Pokey Totem spent the day “causing mischief” around camp. This evening, they traveled around camp, being super silly. They “interrogated” the Directors of Camp Wawayanda looking for the secret message. That message was that they were having an ice cream party! During their party, they showed off their best mischievous faces.
This is an example of the small moments at camp that sometimes mean the most to our campers. Here we have a camper from Sunburst, one of our oldest female villages, and one from Pokey Totem, our youngest village. They formed a bond during an activity with the two villages and spent the whole period walking around chatting with each other.
Gotta love Wawayanda Hoopla. Everyday after lunch every village stays together in the dining hall to scream and shout their village cheers. Although occasionally competitive, we end every hoopla chanting the famous Wawayanda cheer–ask your camper to sing their favorite cheer to you![Gallery not found]
Firstly we would like to apologize for the lack of blogging yesterday… We had such a busy day with the girls, there was no time!
So to fill you in… Sunday night’s barn dance was a huge hit with all the campers and the staff too! We learned all kinds of new dances and routines as well as the concluding round of our stick pony rodeo! All the girls won rosettes for their efforts and had a great time on Western Day at EVR!
Unfortunately yesterday’s rain ended our heatwave up here in the mountains and meant that some of the girls had limited ride time. However, this did not stop us from having a great day anyway… We had craft time in the morning and then we did sports/board games for the afternoon. Evening program was an extra special one yesterday as Jennie (our director) came over and spent the evening with the girls! They had a great night making posters and watching movies in their PJ’s… As it was one of our staff member’s 20th Birthday (Tiny Kleiny), the girls were allowed to stay up a little bit later to end the day’s celebrations with her 
.
Now on to today’s activities! This morning the sun came out and EVR was back in the normal routine… Yurt 5 wrangled the horses in to the barn this morning and after breakfast Barrel Racer’s came down to the barn to have an extended arena lesson to make the most of the sunshine! The Buckin’ Bronc’s spent the morning learning about feed and nutrition and then participated in some awesome games and sports until lunch time.
This afternoon the Buckin’ Bronc’s will ride for the afternoon and then turn their horses out to rest for the night. The Barrel Racer’s will spend the afternoon on ground lessons.
WE LOVE EVR!!!!!
Two days of high energy songs, face painting, t-shirt making, and challenge activities made this years Olympix All Camp an event to remember. The Mustang girls were all broken up into teams representing countries from all over the world. International staff at Frost Valley from each country taught games, songs, and other activities. A torch lit opening ceremony followed by a whole day of games was amazing to see. All the girls had spirit for their teams and quickly started to cheer on their teams. A few rain showers couldn’t even dampen spirits as Olympix took over all of Frost Valley!
This is Kam reporting to you live from the Dining Hall! the Spirit Award has just been announced…the winner of spirit 2011 is Columbia!!!
What an amazing 2 days it has been filled with games, cheers and epic rain!
FINALLY…the rain came. Just in time for the Olympix fun to begin–although most of us thought the storm would pass, aside from the first period we found ourselves still in doors for much of the day. Don’t worry, without fail counselors and staff managed to put on a great afternoon of fun indoor competitions including, Dutch Auction, All Camp Challenge Night, Interpretive Dance and Beat the Clock Charades. Stay tuned to find out who will taken home the coveted Spirit Award![Gallery not found]
Last night we helped the opening ceremonies for Frost Valley’s Olympix. We have counselors from all over the world working here and are excited to share their culture with us. Every camper in the West Valley is put onto one of eight teams. These teams spend the day running around showing how much team spirit they have. This year our teams include Australia, England, Spain, Colombia, Ireland, Mexico, Japan and South Africa. After two days of cheering and sports events we will award the one team with the most spirit the coveted Spirit Award and the honor of being our host country next year.
Our animal friends are doing very well in Rhode Island right now! The past few days they worked at the bird sanctuary in the morning and the animal shelter in the afternoon. The first day at the sanctuary was hard work for the group as they cleared brush and helped to re-stack a stone wall to build up some habitat in a particular area. The second and third day were much more interesting for the ladies as they cleared out a bird enclosure, saw a red-tailed hawk up close and personal and actually touched a snake in one of the exhibits!
The animal shelter had them cleaning carriers to start, and then moved int working with the dog trainers (including some agility training), socializing a new dog that had come in and cleaning some cat litter boxes. The girls loved the hands on animal portion of the work! The Aquarium today was AMAZING with some highlights being feeding the sting rays, getting super close to a beluga whale and getting to go behind the scenes to check out some different areas in the aquarium.
After work, the group has been hanging out at the beach swimming and playing on the sand, catching frisbees and relaxing.
Overall this group is having a great time and pretty excited about life right now!
The work definitely picked up for our crew on Friday and Saturday. They did a lot more work on the trailer and are super excited about potentially finishing it up tomorrow. They have also added puttying, sanding, nailing and sealing cracks to their list of tasks. They feel like they are doing “real work” a the construction site and spirits are pretty high!
Climbing went well – although it started a bit late due to an Iron Man race that had the group rerouted several times on the way to their site. Almost everyone climbed at least twice, if not more, and offered great support on the ground when not scaling the rock.
At the campsite the group has been playing magic (one of the campers has taught the rest of the group) and/or cards to stay busy in a quieter fashion. When it starts getting dark they put on dark clothing and pick their capture the flag teams. They have been going for three nights straight now and are very competitive (in a healthy, friendly manner) for the title of winner each night!