Talent Night and Get Skyline Back - Session 1
Hi Skyline Parents! It’s certainly been a busy few days here at Camp Skyline, but the girls are finally beginning to settle into their routines. They start every morning at 7:15 am, and head to Morning Watch at 7:30 for a devotional and a time to rest in the peace of the morning before jumping straight into a day of action-packed activities. After morning watch, they attend flag raising and then it’s on to breakfast. They’ve really been enjoying Skyline breakfast staples such as crispy bacon, melon, and delicious golden biscuits.
By the time breakfast and club meetings are over, the girls are ready for more fun. It’s been so awesome getting to walk around camp and see the girls thriving during activity time. Yesterday, some of the older girls from Riverside and Summerplace went for a power run all the way to Camp Laney in Fitness class! After they triumphantly got a photo in front of Laney’s sign, the girls were able to spot some boys inside and greeted them with “Hi!”s and friendly waves from the gate. Little River Hardware treated Fitness to lollipops on the way back. Such a fun, well-earned reward for an early morning run!
The Ropes and Circus activities are also very popular among the girls. Yesterday, the Ropes staff broke out the zipline and my new favorite thing has become watching the girls’ joyful expressions as they zoom through the air. Many brave campers tackled the zipline, and new tricks in Circus too! Nothing beats hearing the girls’ sweet voices cheering on their friends as they try out something new. Before I left the Circus field, I was summoned by walkie to run over to Tower and witness something exciting! Larry’s CSR class spent the afternoon practicing emergency rescue with a few different simulations, and when I arrived they were lowering one of our staff members, Walker, down from the top of Tower using a pulley system. Don’t worry, they successfully completed the rescue and no Walkers were harmed in the process. Today, CSR went on their first caving trip and so the adventure continues!
Our mini campers have also taken on the chaos of camp fearlessly. They’re having a blast in all their activities. From going down the waterslide at fun swim to making caterpillars out of paper towel rolls in Arts and Crafts, the Minis sure have been busy. Today they practiced strokes in Tennis, and they really impressed me in Archery with the accuracy of their shots. Some of the campers even got three or four arrows on target all in a row!
As the sun begins to set, the girls participate in Camper Choice, which continues to be a hit. They enjoy choosing from a wide variety of activities such as scavenger hunts and nature walks, crochet, Kinetic Sand and Play-Doh, flag football, chalk, magnet tiles, Mahjong, pickleball, Legos, and so much more!
I know you’re all wondering what nighttime activities have been like the past two evenings. Yesterday we had Talent Night, and the girls really showed up and showed out! The show kicked off with the crowd practicing the different types of celebratory claps that we do to support our Skyline Sisters during their turn to perform. Some favorites include the seal clap, the firework clap, and the popular “O!” (which means that the talent of the performer really wowed them). We had some amazing acts perform. Our girls sang lovely solos or duets, played the piano, guitar, or mandolin, performed tap and hip hop dance routines, and showcased gymnastics tricks. Our older campers brought the humor with a boxing-match-style skit and a funny interpretive dance by the age-outs. While the judges deliberated, the entire camp spontaneously jammed out to an acapella rendition of “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift. Then, we crowned the winners with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place ribbons and celebrated with s’mores at evening Campfire (yay for no rain!)
Tonight’s activity was an annual camp favorite: Get Skyline Back. All day long, the counselors have been telling campers that their brothers or cousins would be paying a visit to camp tonight. At dinner time, the counselors dressed up in baggy gym shorts, backwards hats, jerseys, and marker tattoos and beards. Giggles erupted through the dining hall as the counselors leaned into their Laney personas. After our meal, the club captains were suddenly kidnapped by the “Laney Boys,” who had taken over camp! The girls had to band together in their club teams to manuever around sock attacks from the boys while chasing them down, and retrieve their club captains, boxes, and flags as fast as possible. After 3 crazy sock battles with “Laney” counselors, the clubs completed the challenge and the Mounties won!
The girls got Skyline back just in time for Campfire. At Campfire for Lodge and Hut Row, LTs from Riverside shared about today’s theme: Hope. They read from Romans 5:3-5, which says “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
After a long night of reclaiming Camp Skyline, it was off to bed to get a good night’s rest before we have more exciting activities to close out this week, including tomorrow night’s Laney Dance! Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for the next blog post to hear all about it. You can also follow our social media to get updates on what the girls are up to throughout the day and at night if you want to catch some of the action in real time.
Have a great night, and we’ll catch up on Saturday!
With love,
Sydney (from media team!)
