Summer Camp Ad

Hey, I was just wondering if anyone knew about any good summer camps that a 12 year old, 16 year old, and a 17 year old could all go to.  I want a Christian camp that is CHEAP.  I looked up Christian summer camps and almost all of them were 300 to 1000 dollars at LEAST.  The cheapest one I found was 125 to 300 dollars a week.  I would like a camp that costs about--I dunno--50-75 a week because there are three of us kids.  PLEASE leave a comment if you know of any.  I REALLY want to go to summer camp this year.  Court and Will have done it but I couldn't.  At the time I was too little.  So, once again, PLEASE comment if you have any suggestions.  Thanks

-Jaime-

Camping 2009

We went camping last weekend (Thursday-Saturday). It was pretty cool. We went to Paradise Lake Campground. Here, I'll post some pictures.


Dad in the cabin we rented.

Little sister.

Brother.

Who in the world is THAT??? O.o

THE WATER....no seriously!

The pond. =)

My foot over the water. I thought it was pretty cool with the reflection of the sky.

The brother, Will, and Dad's fishing box thingy. =)

The sister, Jaime, and her rod.

Fishing. (Jaime's totally hooked on fishing now. She loves it! I say it's kind of BORING. Takes too long....even if you DO catch something.)

What's that in the water?? NOTHING!! It's the reflection of the sky!! =P

BREAD. We used this for bait.

Look out!! Jaime's casting!! O.O

Jaime and her first fish which she called "Sonny". She was the first one to catch a fish here. =)

My bwuhduh...

My sista...



The cabin we stayed in...except for me really....I slept in the car 'cause everyone else...well...they snore and I didn't bring ear plugs. =P

Around the campfire.

Mmmm...marshmallows!!! =P

Smores... =P

Pigging out in the cabin.

Me and my bro listening to my Mp3 player which is cool to do at night especially if you don't have a good book to read.

Unlike Will and I, they actually had some good books to read.

In the morning... *YAWN*

Breakfast for them was...(rotten) eggs.

Yumm...(BLEH!!)

As you can see, I was really tired....

MORE fishing...

Eating Cracker Jacks because that was more fun than fishing. =P

Sitting in the sand....dumping sand on himself...for some reason.

Motoring Jaime around...that water was FREEZING!!!

Will and one of his four fish. (Jaime caught 3 and I caught 1).

Unhooking the fish.

My lovely sister and her lovely marshmallow. =9

Fishing...

The lake (or pond or whatever it was).

I remember the first morning when Will woke me up, and I was extremely tired. I had walked over to the bathroom, and I was just coming back. I was still tired so I kind of had my eyes closed, and there was this swing set by the bathroom a little ways...I walked right into it. Yeah, umm...that woke me up pretty good. =P ...Ouch...

I also remember when Will, Jaime, and I were making up this song... It sounded really cool. Will kind of began it, and I followed suit... Then we decided to change the songs words...and the whole song ended up changing. It went something like this:


I woke up one day
It was Jaime's birthday

(Guitar Solo done by ME)
Deh neh neh neh
Neh neh neh
Deh neh neh neh

I tried to make a cake
But I didn't hit 'bake'

Deh neh neh neh
Neh neh neh
Deh neh neh neh

(At this point, the song kind of changes gear)
So......whoa whoa...whoa whoa....
I CUT THE VEGGIES WITH A STEAK KNIFE!!
Whoa!! Whoa!! Whoa!!
I cut the veggies with a steak knife!!
Whoa!! Whoa!! Whoa....!!

(I don't remember the rest...I can't even believe I remembered that much.)


I also remember, the first night I believe it was, their were so many stars.... I had asked Dad if we Jaime and I could go over to the swings to talk and look at the stars. Pretty soon, Will joined us, and we were all just laying in the grass staring up at the starlit sky and talking. It was nice... Staring up into a sky like that, you have got to know that there IS a God. It's evident. No doubt about it.

