Tonight is also one of those nights, however, where I have so much to say that I don't know where to begin. My dear friends at Woodland West who have come to know me pretty well by now are incredulous, I'm sure, at my assertion. After all, I never have any shortage of stories to tell when I get together with my friends! I have obviously chosen my friends wisely, too, because they are so patient to put up with my stories that occasionally only go half-told because in the middle of one narrative, I will go off on a tangent and spin an entirely different yarn that has little to no relevance to the original account. Welcome to my world.
I told Randy recently, in the midst of a crisis of self-confidence, that I was afraid I talk too much. (Shocking, I know, that I could be that self-aware.) Randy tried to reassure me by asking a few questions:
"Do you 'hog' the conversation?"
"Do you allow the other person to speak, and do you listen while they are speaking?"
Truthfully, I believe I can answer "yes" to both of those questions, but I was still unconvinced.
"I just have all these stories I always seem to be telling!" I fretted. And Randy, anxious to move on to another conversation no doubt, said, "Well, do you tell anecdotes, short stories or novels?"
Hmmm, that's a poser.
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One of the reasons Randy and Tyler are at the movies tonight is that aside from the fact that Randy and I are trying to be intentional about spending time with each child individually (and may I just say what a challenge that is, but oh-so-rewarding!), Randy was also trying to make up for our having to say no to a youth event tonight. The teens went to the opening of The Dark Knight this evening and Randy and I decided that, for what I hope are obvious reasons, Tyler would decline to go on this particular outing. I don't think Tyler minded missing the movie so much, but he hates to miss any of the youth events. And that's a good thing, I think.
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And speaking of youth events (what a handy segue!), my friend Kelly left a comment asking me to give some of the details about Tyler's time at church camp. So here is my non-eyewitness account of his time in New Mexico:
*He left at 3:30 a.m. and didn't complain.
*He got a seat on the bus with his buddy Hunter. No complaints there.
*He claims that he nearly froze to death the first night, and yet he said it with a smile on his face. (Are you detecting a pattern?)
*It rained almost every day. Guess what? He didn't complain! (At least not to me, and frankly that's all that matters!)
*He participated in a couple of games that evidently ranked WAY high on his Fun-o-meter. One game was called the Hurricane that, as nearly as I can tell, consisted of sitting on a chair and watching someone race toward you with a bucket of water which he/she would douse you with, and then you took your turn being the douser (is that even a word??). Mmm-mmm, fun times. The other game was a "Flour War" which, I will admit, looked to be right up his alley. (I've seen video.) I'm not sure if the kids were supposed to be divided into two teams or not, but if they were then there was a boatload of Benedict Arnolds in their midst! And now that I write this I can't remember what the flour was in but the kids essentially raced around this big open field, pelting one another with flour balls. It looked pretty funny.
*He learned some new songs, some cool/some goofy. LOTS of jumping around and seemingly acting crazy. I'm not a big fan of the crazy unless it's called for and in this case, it was called for! Again, I got to see video of this and from the look on his face, he was having the time of his life. Score!
*He was put into a family with four "sisters" and seven "brothers." He thought that was pretty cool and evidently felt very close to his "mom" and "dad." He also said that there were several other kids that he hit it off with--in other words, he branched out!
I've said it before but I'll say it again: I never had any doubt that Tyler would absolutely LOVE church camp; after all, this was his fourth year to go. It was Mom who had all the angst about the trip! The kids arrived home around 12:30 a.m. Sunday morning and Randy again took pity on me and took over transportation duty. But you can bet I was waiting at the back door when he walked through it and we had quite the reunion! I sat up talking with him until about 2:00 a.m. (he did most of the talking, as you can imagine) and I just thrilled to hear him talk about the various aspects of camp and to watch his face morph into one enormous grin as he recounted one funny story after another.
These posters were displayed on Tyler's bed so that they would be the first things he would see when he walked in his room. I got an especially warm, fuzzy feeling when Tyler approached Peyton's poster (Love Joy Peace) and said, "Hey, where's the rest of the verse?" and then rattled off the rest of Galatians 5:22-23. He also quoted several other verses he had committed to memory over the past week. Camp might have been expensive, but it was money well spent!
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