Christmas

This picture goes further down. I accidentally deleted it. There's no moving around of pics with this program. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm not starting over!

I thought it would make for a fun blog to post pictures of the Camp Daniel missionaries' Christmas decorations. Some of us have been hording decorations for decades, while others are just starting to collect some holiday items for their homes. I think we all know which category Tony and I fall into!

So this is like a Camp Daniel Pictorial Tour of Homes. Free of charge.

Jo and Tony have Christmas decorations everywhere. It was hard to decide what to take a picture of! Anthony liked this new wreath that Jo has on the wall. To me, this picture is iconic Jo. She changes this hutch for every season, continuing the tradition that her mom started when she had it. Every item is Christmas, and the pieces have been collected over many years.

Moving on to our home. We have a regular Christmas tree in the living room, but this is my special antique tree, which sits between the kitchen and hall. Charlie Brown wouldn't have been given such hassle, had he brought home this aluminum beauty! We bought it at an antique shop in Crystal Falls, MI. It was a real find, as I already had many antique ornaments. Every one of the 180+ ornaments on the tree is antique.

More old stuff in our living room. All silver and red. Some of it is new. I specifically remember buying the snowman and the house (both in the foreground). We were with Greg and Kitt Cleereman, in Chicago, in January. We went to Marshall Field's (now Macy's), where the Christmas leftovers were 90% off. I was like a crazy person! I just remember Greg sitting there looking at me like I was nuts. Well, maybe just a little.

Jen and Marceaux have a real tree. They were going to put it outside, but it kept blowing over in the wind! So it's literally in the middle of their place. On the tips of the branches are pieces of popcorn that are "glued" on with a doughy paste.

This stocking hangs outside of the Bury's. It's a pretty arrangement that Jen's mom made.

Onto the Hartley House. They have a nice tall tree in the living room, but I felt like the deer had a bit more character. Other taxidermied critters in the house with Santa hats: fish and smaller deer mount.

The top pic goes here. It's probably the largest nativity in the county! The very top has the traditional nativity characters, and the rest of the shelves have more of a supporting cast of towns people, Roman guards, angels, etc. When Tony and I did craft shows, Tony made stables for nativity sets. We bought the sets, and he built the buildings. We bought Fontanini brand at wholesale and sold the many many pieces that they offer. Well, after we finished doing the craft shows, we had many pieces left, so they now take a place of honor in the dining room of the Hartley House!

This is a close up of Molly's pretty Christmas tree. It's all silvers, blues and purples. Pretty impressive for her first tree!

But even prettier than her tree is the way she lit up the exterior of her home.

The Kelly's are the only one with a proper fireplace for Santa! Those are some big stockings. I bet the kids picked them out!

Have a Merry Christmas, from all of us at Camp Daniel.

Who knows, maybe next blog, I'll show all of the snow we've shoveled!

Thursday, December 9

This blog will focus on what Jen and Marceaux have been doing the past week or so. They often go about their business with such quiet dedication, that what their doing gets sometimes overlooked on the blog. Well not anymore!

We begin two Sundays ago. Sunday is, of course, Mega day. Jen is a megaphone (worship leader) and Marceaux is in charge of security. After church they, along with Molly, went to the Mandich's for an Able Church meeting.

On the following Monday, Marceaux did a bible study with the Hartley House guys in the morning. Later that day, he finished sheet rocking his "Ham Shack" (the kids old playhouse, which will be for Marceaux's ham radio). Jen worked on "Miracle of Camp Daniel" book. She's been putting together the stories and history of Camp Daniel. She also organized and labeled all of the braille books of the Bible that are in the conference room. Jen then went through the basketball uniforms for the Able Attack Special Olympic team, check to see what we have and what we need for this season. Jen also did some therapy on Tim's shoulder recurring shoulder injury.
We have a staff meeting every Tuesday morning. After the meeting, Marceaux, Tony, Tim and the guys all worked to get the old plow truck onto a trailer and brought to the plow shop. The plow was taken off of the truck and installed onto Tim's truck, which actually runs.
Tuesday is Able Family Night. Twelve players participated in their first basketball practice. Roger Weid is the head coach, and Jen and Marceaux are both assistants. They had additional coaching help from Brian Suess and Bill Woods. After practice, was the pizza and Bible study time, during which 25 people participated.

