Week 6 Camp Report

This week the monkeys have been at Rhodes for Soccer Camp. Neither of them has really ever played soccer, but I did for oh, fifteen years, so I wanted them to give it a fair shake.

For what we spent on equipment and apparel, I probably could have sent a third camper, but I have to say the sight of them (especially my Jiro) in shin guards and cleats was worth the money alone.



In the afternoon they got to go swimming at the Rhodes pool, which was awesome, but I felt bad for the amount of stuff they had to haul around each day. Inside their (taekwondo) bags they had: a soccer ball, a lunch bag, a bag full of swim stuff, pool shoes, indoor shoes and/or cleats, and a giant water bottle. Their bags were heavy! Luckily once inside the gym they didn't have to do much hauling.

We also forgot sunscreen on Monday, and only partially got the right areas on Tuesday, so they are way tanner (and Satchel is slightly burnt) than in the photo above.

They've been pretty quiet about what they've been learning, but it is clear that they are having fun. They have made even more new friends and are also getting to know other kids that they met at other camps over the summer who just happen to be doing soccer camp too. Satchel was most thrilled to find his best buddy from Lego Camp at the pool in the afternoons.

The funniest part of this camp was that I totally forgot it ended today. Oops! So tomorrow the boys will attend a special one day session of Camp Daddy.

Next week is our final week of camp--Comic Book and Reading Camp. If you really want to hear even more about our summer camp action, check out my column today. (Comments were accidentally disabled this morning so my biggest fans--Pookie and Bogey--didn't get to weigh in at 5am with their witty comments. I feel cheated.)

Satchel's Parents

Satchel's parents seem sad. I think it's because his dad looks like Count Chocula and his mom has an ice cream cone on her head.

Jiro's Parents

As drawn by Jiro on the paper covering our table at Tsunami last week...





Warren was a little crabby that night.

My (Little) Rock Stars

Well, the showcase was every bit as fabulous as I thought it would be. Satchel and Jiro (and Warren) seemed to be having the time of their lives. Chip was there taking pictures and I just love how these turned out.

Satchel was all smiles. He loved his band and giggled at all of the funny touches they added in like a mid song rap, a surprise Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at the end, and so on. Before camp ever started he asked me if there would be a showcase and when I said yes, he said, "I'm not going." However, by Wednesday he couldn't wait for the showcase and said it was the best part of camp!



Warren, who was one of the band managers, got to play along. He said it was the first time he ever played to an audience and he totally loved it.



Jiro, who was so excited leading up to the performance, had worn himself out by the time his band played last. Despite being subdued, he was completely adorable.



I'm so proud. And so happy that everyone had such a good time. I figured they would all either love it or hate it. Thankfully they loved it. Can you tell how proud I am?



My friend, Allen, got this shot of Jiro and his band hanging out waiting their turn. It makes me smile. They look like real little rock stars.



This week is Soccer Camp. Stay tuned!

Week 5 Camp Report

I'm thrilled to say that Rock-n-Romp Camp is exceeding my expectations. The kids are really having a great time and we are so excited about tonight's performances! The 40+ campers have broken into 8 bands and they have been practicing a song all week that they will perform tonight at 7pm. Three of the bands have joined forces with local musicians. The others have either opted to play solo or with their band managers as back up.

Here are the bands that Satchel and Jiro are in to give you a taste of what's coming tonight. Did I mention how excited I am??

The Ghost Hunters
Magnus - Lead Vocals
Jiro - Guitar
Santiago - Guitar
Oliver - Drums
Enrique - Drums
Bobby Matthews- Band Manager
Andrew Maloney- Band Manager



Bio: Enrique and Jiro bumped into each other one particularly humid July night in the basement of a supposedly haunted house in the middle of a secluded Brazilian rainforest. Jiro, with the aid of his trusty infa-red ghost searching goggles, spotted what appeared to be a unicorn. The mythical creature turned out to be Magnus and Oliver in disguise as a unicorn. “Dude, why are you dressed like unicorns?” asked Enrique. “Because, there’s a zombie outside!” gasped Oliver. “And everyone knows that zombies are afraid of unicorns,” added Oliver. “Guys, that’s not zombie,” laughed Enrique, “that’s Santiago, my little brother, and he’s just really hungry!” The boys all laughed and laughed--and THEN they formed this band.

