resurfacing

Hey my little internet world!
I've returned. Thanks for keeping the place clean while I was gone, I have multiple piles of laundry overwhelming 2 rooms in my house & a sink full of dishes & I really didn't want to have to pick up after you rowdies.

So the question of the week has been "where have you been?" I've gotten emails, facebook messages, answering machine messages, & even notes left on our doorstep! You sure know how to make a girl feel wanted!

Well Tuesday was my lovely mother-in-laws 50th birthday. We got home sometime around 1am & set the alarm for an unheard of 4am in the morning.

4. a. m.

Have you ever seen 4am before?

It's dark
It's cold
It's unwelcoming
& worst of all...
it was the time we had to get up in order to drive to Oshawa to catch our train to Hamilton.
I thought I had outsmarted the 4am by sleeping alllllllllll the way to Oshawa & almost allllllllll the way to Hamilton.

Stupid 4am. That'll show it whose boss.

{Little did I know 4am would return with a vengeance...keep reading}

In Hamilton Mat got 'oriented' to his new school, McMaster Divinity. Meanwhile, I got oriented to an unhealthy intake of caffeine. We spent Wednesday & Thursday in Hamilton, got some visiting in with my dad & slept for almost 10 hours straight, with no 4am to interrupt.

Friday. Oi.

{I have decided never to take two days off in the middle of a work week again. So dumb.}

I scrambled to get everything done orderly, correctly & at the speed of ligthening because the start of the Spirit Borne Retreat was Friday & us leaders needed to be out at the camp.

{For those unaware, Spirit Borne is the performing arts program of QuinteYFC/Youth Unlimited. It's a cast of roughly 50+ high school students who sing, dance, act, do tech stuff & play insturments}

It was amazing & it was one of the only things from this whole crazy week that I took pictures at

The retreat theme, quoted from C.S. Lewis' book, The Lion, the Witch & the Waredrobe.
{I love his stuff, right now I am in the middle of Perelandra, another one of his books, so good}

There's us leaders, plotting & schemeing.

Meet Joy, another leader & the stunning wife of the Spirit Borne Directer, Adam. She was my bunkie...her whole top bunk was supported by only 3 rusty springs on one side. I was scared. I could just picture waking up with her next to me:
"I thought you were on the top bunk"

The food was glorious & the coffee was a fountain of life.

The first night we were up until somewhere around 2am...& awake by 6am.
{But but it wasn't a problem because I had -so far- escaped the clutches of 4am once again}

Here's the team. The hard working, voices-like-angels, Spirit Borne team. They rehearsed their little selves to the max & did a mini-concert for us. It was intense. Their last song, "The Redeemed" almost made me cry. If you are in the Quinte area (or in Flordia where they are touring) you really should see this show, it will be worth it.

Sing sing sing

Team huddle - the older guy in the middle is Warren the artistic director. He's cool.

"Hey guys!? See me, on the chair?! Guys?! Hello?!?!"

"Yeah thats it, lemme see all your sweet, smiling faces"

{Those sweet smiling faces all plotting with 4am - hatching schemes for late night hijinks}

Canoe relay!
They had to swim out to us in the canoes where we would hand them a water balloon coated in corn oil & they would have to try & get it back to shore without popping it, or letting it slip out of their hands.

It was madness

Here is where I will pause for a moment to retell you the story of what proceeded after the day was done...some of this may explain the next picture.

Somewhere around 2am Joy & I decided it was lights out of our cabin.
Unfortunately we weren't aware that 4am was looking for justice & had brought some of our girls over to its side.

4am.
I wake up to Joy leaning over me.

My first thought:
"I thought you fell asleep in the top bunk"

She says: "Can you help me find the alarm clock?"

My second thought:
"Oh goodness, she's talking in her sleep"

Then I hear it, this constant nails-on-a-chalkboard horrible beeping

I assumed that someone had set their alarm in their bag & had forgotten to turn it off. So I hop out with Joy & hunt for the alarm.

We can't find it.

As far as we could tell it wasn't coming from anyones bag...it sounds like its on the roof.

Outside we go.

4am is laughing its butt off, while we're freezing ours.

Nothing outside, except a few girls running around pulling some pranks on the boys.
We have much bigger fish to fry. This alarm is STILL going off.

Back in the cabin, Joy hops up on top of one of the bunks to survey the rafters & her eye spots this little orange box. SUCCESS! We turn it off, the whole cabin breathes a sigh of relief & we head back to bed. The whole event was probably around an eternity of 30 minutes.

Oh but 4am had not yet delievered all the wrath it had. It had befriended 5am who had already plotted with the boys to light fireworks outside our cabins.

I plugged my ears & prayed for the rapture to come.
{laugh}

8am comes, niaeve & innocent with its dutiful servant Adam who is playing random notes at full tilt on the trumpet to alert the camp that it's time to get up.

I stuff my head under a pillow & dream of stuffing a sweaty gym sock in the trumpet bell.
{& its my trumpet!}

Coffee. Vital.

Overtied doesn't contain the depths of exhaustion I felt. But Joy...oh poor poor Joy.

It was just a little more than her little body could handle.

Or maybe her estatic expression comes from the fact that we got a little revenge on some of 4am's minions.

Maybe.

Adam was completely unaffected by the evenings pranks & took some time to pray & prepare for his last message of the weekend.

Some of us girls absorbed the last few moments of the beautiful weather that graced the whole weekend. Some of us leaders even managed to get in some private swim time.

Our first place team {I forget their team name} with the First Annual Spirit Borne trophy.

The team with the most spirit, The Wombats.

It was an awesome weekend. It'll take me a long time to come down from this high.
But I have 18 hours of sleep to retrieve & a certain one 4am to clobber.