On Wednesday morning, Marceaux did another bible study with the guys. Then he and Jen spent some time cleaning out the basement of their place. They are converting it into an "art cave/studio". They hauled in a large work table and hung shelves for supplies. Afterwards Jen worked on Tim's other shoulder, which is also injured. Jen also added to the Camp Daniel book that day, and did laundry. She spent some time in counsel with DJ, whom has been going thru some hard times. Marceaux finished his portion of the thank you cards from their wedding. He knocked out 40!

Thursday morning brought another Bible study. Jen worked on preparations for Friday night's Able Church. She also spent a long time counseling with Lori, DJ's girlfriend. She then had a fun night out with Molly, Karol and others at a Sushi restaurant in Green Bay.

On Friday, they left camp early to get to Green Bay, where they visited with some members of the Able Church. After Able, they brought the guys to Jen's parents house to spend the night before the big Special Olympics Bowling State Finals, which were early Saturday morning in Wausau. The guys placed 7th. After bowling they headed back to Green Bay to help with the clean up from the Mega Movie. After cleaning that mess, Jen, Marceaux and the guys, went to a concert at St. John's in Howard. They saw an acapella group that only uses their mouths for the instruments. Right up DJ's alley. The guys all had a great weekend. It was like a mini vacation for them. All thanks to the Bury's.

Wednesday, November 17

Last Saturday, we had our last work day of the year. Ed Rogers, a camp counselor, brought 5 guys from the work share program he volunteers with. They worked in the Trapline lodge (men's) putting up drywall on the cathedral part of the ceiling in a dorm room. Also here for the work day, was a group from Shepard's College. It's a Christian non-profit that provides residency for people with disabilities, and more recently, they started a post secondary education system for people with disabilities. The students can choose from horticulture and culinary arts. Erin Reynolds, who has been a counselor at camp many times, works at the college organized their coming up for the work day. The college is in Union Grove, WI. They drove up Friday night and stayed in the dorms. The Shepard's group consisted of 9 students and 3 staff. They broke up into three groups and each group worked with a member of the Camp Daniel staff. Below is a picture of the group. They were a lot of fun and we're hoping that they come back again.....only in better weather. Saturday was all about cold, rainy and windy. A lovely combo. But they were troopers, and none complained as much as I! In the end, we got a lot done.I just mentioned the wet weather, which never touched any of this crew! (Yea, I'm a little resentful. And I think they were just showing off in those short sleeve shirts! ) These guys hung drywall with Dave Detloff.

These guys kicked butt. They moved 5 pallets of retaining block. Each block probably weighs 15 lbs.! Do the math. They loaded them onto the trailer, where they were then added to the retaining wall between the Founders House (Jo and Sr) and the Lumberjack Lodge (women's dorm). When they finished moving the block, this group back filled the retaining wall with sand.

This was the group that I worked with. (yes, we were outside the entire day. :( First we mulched the trees that hadn't been mulched during previous work days. Then we moved about two yards of pea gravel. In the pic below, they are unloading the gravel to a location where we can store it until we need it next spring. The pile was left over from the retaining wall that's between the Founders House and the Lumberjack Lodge.

This is where the first group I mentioned was moving sand to back fill the retaining wall.

The kids were having a grand time with "Ooblec", which is a science experiment that Annissa learned in science. It's two parts cornstarch and one part water. When mixed it has this strange ability to change back and forth between a solid and a liquid. If any pressure is applied it gets instantly solid, like a thick clay, but as soon as the pressure is released, it's instantly a drippy liquid. Very cool (and a bit messy, as I'm still finding it in nooks and cranny's. Although maybe I shouldn't blame it on the ooblec, rather the ones making it!)