Toyger
Roman - Bass
Satchel - Keyboards
Kade - Keyboards
Davis - Keyboards
Greydon - Keyboards
Terrence Bishop - Band Manager, Guitar, Vocals
Warren Oster - Band Manager, Guitar



Bio: A toyger is a genetically engineered breed of cat that has genes derived from several different types of house cats and a tiger. They’re like small tigers and they’re aggressive killers. Like the animal, the band is a pack of aggressive furry killers. Kade, the drummer, is from Uranus. Roman is the first human to play bass guitar and football on the moon. Davis was raised by monkeys and plays the piano with a wild flair. Satchel, on the keyboards, emerged from the bean bag in his room. Greydon plays keyboards. The Toygers like rock-n-roll, peanut butter, and animal flesh.

Week 4 Camp Report

This week the boys went to Shelby Farms for the Woodland Discovery Challenge. For me, the best part of the camp was that there was a shuttle from the Urban Farms Market on Tillman to and from the park each day. Instead of doing an hour round trip commute, I only had to do five minutes there and five minutes back.

The best part for the monkeys was getting to play outside all day.



Equipped with knapsacks, baseball hats, and water bottles they managed to stay cool. In addition to playing at the playground, they explored the Wolf River along the Greenline and they also visited Urban Farms and the Old Forest. There was a healthy lunch provided each day by Cheffies, and they even learned how to read food labels. Satchel actually asked me one day if I knew that high fructose corn syrup was bad for me.

The camp is actually two weeks long, but we only signed up for one since next week is the first ever Rock-n-Romp Camp! Warren and I have pretty much been in "get everything ready for RnR Camp" mode since we returned from vacation. On Friday we had some friends come over and help us tie dye t-shirts for the campers and make name badges for everyone.




Today we went over to the music building to get all of the rooms set up for the music classes tomorrow. I hope Jiro is as loud and proud at the showcase on Friday as he was today!



The showcase is open to the public, so if you want to come see what the kids learned all week, come on out. It's in the Lynx Lair at Rhodes from 7:00-8:30pm. It's $5 per person and beverages will be available for purchase.

Between the Lines

Ok this is the final vacation related post. I just wanted to share a few shots that didn't make their way into the official recaps.

Here Satchel and Jiro sulk while simultaneously eating hard boiled eggs. We were on Mt. Tom and Jiro had just attacked Satchel out of nowhere. Jiro (and sometimes Miles too) took great joy in messing with Satchel. He did his best to stay cool, but as the days wore on, his fuse got shorter and shorter.



Satch often escaped to our room to get some alone time. He needed to not be picked on and he needed to study You Tube videos of his favorite video game so that when he returned to the land of XBox he could dominate. Several times he told me that he was "XBox sick."



The kids found no shortage of things to fight over, but there were also times that they happily--and quietly--played together. Miles and Tasha are big fans of hanging out in their undies, and so Jiro naturally followed along.



And the boys also had some bonding of their own. Miles isn't really into games yet, but I have a feeling it's just a matter of time now that he's been corrupted by the monkeys. (Please note how they are all dressed the same!)



Tasha absolutely loves Satchel in a way that she does not love the rest of us. Our first few days there she could be heard saying, "Where's Satchel? I want to wrap around him." We all thought it was cute, especially when she started calling him Satchely. He probably didn't think it was as cute as the rest of us, but he tried to be nice about it.



Tasha and Jiro also had a few moments of bonding. They were both big fans of Vanessa's homemade granola and could often be found enjoying a late night snack together.



And there were even some cute Tasha and Warren moments. (Hey, maybe it's just me that she doesn't like??)



Despite the bickering and minor disputes, I think it was really great for us all to get to spend so much time together.

Fall Creek Falls

The last leg of our cross country tour was in Fall Creek Falls State Park just outside of Nashville. I'd been wanting to visit for awhile, so it worked out perfectly. We arrived in the evening and did a little driving around before setting up our camp. We were pretty unprepared food wise, but thankfully FCF is massive and includes a store, restaurant, and snack bar. We opted to go to the store and cooked up a fabulous meal of Ramen, beef jerky, and macaroni & cheese. (We'd had a pretty hearty lunch in Knoxville.)

The most exciting part of our evening was seeing deer at every turn. They were huge and they were everywhere.

In the morning, the monkeys were very anxious to hit the road and get home to their XBox, but we managed to get them focused on enjoying our last day of vacation. They suited up, had a little breakfast, helped us break down the camp, and then we went to check out the sites.

Our first stop was the Gorge Hole, also known as the George Hole, due to a typo or whatever you call it when someone carves extra letters into a wooden sign.

Although this was pretty cool. we knew that there had to be more. Oh, and we were so right. Check out Cane Creek Falls! It had a built in slide.

