooler ran after them giggling.  After 5 minutes they came back running the other way shouting, "Cookies!  Cookies!" with cookies in hand and the high schooler still running giggling after them.  Whatever the goofiness, this time was a great way for the littlest kids to spend time with Czechs and for the Czechs to spend some one on one time with the cuties.

During the Sports Time the older little kids would join in with the teams, like Hannah and Zeke and their Sports Team, the Cougars!  Zeke was always right in there participating during Sports Time and it was great for him!  Max would sometimes join in and on Water Day he especially had a great time!  During the Evening Program our three would join the song and dance portion before going to bed.  At first the three were apprehensive about dancing with all the students but after they saw Aunt Leah, singing and dancing like a crazy woman on a chair at the front of the room, they got over their shyness.  Again, I have a video coming of this, one has Zeke running up front doing an amazing air guitar solo, it's great!

The Czech high school kids were great sports throughout the entire week with these 8 cuties!  They welcomed the kids into their games (except Viking Football, only Zeke was allowed in that one), pushed little baby Martin in his stroller, and played the Freezer Dart Game, even when the little kids were going a overboard playing the game.

Freezer Dart is this game where you say someone's name and when they look you in the eye you put your hand to your mouth and pretend to blow a freeze dart at them.  They then have to freeze until someone comes up to them and pulls the "dart" out of their neck.  However, while the person is frozen you can do something to them, tie their shoes together, put their hands in strange positions, etc.  In the above photo Majda froze Max and then proceeded to pick him up while he was frozen.

Even though our kids did make mistakes at camp and were often times being "kids," I easily had over two dozen students come up to me and comment on how well behaved our kids were, or how they obeyed their parents, how they weren't wild, or how they were so loved and loved us.  I can only imagine it was because our kids weren't like this little boy I saw from a German Language Camp nearby walking down the curb with his penis out of his shorts, peeing on the curb as he walked, while a little boy and girl walked on either side of him giggling.  Yeah, at least my kids didn't come up with that idea. HA! :)!

Overall, our family of 5 was greatly blessed during our time at English Camp!  It truly united us together as a family in a fresh and new way!  It was amazing to have our kids at camp laboring with us in this type of non-stop setting, but also encouraging to have them enjoy camp as much as we did.  The boys really understood why we (and JV) were there (Praise God! What an answered prayer!) and they prayed for the students, who were now their friends, every night.  It is awesome too that one of their favorite high school friends accepted Jesus at camp!  Whoo hoo!

In a heartbeat, I think we would all love to go back as a family and participate in another English Camp!  I would not hesitate about bringing our three with us either!  (Though I still contend at my age "I" need a week or two to recover before going to the next camp.)  :)!

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