Camp Buddy 2018

Camp was once again fabulous. Much smaller, only about 50 campers which made things a little less chaotic. 

Isabella did wonderful. I was a little worried the first night, she is our more timid and sensitive child and she knows it. But she and her roommate had a blast. 

When I asked her about her night she said they told each other stories and stayed up until past midnight. She also confessed she bought coke in the canteen. No problem, I am not here to regulate!

Canteen was the best it has been in years, nerd ropes, dr.pepper, spree, chocolate, pretzels, nutter butters, yum and yum.

I texted some with David, and Tobin wanted to see a pic of Sophia, so I interrupted her team time to grab a shot.


Seeing great friends was very refreshing for me. This is one of my favorite parts, hanging out with people that live all over SE Asia and ones who know the ins and outs of me. And watching them pour into these kids, our kids, with such intentionality was a blessing.

One of my bffs, and usually my running and vacation buddy. I helped her by buying the green shirt for her!

Highschoolers! I paired up with another lady to spend time with them in the word and late at night. Working with high-schoolers every year now continues to cultivate dependence on the Lord and show me how precious this age is!

'Underground' was another night time activity that everyone enjoyed. It involves finding 'real' groups, jail time, and Roman soldiers this time around.

I was team yellow, Sophia was Green, Isabella Blue. And still not one of our teams won! Red was strong throughout. Team time is a spread of ages coming together to encourage, get to know each other and do some really fun recreation time competitions. This year these involved amazingly difficult (wet shirt, inner tube, and scuba flippers while running) relays, human Foosball, uphill soapy slip-in-slide, and airplane crash survival.

The facilities have a great pool. I did life guard a few times.

Isabella and her roomie. This was dance night so they dressed up.

The dance is the Virginia Reel and a few other line dances which all take a bit of skill to learn.
This is one event I really love: we laugh at each other and dance and learn and laugh some more. Of course the 9 year olds are grossed out by the opposite sex at this point. But they all end up enjoying it in the end.

One of Sophia's roomies and long-time friends. I didn't get a picture of her other roommate. All three got along great and are good friends.

One of my team members! Go Team Yellow! 

Who we are ANCHORED in Who HE is....the theme.
A great week of unpacking this.

Last day pics!

There are actually a thousand plus pics I have not sifted through that the photographers took...for another day.

Another fun Highlight was the talent show. Sophia played the piano, while Isabella and a friend did some gymnastics feats like one-handed cartwheels and back walk overs. They did great! The counselors at the very end did a 3 minute 'Evolution of Dance through the ages' and it was hilarious. My friend and I danced the 90s! Since that is my era, it wasn't too hard :).

Each year at camp God teaches me new things in parenting and life. The first year it was the 'chill out and breathe deep' the long haul of parenting will be just fine. The second year it was the 'freak out', these kids need secure love, belonging and affection. This year??? A combo of all of that. I see a desperate need for these awesome, amazing teenagers to have real weekly in-your-face discipleship. And some of them asked for that. All week we talked about being Anchored in HIM and how it is a real daily relationship. But navigating what that looks like, how to cultivate those affections for God and his word is hard for adults, much less folks still figuring out their place in His Story.

The study leader and I also made ourselves vulnerable to these girls with our own weaknesses, and how we fight at times for joy in our Savior, and daily seek to know Him--sometimes even that is a battle of the soul. No one is immune or alone in it, we reminded. And in all the deep talk, we giggled. A lot. These girls made me belly laugh, and they took us in as 40-year-old somethings trying to relate and love them well. They were honest: 'No one says that anymore Aunt Lorraine', they were real, they were hilarious, and I can't wait to see what God will do in each of their lives.

We reminded them and ourselves that amid the struggles discussed, the anxiety of the unknown for our futures, cultivating trust and contentment in Christ and His deep love for them (and us) solves every problem. It does not remove the problem. But his power and love and life and death and resurrection and his advocating for us now does indeed solve it all and bring peace.

Newbie going to Camp!

Camp Buddy is something Sophia looks forward to every year, and Isabella has been anticipating for many years now. This was Sophia's third year. You have to be 9 years old or finished with third grade. Having heard about all the fun for two years now, Isabella was raring to go. I think she was most looking forward to the canteen (lots of good American candy and treats).

This camp is where a bunch of ex-pats living in SE Asia come together. These are the kids' friends that that they see once a year and connect with because they have a common lifestyle. At camp these connections become deeper as they room together, have obnoxious fun together, stay up way too late, compete together, and dig into the word together. 

The rainy season in our town has been incredible this year. almost non-stop rain, wreaking havoc on mountain areas and on the flight schedule. There were some days airplanes didn't land at all. Having booked our tickets awhile ago, I had a real conundrum, I knew we would be delayed, miss our connection and therefore miss almost 2 of the 4 days of camp. We worked hard with our travel agent to rearrange and finally ended up leaving 2 days earlier than scheduled (for a price of course). But it was worth it! And because our girls had worked hard at teaching English we knew it was in the budget. 

This was actually stressful and exciting all at the same time....

we packed light and didn't check a bag on the way out...

Look at those smooth travelers! Isabella wanted me to include that not one second after I took this picture her suitcase caught her shoe and she fell flat.... we all had a good belly laugh (after I made sure she was okay).