Warren and I were really jealous that we didn't put on our bathing suits. We waffled several times, and almost put them on, but decided against it since we still had a long drive ahead. But man, we are going back and next time we will be ready!

We couldn't leave without actually seeing Fall Creek Falls. We started hiking there, but once we realized it was 2 miles and we had no snacks or water, we turned back and drove over instead. We were simply stunned when we saw how big the falls were--256 feet!

You can totally hike down to the bottom and swim there too. Did I mention that we are definitely going back? I've almost convinced warren to rent one of these babies for a week.

He actually said FCF reminded him of California. That's just about the biggest compliment he's got. (I guess reminding him of Alaska would be the pinnacle.)

Unfortunately, I've pretty much blown my vacation time for the year, but I might be able to squeak out a few more days.

It was the perfect ending to a near perfect vacation. We had some serious quality family time, got to see some really good friends, and saw amazing new things everywhere we went. It doesn't get any better than that.

Virginia

My best friend from childhood, Hope, lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. I visited her there several times during college, but hadn't been back since just after I returned from the Peace Corps. (We did visit her when she lived in Colorado and thankfully she comes to Memphis at least once a year!) We had to prepare the monkeys for the fact that there would be no wifi, video games or other kids on this leg of our trip. However, Warren did get them pretty jazzed about meeting a real live "bachelorette."

We arrived in the evening and were immediately handed beers. (Warren and I, that is.)

The kids were given Sunny D and exercise balls to play with.

She even gave them ice cream!

It was awesome. The monkeys got their ya-yas out while we chatted and drank beer. After an hour or so we ventured into town for some pizza at the Cellar. The monkeys declared it the best pizza ever, even better than the Trolley Stop (blasphemy!). I think they were just starved, although it was good.

Back at the house we all gathered in our jammies and watched Stand By Me. I tried to explain to the kids how I was supposed to marry River Phoenix, but they didn't get it.

In the morning, Hope got us all going with some music, coffee, chocolate milk, and Greek yogurt. She had a full day of activities planned for us, so we wasted no time. First up, picking blueberries!

Next we went to nearby Mountain Lake, where they filmed Dirty Dancing! I carried a watermelon!

Hope and Warren didn't believe me, but I did actually join the Peace Corps because of Baby. It's true. I saw Dirty Dancing five times in the theater!

Mountain Lake has definitely passed it's prime, mostly due to the fact that the lake on the property dried up. It was pretty dead except for a few European visitors. There are still cabins and hotel rooms for rent, but you can pay $5 and enjoy the grounds and the restaurant. We had lunch right where the Housemans had lunch, which was exciting. Unfortunately the food was awful. No matter, the grounds were spectacular.

The kids loved the life sized chess and checkers sets.

I loved the Dirty Dancing tour, which now includes a Patrick Swayze memorial rock.

Somehow we peeled ourselves away and headed off to the nearby Cascades for a hike up to an awesome waterfall. Warren and I were really impressed with the trails. They were very well planned and maintained.

The two mile hike totally paid off. Look at that waterfall! The water was freezing, but we all swam and soaked up as much of the awesome as we could.

A short cloudburst sent most everyone else packing and we had it all to ourselves for about half an hour which pretty much ruled. After awhile, we headed back down the mountain on the less challenging trail since the kids were just about zonked.

We went to the house to put on dry clothes and have a beer, then headed out to dinner at Gillie's. (I asked Hope to take us to a hippie restaurant.) On the way we noticed that the Cave of Forgotten Dreams was playing at the Lyric, a one screen theater next door, and made a split second decision to go see it after dinner. It was really, really good. And then really, really bad. It was both awe inspiring and guffaw inducing.

The movie did us all in and we went home to crash. Hope woke us up with the smell of bacon and soon Warren was making everyone blueberry pancakes. We ate out in the yard in shifts between showers.

Before leaving town, we went to visit one of Hope's friends and see her amazing garden. (Hope is a plant nerd at Virginia Tech who gardens on the side.) It was huge and had several different "rooms." Satchel said it was "epic" and way better than the Dixon!

Then we had to go check out the nearby skatepark, which was completely empty. Thankfully our pad & helmetless driver did not injure himself.

Shockingly neither did the padless & helmetless monkeys.

(They are so excited about having a skatepark in Memphis. They'll be [padded] regulars, I'm sure.)

By now it was approaching noon and we had a six hour drive ahead of us to Fall Creek Falls, so we had to say another round of goodbyes. It was SO nice to have Hope all to ourselves for 40 hours! Bachelorettes rule!