This week, Tony and the guys have been working by the retaining wall that's between the Founders House and the Lumberjack lodge. Even after the work day, there was still much that needed to be filled. Then they started on the new path that will lead from the dorm down to the lake area. If you're familiar with camp, it's where the stairs are that now lead up to the Founder House. Tony is great at seeing how things could be with elevation changes. None of the rest of us would have been able to make this all make sense and work in a great way to control the flow of run off water, which is always a big concern. In the pic below, you can see where they made a path area that will lead to the stairs. It has retaining wall on the left. Eventually, the area on the right will be even (where there's a hump now) and that area will be blocked in as well, as the pitch there is pretty steep.

This is a closer shot.

This is from the bottom looking up the stairs. I just took this picture today, but it's already out of date as the retaining wall already goes across the stairs. This isn't all going to make sense, so you'll just have to figure it out with the future pictures.

Molly and I have both been in the Christmas mood. We both took advantage of the warm weather last week and hung up outside Christmas lights. Molly finished hers this week. Plus she's been working a bunch on the camper's Christmas cards. It takes time (and some racking of the memory) to figure out exactly which picture goes in each camper's card. Camp Daniel has been sending Christmas cards with a picture of each camper for years. Of course, every year the list gets longer and our memories are having a hard time keeping up!

I started putting up decorations in our house, which makes the kids very happy. I'm thinking that a fun December blog will have to be all pics of the staff houses Christmas decorations/trees.

The question was asked after the last blog about what the white rectangles are on the gable ends of the dorms. Good question, and maybe there's others wondering the same thing, so I thought I'd blog the answer. The white that you see is Tyvec house wrap. Those areas don't have any siding, but have a 2x4 frame around them. Each dorm has 4, one on each elevation. They will have a sign in them indicating which building each is. So the signs will say either "Lumberjack Lodge" or "Trapline Lodge". They each have lighting over them. I will be painting those this winter, and I'll be sure to blog them after they get hung. By each dorm room door is a place for a much smaller sign that will indicate the name of that room; Red Oak Cabin, White Birch Cabin, Bobcat Cabin, etc. Many of the Camp Daniel staff, after all these years, still don't know the names of the cabins at Lake Helen. So this will avoid that scenario when we have camp on our own grounds!

Saturday November 13

We have continued to excavate and smooth out dirt, and plant trees too. The area in the pic below is between the two dorms but closer to the Lumberjack Lodge (women's dorm, or one that's further along). Last weekend this was not ready to go. Tony did a bunch of excavating with the bulldozer to get proper pitch and elevation all around this dorm. It was then covered in about 4 inches of top soil, then planted with trees. We've pretty much established where the paths will be, so those areas are just sand. The planted areas are roped off to keep cars, golf carts and people off.I didn't get many pics in the last blog, so some of these are from last Saturday's work day. The shot below is from the Trapline Lodge (men's dorm) looking at Lumberjack Lodge. This was taken on a new burmed area.

The pic below is looking the same direction. Every tree you see was just planted in the past two weeks.

This picture is looking at the south end of the Trapline Lodge (men's). The road that goes around the property is on your right. Most of this area was planted with grass, but there are also many small trees in there as well.

This is standing on that road and looking north. You can see both dorms. This is what we call instant woods. It makes Little Tony very happy.

This is another shot of the burm that's next to the road by the Trapline Lodge.

Moving to the other end of the property: This view is taken from Jo and Tony's driveway. It's looking down on Lumberjack lodge. This was the area that Tony excavated.

This is George after I woke him up. George, and the rest us, all knew that 3 days of sunny 60 degree weather in November in this neck of the woods is something that must be appreciated and taken full advantage of. We all did a lot of last-time-before-it-snows cleaning up. Karol cleaned up a few more gardens, laid some concrete garden edging and took the tags off of all of the trees. Jen did some raking, and Marceaux was working on the tractor while it was warm. Tony was on the bulldozer until it was borrowed by someone. Tim and the guys did more work on Molly's roof as well.

Molly's roof is now pretty much all green. Still lots of trim and edging to do though.

Below is the garden area that was planted last weekend, and the brick edging put in this week.

The guys also worked on insulation in the Trapline Lodge. It's amazing how much little stuff there is to do when preparing for winter! We've put away the picnic tables, benches and all tables and chairs. Grills were put away. Leaves raked, gardens cut back, trees mulched, and the list goes on.

