I wish...

I wish i'd just grow up.....................

Flight of the Nebula!

Well this time i'm going to try and squeeze in Wed and Thurs together cos in case you havent noticed i tend to ramble on a fair bit........

So Wed was BEACH DAY!! and LASER ZONE DAY!!

After long bus ride listening to boys talk abt the scariest movies theyd seen and having taken a wrong turn to the heads instead of the beach (silly bus driver) i was glad to get off and smell the sea!

We dug HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE holes in the sand, played some fun games, buried some kids and turned them into siamese mermaids?!?!?! Don't ask! I managed to make a sand sculpture of a sea turtle which i thought was pretty good, even if i say so myself! :P

During lunch i also had the priviledge of sitting next to someone (who shall remain nameless) who we're fairly sure ate at least half a worm/grub which fell out of the tree above us and landed on their drinking straw........ EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW talk abt gross man!

After having scraped and brushed and wiped sand off ourselves we jumped on the bus again and headed up to Wallsend where we swarmed laser zone.
I hadnt been last yr seeing as i was sick but man how cool was it! I managed to get two goes curtesy of Dan (Thanks mate!) On my first go i was 'Elmo' i came third overall which i was pleased with but felt i could have done a better job.... dont ask me about point this time round cos i have no idea what my score was! I look at this go as a learning curve, when we started i turned left while everyone else turned right... took us a while to meet up somewhere down the bottom....

Feeling pumped going into the second round i was now 'Nebula' I now had some experience up my sleeve and managed to hit so many unsuspecting targets they were still wondering who had taken them down!! These are my tricks of the trade...... AS IF I"D TELL YOU!! So you guessed it i beat the pants off everyone and came first not only in the winning team but 1st overall... does that classify me as competitive?!?! i wont say how much i won by cos thats like bragging *-)
Too bad there was no running allowed, nor combat rolls etc.... would have made the game much more fun! Cant wait til i go again!

Later that night it was movie night for the kiddies and for once they got bored during the movie.... too bad they were the ones who chose the flick anyway, you cant always win!

Roll on Thursday....

The long awaited rockclimbing day had finally arrived!! Unfortunately i had not realised i had not done this for 8 yrs and so was very out of practise and realised just how unfit i was... diddums... BUT it didnt help having another kid make up his mind as to which holds he was going to stand on and hold onto so i was left hanging with my energy draining very quickly, so i decided to take a fly when i got way too tired to hold any longer... and fly i did! i swung and swung and swung until i managed to grab hold of something, anything by then i was stuffed and came back down. Never mind theres always next time! Thanks Joey for belaying!

Next was archery.... we had one round of practise then the balloons were put on. No sooner had they gone up when i hit both in a row! WOOHOO! Poor Fi, had to blow up more balloons and this time told me please reserve balloons for the kiddies... At least i won some sherbies! :D

That night was theme night, ancient civilisations. I didnt have a costume but dressed up two mummies with the toilet paper which kept falling off them in shreds... there was gladiator events.. does anyone remember that errr fab show from the 90's?? Then the usual chicken dance, macarena... need i say more we all had a ball!

Only problem with Thursday nite is that leaders have a tendency to stay up too late for our own good and Friday morning has us looking like zombies... that tho is where im ending this recount...

Adios till the next one! CHEERS!!

Leprechauns, goblins, dragons a basilisk and a giant!

Yes yes the last entry was a tad long but hmm i am known for lengthy descriptions... must be the teacher in me!

And so we continue on with the tale which brings back memories of a fun filled week making me want to do it all over again *sigh*

The next day Tuesday....
There was the usual morning stuff, slavery ;) , discussions, quiet time and singing.

Unfortunately the rain (which was much needed) had us changing plans for the day. We were initally going to do rockclimbing, abseiling and archery but the clouds kept squeezing themselves dry meaning activities were cancelled. Thankfully though we managed to have a jumping castle brought in.

I know im a leader and i might be a bit too old to whinge, but whinge i did when it came to the jumping castle! They said only kids can jump on it, leaders being 'big' could sit and walk on it only but NO jumping! How could they?!?! I mean don't they know those year 6 kids (even some yr 5's) were bigger than me?!?!?! How rude!
Dan rang up and saved the day (yay!!) i was within the safe weight zone and i was allowed to jump after all! And jump i did!! Despite all that though, it was no where near as fun as last yrs jumping castle. Sure there was the Hippos mouth which opened and closed with a person inside at regular intervals but thats all there was! Last yrs safari castle had things to run into and tackle with all your might, and the slide seemed a bit better too. And the other thing i noticed was when all the leaders hopped on we seemed to kind of sink down to the ground ???? either the castle wasnt strong enough or there were soem mighty heavy leaders which resulted in much great effort to pull ourselves out..... at least yvonne and i enjoyed bouncing around in there ourselves! :P

Other activities at the time were poison ball in the hall, that seemed a big hit with the kids but i wasnt there so i cant really say, and again flour was being used to make stress balls.... they were fine until stress balls started popping and the flour seemed to go everywhere.... poor Verity got yet more flour on herself.... but that was not the end of flour for her oh no it wasnt!

Because of the cancelled activities we swapped Thursdays events with Tuesdays and we ended up playing safari. Basically leaders are given a character or animal, depending on what the theme is at the time, and characters are worth certain points. If the kids could capture us they go points for their teams BUT we could also capture kids taking 'lives'. Each kid had 4 lives. Anyhoo characters are listed in the above heading and the basilisk happened top be a poisonous snake which walked around with a stocking filled with flour. Any flour landing SPLAT on an unsuspecting kid meant they were dead! And yes Veri was the person to play that role. she did a good job however managing to get kids 40 odd times. Thats saying something when there were only 39 kids there!!
I was a leprechaun and man can those kids argue. Surrounding ourselves with trees meant we were in a safe haven. Trees meant we were invincible!! We could capture kids at any time we wanted and it was even better if we holding onto a tree, it meant no one could get us and no one could save those we had captured! *evil laugh* The kids though kept tipping us and were like HELLO IM HOLDING ONTO A TREE!! Ahhh man some kids will never learn. True there may have been some breakdown in communication but in the end what we said went so teehee too bad to the kids.... At least at the end of the game the kids were asking to play more, a sure sign they enjoyed the game. Thankfully though that was the end of it, i didn't fancy running around for hours on end.

