Monday, January 25

Well, during the winter, there's not much in the way of physical work to put on the blog, so I thought I'd share Annissa's 13th birthday bedroom redo. Well, what's been done so far anyways.
This is her room before. This is the "inspiration". Bedding we found online. The background is chocolate brown, but you can't see it in the pic.

Who doesn't like an orange ceiling?

The walls and edge of the ceiling are an off white. The teal border is wallpaper that was already there, it just matched the light blue of the walls and ceiling before. Now it definitely pops. My neck was "popping" after painting that!

In addition to the teal and orange, we bought purple and an olivey-limey green. (if crayola made that color, I'm sure it'd have a better name) We decided on stripes. (There's stripes on the reverse of the comforter and the little pillow. see pic above) The silver and yellow contraption in the foreground is a laser lever thing. You adjust it til it's level, set the height and a red laser light spins around the room perfectly level. I used that line to apply the blue painter's tape. This job would have taken about 3 times as long without it. (Actually, now that I think about it, the job wouldn't have even been tackled without it!)

Here's Annissa applying coat 2 of 3 in the purple. Only a true fashionista wears clothes to match the paint job!

Here's a closer shot before it was done. A purple stripe is now adjacent to the orange.

After we moved the furniture back.

There's still much to do. Annissa wants her name painted above the closet doors. The closet doors still need to be painted. An upholstered headboard and a scrapbooking paper bulletin board are also on the to do list. Annissa is very excited with the results thus far, and will surely keep on me until it's all done. I'll be sure to show you some pics when we get further along.

Saturday, January 23

Molly
Last week Molly worked on the Able Church bulletin and postcards for the Able Valentine dinner. She spend some time writing thank you notes to her supporters, and she continued her work on putting together a Bible study on Corrie Ten Boom that she will be starting soon with the girls. This week Molly went to the Weidners from Tuesday night after Able Family Night til Friday evening before Able Church. She forgot how much toddlers can wear a person out!

Tim and the Guys
They've been working in the women's dorm installing drywall on the ceilings and insulating. Tim met with the "heating guy" this week. They'll be installing the heat next week, which is great news because it's not too warm in there, plus we have many work days coming up.

Did you catch that? Work days will involve a heated interior.....how can you NOT come and help???

Jen and Marceaux
Last week Jen gave the Hartley House guys haircuts. She and Marceaux visited with some campers between working on Able Church stuff and fixing Weidner's van. Like Molly, Jen sent out thank you's to supporters and volunteer drivers for Able. Jen did the sermon at Able last Friday too.

Tony
Last week Tony tied up alot of loose ends before leaving for Florida. He also spent many a day cleaning his office and getting his new computer ready to use. If you've had the pleasure of an encounter with Little Tony's office, you may understand the full extent of the job. Tony left for Florida on Wednesday. He is staying with Jim and Rhonette Hukill. On Thursday he attended a meeting with leaders in the LIFT Disability Ministry Network. On Friday the Northland Church Disability Conference started and Tony taught one breakout session the first night. Saturday the conference continued and he participated as part of a 3 person panel to answer questions on disability ministry agenda. Saturday night he went to a dinner with other disability leaders and pastors that included disability ministry pioneer Ginny Thornburgh (who's article appears in the Christianity Today This month) and pastor Joel Hunter of Northland Church. Sunday morning he will travel to the coast to preach at The Special Gathering Chapels and spend the evening with Linda Howard, Richard Stimson and Carmine Dibiase who are Special Gathering Pastors and all have been Camp Daniel Speakers. Monday he will be getting together with Joni and Friends Regional Coordinators and having a birthday dinner for Laura Lee Wright with the Hukills.