Sunday, November 7

shortly after the last blog, Tim and the guys installed the roof on the pump house portion of Molly's house. Then the rainy weather came, and they moved indoors, where they've done most of their work since. The men's dorm (Trapline Lodge) needs to be heated for winter. To get the heat going, it needed to be fully insulated. To insulate, all of the ceilings needed to be drywalled. Most rooms had been done, but the bathroom ceilings were done this past week. They finished insulating the walls as well. Then Tim rented a hopper machine that blows the insulation. It made quite a dusty mess. The guys had to take the plastic wrapping off of the bags then feed them into the machine, which blew it thru the hose, where Tim could direct the insulation.

The other big job done since the last blog, was planting of trees. Again this fall, we were blessed to get a huge donation of trees and shrubs from Green Bay Nursery. It has taken Tony and Tim many trips to Green Bay with the trailer to get the 140 plus trees and shrubs here. Also included in the donation, was 4 truck loads of mulch, and three loads of retaining wall block. Many of the trees were huge - not balled and burlapped, but with large metal cages around the root ball. Many of these trees weighed upwards of a couple hundred pounds! With each tree, we had to decide where to put it, dig a hole, remove sand from hole and replace with dirt, plant tree, water tree, and mulch. All of this 140 plus times! Tony and the guys got a lot done, then we had a work day on Saturday. Two college students from Concordia came and helped all of the Camp Daniel staff finish planting the trees. We got all of the trees in the ground, but some still need to be mulched. The job now will be getting them adequate water thru the fall. It's great to have instant forest with all of the large trees planted. We got a mix of deciduous and evergreen trees. The mix will give us great diversity. Dave Detloff also came up for the work day. He put up trim in the women's dorm.

Karol and Tim have been organizing the last work day of the year, which will be next Saturday.
Karol has also spent time finding fabric for the curtains in the Lumberjack Lodge. She wants to find fabrics for each dorm room that represent each room's theme. Some were found at a Green Bay fabric store, others will be ordered online.

Jen and Marceaux made it back safely from their trip to Montana. They had a Special Olympics bowling tournament last Sunday. One of the Able teams is moving on to state!

Jen, Marceaux, Molly and the rest from Able in Action did a service project. They raked leaves for an elderly woman from Living Hope Church. They also helped someone who needed help moving last Friday.

In addition to these Able activities, Molly's been doing some weeding, planting and fall clean up. She sent thank you notes to her supporters, and sent another newsletter/support letter to those on her mailing list. Every week Molly lays out and prints the bulletin for Able. And she was in charge of the women's bible study on the Tuesdays that Jen and Marceaux were gone.

Monday, October 25 2010

Tony spent a good 40+ hours over the past week on the Megarusalem room at church. It was never fully finished last year. Tony finished the mural that was started by a professional muralist, but never completed. With Karol's help two of the days, they also added a bunch of other details. I'll take pictures and blog them at a later date.

Tim, with the help of the guys, hung the cabinets and finished the shelves in the second dorm where the work shop will be. He's also hung shop lights in there, and started organizing all of the tools.

Dave Detloff came two days last week to finish the tongue and groove in the dorm room that he started a few weeks ago. That room is now ready for polyurethane and paint on the ceiling.

Molly's been working on editing pictures that she' taken for people.

Chrissy, with the help of Jen (before she left) printed labels for the 800 newsletters we had printed. They also had to put on the labels and organize all of them by zip code so that they could go out bulk mail.

Karol spent the better part of two days designing wood bunk beds for the dorms. There are two guys who have volunteered to build the beds for us, so it was time to nail down exactly what they should look like. It took online and code book research to get the overall dimension guidelines, then decisions had to be made on built in storage. Then precise plans were drawn up so that they could be built from the plans. Since it ended up being such a complex thing, we decided to have Tim build one prototype to make sure that all of the details are how we want them.

Before the rains set in, Tim and the guys started to reroof Molly's place. Nick and Richard took off some of the old roofing and the metal trim and edging. Then they were able to start putting on the metal roof.