The night game seemed ok though i cant say too much about it. It was the usual find the leader game in the dark, in the cold with criptic clues. I chose to sit out as last year i got soooooooooooooooooo sick while hiding up a tree that i was literally out of it for the rest of the week and the next week and the next.... yeah i think you got the picture! I decided to play it safe!!

But yes Tuesday rolled on by without any mishaps and man i just wanna be there right now!!

Escape with the winter blues...

Just returned from yet another awesome week at winter escape! There was soooooo much that happened during the week that there might be a few postings so stay in tune for more to come.

The best thing by far, well ok i might be exaggerating a bit, was NOT getting sick like i did last year. That meant i was able to interact with the kids heaps and enjoy every activity we did together. The kids were great. I thought they were better behaved than last years group, some may think otherwise but hey we all have our own opinions.

Sunday and Monday were the longest days, most likely cos we crammed so much stuff in. By Tuesday i already felt like i had been there a week and was a little ready to be coming home. Still that could have just been me feeling very tired.

The sun was just going down when we pulled into the campsite where we'd be living for the week with 39 kids from yrs 4 to 6 and 12 brave leaders. Off the bus we jumped and played energetic games in the semi darkness.

No matter how many times you try and explain "Fresh" to kids some of them just dont get it. Hence there was lots of confusion throughout the game from a few.
Next game was giants wizards and elves. It was hilarious because while one group was supposed to be doing elves actions, half of them were doing something else... obviously there was a break down in communication. BUt at the same time the other team (my team) should have been doing wizards actions which we did but ran away from the other team even though we should have been chasing them...... ahhh it was mayhem i tell you!

To make matters worse the grass was slippery and the amount of slips and slides we did its a wonder no one sprained anything.

Oh well theyre mostly kids, like Dan says "they bounce!"

Monday was a crazy day so many different activities and to top it off it started to rain in the early avo so kids were in and out while leaders were deciding whether or not some activities could still go ahead.

Before all of that happened though there was some serious stuff going on. Our theme for the week was looking at slavery and ultimately discussing what it means to be a slave of sin and a slave of God. A challenging topic for some kids but some benefitted from the learning.

We had divided the kids into slave groups which were then given a master, as in one of the leaders. Each kid had a tag which identified the house they belonged to. For example a kid may have belonged to the house of Master Iasabrain, Master Filixstuff, Master Yvearite, Master Ohno, Master Robo or Master Markenfly. And if ive left anyone out excuse my mental block.

Each master was to demand their slaves do certain activities in which the slaves could earn 'money'. This money was called 'Evils' and with their evils slaves could then slowly buy back their freedom over the week or spend it at little shops. These Shops ranged from ping-pong in a bucket where they could win prizes or lolly tokens, magnetic darts, hair wrapping, tattoos and stickers, nail art, nintendo and lastly pegging balls at stacked cups, again able to win lolly tokens in exchange for lollies at avo tea. The kids had a blast and it was even amusing watching the boys get their nails done and their hair wrapped! Don't worry we havent scarred them for life, it was all part of the game! :P

Then of course there was the bible discussions and talks and singing. KIds got so into the singing it was fantastic!!

In the avo kids rotated in groups playing beach ball soccer... hmm that actually didnt last too long as we popped the ball by kicking too hard. A second beach ball wasnt much better either, in the end we just played normal soccer. There was also the chocolate game, nintendo, find the snake in the flour game... ok if you like to be covered in flour. See you had to find the snake in the flour using only your mouth. And yes you guessed it flour went everywhere!! In teh hair, in the eyes, mouth, even down some kiddies shirts. Porr Verity though, i dont think she went home with an item of clothing that wasnt covered in flour!
And the game i was manning was find the lolly in the baked beans. I had never done this before so wasnt sure how it would go. Basically there was a bucket two thirds filled with baked beans and a few lollies tossed in and stirred well. Next kids had to battle it out to fish the lolly out using nothing else but one of their foot! It was extremely messy to say the least. It ended up looking a little like vomit at some stage :P

The night was by far the best activity we did though. While the kids were locked outside of the hall the leaders ran around inside setting up chairs creating the ultimate maze. I was the leader at the end and if they managed to avoid being spotted by leaders they were rewarded with a lolly. THe catch was they needed to know the password!

Off flicked the lights and the kids came in, crawling on their hands and knees they tried mercilessly to fight their way through the maze trying in vain to avoid being spotted by nasty leaders with torches going on and off at a constant rate. We weren't about to make the game easy!
There were so many Kodak moments when after an hour kids finally managed to find their way to me and i asked the question "What's the password?" I was met with a blank stare and a "what?!?! there's a password????" Priceless! Extremely priceless!! I then had to give a clue which would lead them to another leader who when asked would give them the password and THEN they could come back and find me. Oh did i also forget to mention they had to start at the beginning again after having found me?!?! TEEHEE! Evil leaders we are!
Despite the game lasting a while the kids really really enjoyed it so much so that they even asked if we could play it again! IT sure was a real encouragement to us leaders at the start of the week! We were on a role, at least it seemed that way, and the week could only have gotten better!!

Anyways that just about covers the first day, stay in tuned for the rest of the week!