Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Camp Chawanakee

Tyce and Bryce were gone for 8 days--Saturday to Saturday. It felt like forever to me but it was fun for them!

The Boy Scout camp is in California near Shaver Lake, about 20 miles away from where they went last year, Camp Kern. Fishing, the Gumby stick, merit badge classes, playing games with friends, and catching frogs made up their days.

Tyce earned 5 merit badges while he was there: space exploration, woodcarving, camping, citizenship in the world, and communications.

The food was hit and miss, but varied widely from quite delicious to revolting. Two of the worst meals were "French" toast, which was dry, toasted bread--no eggs, no butter--with syrup on top; and oatmeal, which was just oats and water. Luckily Bryce brought his own freeze-dried meals for this very scenario.

A highlight for Tyce was the sacrament meeting their troop held. It seemed to be a special experience to pass the sacrament and hear his leaders speak away from the normal noise of the world.

And the biggest surprise of all was that Tyce--literally--bumped into Peter! Peter, our former foster child who is now 12 and was adopted 9 years ago by a wonderful family. You might remember that his family stayed with us for a few days this spring. Peter and Tyce lived like brothers so long ago, and still feel like brothers today. He lives in Califoria, but what are the odds that his Scout troop would go to the same camp on the same week? It seems there may have been divine calendaring going on.

Bro. Peterson, Bro. Callister, Bro. Stembridge, Bro. Rekve, Jackson, Tyce, Gonzalo, Cody, and Ian went.

The beautiful lake.

Tyce, Peter, and a friend fishing.

Gonzalo on the rock. Tyce catching frogs under the rock.

The boys: Jackson, Ian, Gonzalo, and Cody.

Another view of the lakes, through the trees.

Tyce was able to spend time with Peter, doing things like playing football with his troop.

Giant osprey built a nest on top of a very tall tree.

Tyce and Peter--brothers at heart.

3 comments:

FoReVeR WeLcH said...

im So sad Noah didnt go...... Greg hurt his back the day b4 at the 5th grade promotion and was hurt so bad he didnt leave bed for like 4 days and is STILL taking medicine for it when he comes home from work! We both decided that with Greg not able to go maybe Noah should stay home as we just didnt know how well he would do for that long at 11 yrs old.. i dont know why they changed the age of boy scouts from starting at 12 to starting at 11 now..... Oh well... Looks like they had a BLAST

Emmy said...

What a great week! And how awesome to run into a long time friend/brother like that.

Denalee said...

scout camp is the best!