Summer camps.

I admit that I have been a lame blogger these past couple of weeks. In my defense, I've been trying to post this update for the last several days, but I kept facing technical difficulties with the forthcoming video files, which unlike camera files, I know nothing about. Thanks to the glories of the internet and with the help of iMovie, I was finally able to download the videos off my SD card, tweak the file properties and get them uploaded to YouTube. It was well worth all the trouble for approximately 2 minutes of footage.



Last week, Lauren attended British Soccer Camp. As part of the program, college students from around Great Britain come to the United States to coach kids and help them to work on their skills. Pictured here is Coach Aaron molding them into little limeys, I mean "football stars."



As the week progressed, I came to really appreciate their dreamy good looks and charming accents, I mean, how well they worked with the children.

Speaking of accents, I had joked on the first day that British Soccer Camp reminded me of going to Hogwarts, except without the magic and the evil wizard out to kill you. And just posting pictures isn't going to do this experience justice. You have to hear the accents, right?



Wait a second - did he just say "cast a spell"? Let's listen some more.



Okay, he just sorted them into Houses. British Soccer Camp really *is* Hogwarts!

Enough joking about the British. What you really want to see is Lauren do her stuff!



I just realized that in this clip I sound like a stage mom. To clarify, the kids were really confused as to what they were supposed to be doing during this exercise, so I was just giving a gentle nudge.



Let's take a short break before we head to the next camp.



Back at the beginning of July, Lauren and I both went to Girl Scout Camp. The theme of this year's camp was Space, so there were all kinds of space related activities.



The girls made alien cupcakes.



And telescopes.



And ate satellite wafers.



We even made a flag for our "moon landing."



Of course, we also did more traditional activities, like first aid and building campfires. I was a little nervous about having to build a campfire because that kind of thing is way outside of my comfort zone. Pictured here is one of the camp leaders showing the girl's how to light a match.



Not to question her judgement, but trying to start your first campfire while surrounded by a bunch of 6 year olds all yelling in your ear, "CAN I LIGHT THE MATCH??" is quite stressful. Inside the coffee can is water. We were supposed to build the fire up enough to heat the water to make hot cocoa. Mine never quite got passed lukewarm, and in fact, when Lauren fell ill later that week, I thought I might have poisoned her because I didn't heat the water enough to kill any bacteria (In reality, it was an ear infection and strep throat.) When Mark saw this photo, he exclaimed, "Look at it! It's ROARING!" Nice.

That concludes our visit to summer camps for this year. More blogging to come this week, as I'll be wanting to get the post count up for August. :)