Well, I guess that's it...unless you want to hear about fishing... In that case hears the story in hieroglyphics: ♪♫☺♪♫ ~~><>~↓~~

In other words, while everybody else was fishing and once in a blue moon catching something...I was either listening to my Mp3 player or singing to the fish trying to get them to go after my "lonely piece of bread". Yeah...I only caught one fish. =P

Will managed to catch 4 fish, Jaime got 3, I got a pitiful 1... Actually mine wasn't so bad; it was pretty big at least. No pictures though, as I seemed to be about the only one snapping pics out there. Dad did manage a video, but it was pretty bad because he was trying to help me unhook it at the same time. Ah well...

I should put up some of the vids... The Cracker Jack in the cabin had to be the best‼ Jaime was TOTALLY not expecting that‼ =D

-Courtney-

August Camping Trip

Last month, which was August, we Robinsons took a camping trip to -errrr- Bear Creek Lake State Park. It was a pretty small place but it was still really nice there. I think we got site "A-7" but I'm not exactly sure......maybe it was "C-7" or...........I don't know....

As soon as we got there, which was around 2:00 or 3:00 pm, we set up our camp: moving the table, pitching the tent, etc. After that we walked down to the beach-there was a trail leading down to it-and we kids ran around in the sand, playing tag.

Pretty soon we, or rather everyone besides me, got hungry, and so we headed back up that long steep trail and made dinner. You can probably guess what dinner was..........hamburgers and hotdogs.

Later that night Dad built a fire and we roasted marshmallows. Both Will and Jaime attempted to roast their marshmallows until they were slightly brown, but they didn't always turn out the way they wanted them to. Jaime held her marshmallows way too close to the fire so sometimes they would start to burn and she, being extremely disappointed in her marshmallow, would give it to Mom to eat.

I, on the other hand, love my marshmallows burnt! I don't care for the burned outside really, but I love how the inside turns all gooey; it tastes so delicious! Besides, you can't really taste the outside when you're thinking about the inside. =P

We went swimming the next day. That was pretty cool. I remember floating on my back and closing my eyes for a short while, and when I opened my eyes again I was alot farther out than I thought. (Guess that's how sin works, huh? People think, I won't go that far into sin. I'll never do this, this, or this. I just want to do this little sin. Well, one sin leads to another, and pretty soon they're at a place in their lives, they never thought they'd be at. Sorry, just thinking.)

We kids also went to the sand later that day when noone was there. It was nearly dark, but still some daylight. We all buried each other in the sand one after the other. Once the person being buried was completely buried, he/she/or it (in my case. ;)) would break through and try to tag one of the other two. Whoever got tagged was next to be buried. It was great!

I almost forgot, I brought the sailboat I carved sometime earlier. It was pretty neat watching it sail. Just had to make sure you didn't get the (paper) sail wet, or it would throw the weight off and tip. O.o

You know what was cool?!? We, the family, got to go on one of those (funny-looking) paddle boats. We went around the lake. It was sure fun, but really tiring! We learned you should always keep the weight towards the front if you want to go anywhere. ;)


-Courtney-

Old Camping Trips

I remember one year we went camping on a mountain somewhere in Virginia. I'm not sure what the campground is called, but it was a really great camping trip. We went in the fall so it was extremely cold, and we had to sleep in a tent. We got the best campsite; it was right near a rushing stream.

I remember a few teenagers going down the stream in tubes. They must have been freezing in that ice cold water, not to mention we were up on a mountain in the middle of fall. We tried fishing in the stream, but there were really only little fish and about a million bugs.

The only bad thing about where our campsite was, was that the bathroom was all the way up this enormous hill, and at night when you had to go and you just wanted to stay in your nice, warm, cozy sleeping bag, you had to climb this giant hill in the cold to get there.

They had the best playground there. I remember playing on some real seesaws. At one time when we were at the playground, some teens came and were playing on the merry-go-round. We didn't hesitate to hop on, well, maybe I did for a minute because I was shy, but I ended up joining. I was glad too because they spun really fast.