We had a work day on Saturday. Mike Waldrop and Dave Detloff came for the day. They hung drywall on the ceilings in the second dorm.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Wow. We had probably the best work day ever last Saturday. We had a huge group, numbering over 35, from Cedar Grove, WI., and a smaller group of about 5 from West Bend. They got a ton of stuff done, and Tim did a great job of organizing so many different jobs and getting all of the tools ready for them. There were always at least 6 different jobs going at a time, so knowing that I'd never remember everything on my own, I took pictures of each.

Below, Marceaux is putting the finishing touches on the lift that he built for the washer and dryer that he and Jen will be using, located in their basement. He used treated lumber to build the platform that will keep the appliances off of the damp floor and any water that may end up there. Jen is excited at the prospect of not carrying her laundry up to the Hartley House every week!

They also started on the exterior of Molly's house. In the plans are a new roof and all new "siding". They started on the pump house, which was changed around last year. In the pic below, you can see a couple of ladies digging out the ground on the backside of the pump house. With the house being in the hill, there's always concern for proper water drainage. After digging out the dirt against the wall of the pump house, they put a plastic barrier against the wall to keep out ground water, then refilled the dirt with the proper pitch so the water will drain away from the building.

When comparing the pic above and below, you can see that the volunteers also firred and sheeted the exterior of the pump house, covering over where the old door had been.

They also firred and sheeted the exterior of the house that will be covered with cedar shakes. The entire exterior will basically be shakes and stone.

These guys spent the day doing masonry work. Richard mixed the mortar for them to apply the cultured stone to two of the porches on the Lumberjack Lodge (women's dorm). There's still one porch to go, then the mortar between the stones (like grout).

This gentleman worked mostly by himself in one of the unfinished bathrooms in the dorm. He drywalled the upper two feet of the room, then got a better part of the durarock (needed for tile) on the lower part of the walls.

The smaller crew from the West Bend church worked on the porch of the craft cabin (temporarily Jen and Marceaux') The did beautiful work on the tongue and groove that they put along the edge of the porch.

Looks good, huh?

Sorry, not the best picture in the world. This crew drywalled the ceilings in the dorm rooms of the Trapline Lodge (men's dorm). The Hartley House guys had already put up the plastic and much of the insulation and with the "lids" on, Tim can soon blow insulation into the ceilings, which is critical if we don't want to go broke heating this building this winter.

Below is our super speedy crew that installed the "buffalo board" (rigid sound insulation, so that future campers won't hear their neighbors snores in the night). On top of this board will be the tongue and groove. If I recall correctly, this crew got 3 1/2 rooms done.

Naturally, a fall work day is going to include raking leaves. And many a leaf did they rake! Molly and Jen headed up this crew, and I know that they were pretty pooped at the end of the day!

Raking this solid carpet of leaves made for a landscape of piles as far as the eye can see. A small crew used the tarp and pick up truck method to move the piles to the burn pile at the back of the property.
This gentleman worked with Dave Detloff, whom came up on a whim, on the tongue and groove in the room that Dave had started a couple of weeks ago. This is the last room in the Lumberjack Lodge that needed the tongue and groove. They didn't quite finish, so Dave came back yesterday and finished the job! Poly time.

A group of women started the day in the third room of the Lakeside Lodge. Karol had applied one coat of Polyurethane the previous week, so that they could start off by sanding the walls lightly, dusting off, and putting the second and final coat of polyurethane on the walls. This room will soon be used as a workout room. The circuit equipment we had donated a few years back has been in the nature center, but since that building isn't heated, it will be set up in this room. (Eventually, the equipment will be in a permanent exercise room in the new garage.)

The ladies also had to move an immense amount of tongue and groove from the dorm bathroom to the porch, then a pick up was pulled around and it was loaded into it to be moved to the other dorm where it will be used for the dorm room walls. The sand near this dorm was very soft, so both trips of wood that they loaded onto the truck weighed it down just enough that the truck, even in 4 wheel, couldn't get out without a tow from the bulldozer. It was worth it though because it was a lot of wood to move by hand.

These guys worked on trimming out the bathroom of the Birch cabin (black room in the Lumberjack Lodge)