Karol
Karol worked last week painting a living room for a friend of a friend. She's been getting some things organized for camp and just doing lots of little stuff like taking DJ to the doctor for a check up. Since Tony left she's been painting Annissa's room. She wanted her room redone for her birthday, which is February 1st. I'll blog some pics for the next blog. It's taking longer than expected and the "to do list" isn't shrinking fast enough considering she's leaving for Florida on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday, January 12

We're hoping to purchase the below pictured vehicle. It's a Dodge Sprinter. Tony's had his heart on one for quite a while, because it's such a great fit for our needs. It's a turbo diesel, so it get great gas mileage for it's size, which is large. This one has seating for 9, plus an additional 8' in the back where we can install a wheelchair lift and a couple of tie downs. The ceiling is raised to accommodate standing room. The van, which type is hard to come by, is available thru a dealer in Green Bay. Lucas, from LHC, works at the dealership and is helping us out. We recently rec'd a donation of a large dump truck (requiring a CDL to drive) so Lucas is trying to sell that for us so that we can get closer to affording the van. As you probably know, Camp Daniel doesn't take on any debt, so we need the entire purchase amount up front. If you're familiar at all with the chaos that is driving people around here, you'll appreciate how needed a vehicle is that can accommodate more than 7. We often have to take multiple vehicles to church, Able events, etc.

This past weekend, many of us took turns running a booth for Camp Daniel at an Evangelical Free youth conference in Green Bay. Molly and her parents have been involved for many years, so Molly suggested that we could advertise to get counselors there. We were one of about 30 booths, ranging from camps, to colleges to Compassion Int'l, to books for sale. We made small brochures and stapled them to individually wrapped cookies and let the kids take them. We gave out about a thousand. There were about 3,000 kids there. We also had a few sign up for add'l information. We'll be following up with those people, plus all of the youth pastors that were participating in the weekend's activities. Of course, we saw the Three Lakes E-Free group, led by Eli, there. We're hoping to get one youth group interested in a Camp Daniel missions trip.

Otherwise, Jen and Marceaux have been doing a lot of visiting of campers lately. Marceaux always seems to have some vehicle that needs something done. Right now its the plow truck. Some switch went out on the 4 wheel drive. It's extremely difficult to plow in 2 wheel, especially with all of the ice we've had. Gotta love it.

Tim and the guys have been working in the dorms putting up insulation. The goal is to get the one dorm all drywalled, then blow in insulation, so that we can heat the building. There are workdays planned for the 13, 20, 27 of February, that will be centered around the one dorm.

Saturday, January 2

Happy New Year from all of us at Camp Daniel!

We celebrated New Year's Eve with campers, Amanda, Crystal and Sarah. Amanda's family brought them all here and visited with us for a few hours. The girls spent the night at Molly/Jen's. We played games, ate junk food and watched funniest home videos. Then we all slept in the next day.

Yesterday, the Kelly's ended their 26 hour journey from Montana and ended safely at home. We all miss them, but are glad that they had a good time visiting Tim's family for Christmas. In the morning, Tony went to their home to bring their dog, Patch, back and plow them out.

In the afternoon everyone left to go to Able, where we're still being stretched. Molly led worship, and did a great job.

Marceaux was busy this week. He helped Tim Mandich with mechanic work on his car, did the bible study with the guys, and joined Jen and Tim M. at Aspiro. Tuesday they went there to have lunch with many of our campers. It was Tim and Marceaux's first time, so they got the full tour. The trips to Aspiro have been a great way to keep in contact with campers, get new campers and even some volunteers. The workers and volunteers at Aspiro all know and like Jen, so she's been the face of Camp Daniel to many of these people.

Jen is still working quite regularly in pound doing therapy.

Tony set up an email account for Marceaux. It's marceaux@campdaniel.org He also spent made a blog for Jen and Marceaux. It's jennymarc.blogspot.com Check it out! Also this week, Tony spent a bunch of time working on a brochure for the 3rd annual Mega Super Bowl party that Living Hope Church. It's a great blend of newcomers to Mega, long time attendees of Living Hope and Able Church members.

Everyone seems to be catching up on paperwork this week. Lots of bills, forms, and budgets are flying around!

The kids are enjoying their time off of school. Anthony's been doing science experiments that he finds on youtube and Annissa's been relishing in sleeping in every morning. One of her highlights has been the sleepover she had with best friend Ruth Hucek, her sister Grace, and Emily Neitzer. Emily and Grace were both counselors last year at camp and the younger girls really look up to them.