I also remember on another day some other kids came to the playground. They were probably a little older than we were. I remember trying to play on the seesaw with the boy, but he was alot bigger than I was, and so I ended up staying at the top while he sat practically on the ground.

I also remember how, in the morning, it was so freezing outside that I didn't even want to get out of my sleeping bag. I had to get up, of course, so I'd hurry up and get dressed so that I could sit by the fire and warm up again. Mom was awesome in the morning; she'd get us all some hot chocolate to help warm us up.

There were always nuts on the ground from the trees above us, so I'd go collecting 'em, so that later when we lit a fire, I could throw 'em in and watch 'em pop. It was so cool. I'd make a furnace like thing with the logs so that I could toss the nuts in. After a few seconds they'd explode. After a bit, my parents said not to do it anymore, unfortunately, because sometimes it would throw out some sparks. It burned a hole in one of the chairs once.

When we were at the playground playing once, Dad accidentally squirted Mom with the hose when he was trying to rinse off some dishes. She was so angry about it because it was cold outside. After she went and changed, she sat hard on one of the chairs with a plate of food. The chair tipped back, and Dad had just enough time to save her plate of food before Mom fell to the ground.

One time, we went to this one campsite near our house. We got this awesome cabin. I remember when we lit a fire, and it started to rain. At first it was really windy. The wind started blowing the sparks everywhere. It was really wild. Mom thought we were going to burn the place down if we didn't stop it. After dumping water all over the fire, we retreated to the cabin. Just as soon as we got under the roof above the porch, rain started poring down.

At another time, we went camping in North Carolina near where our grandparents live. I can't remember what any of these campsites are called....sorry. We got a cabin there too. It was alot better than the one we got at the other place, but that's probably because we got a bigger one. They had an awesome lake called Lake Gaston.....

I remember one time we went canoing there together. Me (Courtney), Will, and Mom went in one canoe, while Dad and Jaime went in the other. We were all going under a bridge. The canoe I was on was ahead. As we went under the bridge, we were trying to steer right, but we ended up crashing into the bridge's sloping pillar-type-structure. Mom was panicking; she thought we were going to sink. Luckily we were on metal canoes, otherwise we might have sunk.

While we were at this campsite, Will got the idea to create little ships out of some bark off of the trees. We had some suckers, so when we were done eating them, we saved the wrappers for sails for our ships. They weren't bad either. We used our knives to make the fronts more ship-like. When we tested them, they sailed pretty well, at least, most of them did.

One night, we had the best dinner ever, subs. Mom made her own subs, and they were delicious. Mmmm.......I felt sorry for anyone who had to eat more hamburgers and hotdogs. Subs are so much better.

Another time, we went with our grandparents, Mom mom and Pop pop, to this campsite on another mountain in North Carolina, I think. While we were there, we kids found a vine or long branch partly connected to one of the trees. We used it to swing on. It was really fun; we would swing down over this gap, and it would then swing us back to our starting place. After a while it broke though. I had just swung really far, and as soon as I had landed it broke. Luckily it didn't break while I was swinging.

After the 'vine' broke, we had to find other things to do. We met this boy while we were there, Patrick. He was a little younger than Will. I think he was 11 or 12. We went with him to find small crawdads (or crayfish) in the little stream by our campsite. The boys got some cups to catch the crawdads in, and we girls basically alerted the boys when we spotted one. After catching about a million of the little creatures, we eventually let them go, so we could catch them all again later.

After a day or two we climbed up this giant mountain. We went up one side and down the other. Around the rocky parts near the top, there was a bit off water running down the mountain. It was mostly just little trickling slits of water, though. The view was great from the top. I carved my name on one of the trees there as best I could with my knife. When we got near the bottom on the other side, we found this river running through the place. Eventually it would all drop off into a waterfall. As soon as we reached the bottom, we were below the great waterfall and by a stream. We kids jumped around on these giant rocks and crossed to the other side. Dad took us kids up onto a ledge right next to the waterfall. It was really awesome being right next to the waterfall, being right there! Well, that's all I can think of for now......


-Courtney-