Family Camp

Family Camp was lots of fun. Make your plans now to attend next year, or start your own!
We stayed at Our Urban Cabin (it's in town, but here is the view from the deck -- OK, it's not Photoshopped, but it is a very carefully framed picture:
). And here is a picture of the birch trees in the yard:



My favorite part of family camp is the singing, which we do twice a day for about 45 minutes each time, with a song leader. This year we had one set of song leader/pianist for the first and last days, and one song leader/pianist (she does it all!) for the middle day. Their strengths and general aspect are different, but we had a great time singing with both. I believe they are both cousins of Onkel Hankie Pants, albeit on different sides of his mother's family. I didn't take any pictures at singing, because I was too busy juggling the book and songsheets and just enjoying it. Regular people (who aren't musicians and don't have particularly good voices) don't get to sing enough, in my opinion. Two or three hymns each week at church are about it for most of us, bar singing along with recorded music or in the shower. Onkel Hankie Pants says that in his childhood, a church meeting which in most churches would start with a prayer, began with a song instead. I think that's a great idea (and song is prayer, anyway, at least sometimes.)
My next favorite part is seeing all the children. It was the 31st annual camp, so I'm now seeing the children of people I first knew as children. Since there are lots of Danes there, even most of the brown-haired people seem to have blond children of varying shades, but one young cousin has married a man with slightly darker skin and hair and has two gorgeous little boys who take after him. All the kids, whether they are close cousins who see each other often or completely unrelated, seem to get along well and join in the annual Nisse Hunt with great gusto. (Maybe Sisterknits will tell about the Nisse Hunts, past and present, when her computer gets better).
The organic farmers who "moonlight" as our cooks for the past few years did as great a job as usual, despite a lingering drought which has affected their production and the fact that they were hosting one of the Live Earth concerts at their farm the following weekend!
The three days (plus an opening evening) of Family Camp are just right for me. It's hard to be with people constantly from 8:45 am to 9:30 or 10 at night (plus an hour or so each way with the nearest and dearest) -- at least that's true for this INFP. Now I'm excited about next year's camp. Sisterknits is on the committee, so I know it will be good.