And of course, it was raining. At the airport in our town we sat, for nearly 6 hours. We could have gone home, but there were flights coming in, and using the leverage that we had an early international flight in the morning, I begged the attendants to try to get us on another flight. By about 9 pm, 45 minutes before our original flight arrived, we were put on another flight.

These girls were troopers, here was dinner, very yummy Ramen noodles, served on a convenient suitcase tabletop.

McDonalds late dinner and breakfast. Soccer themed for the world cup, their buns and hashbrowns looked like soccer balls.

We met up with and were waiting for some friends. The much promised Birthday Starbucks. Yes, this was Isabella's actual birthday. I promised decaf coffee!

After settling in our guest house, we took our friend's son with us to a mall to play while they had medical appointments. The mall was disappointing, but these kiddos made this kiddy play place work for them....they had so much fun, I had to peel them away!

We went back to the guest house to meet up with other great friends, some of whom we had not seen in three years We had a great reunion pizza party. The next day was camp!!!

Pre- Camp and Little Buddy

At camp each team has a different color. And team spirit gets lots of points. So we did a little pre-camp shopping for each or our team's colors. We found some cute green shirts for Sophia...

My Dr. Pepper yellow tattered shirt was interesting and I wore it proud. (And on day 1 the canteen actually had Dr. Pepper, the one time a year I get it).

I opted out of this blue shirt for Isabella. I found lots of inappropriate English and laughed through many shops.

In other events, Tobin's class had a bring-your-own food party. He loves this because people always bring sushi, his favorite food. Here he is helping himself to a local dessert drink, pao lu da. He took American pancakes, which his class loved.

While I was gone, camp 'little buddy' (for those who aren't old enough) commenced with bike rides to the noodle shop, sand play, and other fun weekend events.

During the week it was Tobin's job to read to Gabrielle, and she read to him too.
David found them like this, in a fort reading, when he came back from a run.

And though I left a menu and a plan, I told David to feel free to go off the reservation and ask our helper to make him local food he loves. Here is one dish. And what do you know, Tobin loved it too: sour and spicy vegetables.

Camp Buddy fun coming up....

Sophia and Isabella: Early Birthday Party!

These girls are growing up. With all of our travels we decided to do a joint birthday party on June 9th, quite early for both their bdays, but we really wanted them to have fun with their local friends. 

They each still had their own home made cake, and both wanted to go to the new water park. Each invited 2-3 friends to join and then three of our teammates kids also joined.  

Of course we started with 'morning-of party' chocolate chip pancakes. 

And their gifts from us. Ballet clothes and a ballet bar, to go right along with their gymnastics beam. They are in a real ballet class now so they have gotten into it. 

I have to say, these cakes were hilarious. Sophia wanted CC's chocolate chip pound cake (YUM).

And Isabella wanted vanilla cake. I used some Ikea crackers for the letters, because of the humidity my icing was melting fast, even the writing icing.

We sang separately. 

Chowed down on cake....

And piled in the car! We had fifteen total folks, including our family.

Sophia and Isabella had three local friends each...none of whom were strong swimmers. This meant David and I needed to be on our game. Though it was rainy, the kids had a blast. They had no idea that David and I were stressed most of the time trying to keep up, especially in the wave pool.

After we packed it up we went outside for local snacks and then drove everyone home. This was a 2:30-8:30 event.

Happy 9th Birthday Isabella!

Happy 11th Birthday Sophia!

These are precious little ladies that are growing in godliness and are a joy to parent. 

Less than a week later these two and I headed to Thailand for Camp Buddy. 

Swim Competitions and Children's Day

Next up was intramural swim competitions.
This year Isabella got to participate.

She was very nervous but did great. I was so glad she conquered her fear and competed.

The water is FREEZING. And while we barely had a hot season in May, the rains came steady and are now strong daily. This made it hard to jump in the water.

And the continual shock to me is that at these competitions kids are always being pulled from the water because they can't make it (25 m). This year it was particularly awful as I watched at least two kids really really struggle until they were pulled. The technique used for saving these kids is to use bamboo poles (like what I used to fish with at Grandma Pinnie's house), the teachers put it out for the struggling kid to grab. If he is really struggling another teacher will come alongside with one. One particular time the kid didn't make it 3 meters and he was in a middle lane. The teacher in charge nonchalantly offered the pole, he struggles to grab it, goes under many times, tries for the dividing ropes too, goes under. The other teacher comes with his pole. Finally the kid gets it. I am aghast at this scene and was about to jump in. Then I realized, I doubt the teachers can swim either. Scar-y!

And of course June 1st was children's day.
We tell our kids this holiday is redundant as every day is children's day :).

Looking cute and handsome, these two could be twins, and most people think they are. But then folks here say that about any two of our kids walking around. Two days ago a lady asked if Sophia and Isabella were twins....(Sophia is a head taller, just to name one of many dissimilarities).

Tobin earned his 'red scarf' this semester by doing well in school. 

Gabrielle celebrated at her kindergarten too with all kinds of fun games, and they could go buy things from others which was lots of fun for her!

Isabella got invited to a play date with her best friend, they went to the pool (spring-fed), and had a blast!!!

Happy Children's Day!!!