January 25, 2011

Sorry, but this blog update won't have any pictures. I've been in Arizona for a week helping my mom around the house after her second hip replacement. I'm so glad she had it done in January!! I just wish I could bottle up the sunshine to bring home with me to share with the Camp Daniel staff! They've been working in the supreme cold this past week. So here's a brief rundown:
Well, I should start with something that happened before I left; Matt Mandich and his son came to camp to give a lesson in welding, which is something that Tony, Marceaux and Tim all only kinda knew how to do. They were able to practice and learn many tricks and techniques. We have 2 kinds of welders, so now it's good to have people that can use them properly!
The Sunday before left, we were all excited to witness Patty Truetinger (camper and Mega and Able attendee) baptised. We've really seen great integration into Living Hope Church. Patty was surrounded by people from Living Hope that love her and are actively involved in Able and camp. Really, it's just how it should be. Also getting baptised that day, were Sara Gillstrom and Brian Suess, both of whom are very active in Camp Daniel and Able. We love them all, and were blessed to witness such a meaningful expression of faith.
Jen has been working doing occupational therapy. She's also been planning the Able winter retreat that we'll be having in February. She's been trying to track down winter sports gear, including broom ball, cross country skis and snow shoes. We're trying to keep the price as low as possible, so Jen's been trying to find inexpensive places to get some equipment. She and Marceaux stopped at Lake Lundgren to talk with them about their equipment. They got some good tips. Jen's also been working on the Dance for Disability. We were originally looking at September, but June is now being considered. Jen and those involved with Special Olympics, went to a basketball tournie last Saturday.
Marceaux has been doing bible studies with the guys. He also worked on getting the two school buses running smooth, as we had a church from lower Michigan drive up to buy them. So, Senior is happy to have those eye sores off the property, and the rest of the testosterone is excited to have more money in the skidsteer fund.
Molly has spent the past week babysitting at the Kocian's. She has been working on some photos that she took as a side job. Of course, she's still doing lot for Able, including Tuesday night bible study and prep work for the winter retreat.
Tim finished plastering the two dorm baths last week. Then he got a first coat of poly on the fourth bedroom. On Tuesday, during our staff meeting, the guys sanded that first coat, then Tim and I got the second coat on. Later last week, he brought the guys to a town near Stevens Point, to help Micah Weidner, whom was heading up packing a moving van for a family moving to Texas. The family is already there, as the dad has been seriously ill, and is seeing specialists in Austin; but all of their stuff was still here. After the truck was loaded, Micah drove it to Texas, then was planning on flying back. Tim was planning for a work day last Saturday, but it was cancelled on short notice. Sunday was all about football. The trash talk is flying as the crazy Green Bay fans take on Tony and family, whom are fans of the Super Spectacular, although underdog Pittsburgh Steelers. It's gonna be a fun two weeks! Tim also brought in the plow to get fixed and ordered doors for the dorm. We buy as we go to make the money go as far as possible. As leader of the youth group at Living Hope, Tim and Chrissy have been planning for a ski outing and a winter retreat. Both taking place at the end of this week.

Monday, January 17

Sorry it's been so long since I've blogged! But here we are, with a bunch of catching up to do. During Christmas, we generally don't work on big projects. We all took time to visit with family and friends, and really enjoy the holidays. The Kelly's were in Montana for two weeks visiting family. Molly visited with her parents at Camp Daniel, and in Eagle River. Jen and Marceaux did a lot of visiting in the Green Bay area. Of course, we had people at the Hartley House many times throughout the holidays.
The Able Church, as per usual, added a bunch of special events and activities during the holidays. One was cookie making one Sunday after church. Then on the following Tuesday, the group brought the cookies to a group home. While there, they sang carols and did the bell choir.
Jen has been working hard with Special Olympics basketball. She and the others involved in Able have been planning more special events for the summer and fall. Able is hosting a winter retreat in February, so Jen's been working on logistics of that.
Marceaux has been working on both snowblowers, here at Camp Daniel. He changed the battery on the bus, and also took the last load of garbage to the dump. I say "last load" because we finally got a dumpster from Waste Management. Marceaux is still doing Bible study with the Hartley House guys. He helped Tim with plaster in the dorms last week. Also, Marceaux is taking a homestudy course on mechanics.
Molly has been working with Able. And she has also been helping the Kocian's and the Weidner's with babysitting. Since she's good with all goods, and truly awesome with kids with disabilities, she's become the go to person for these families. Also over the holidays, Molly was given the opportunity to speak at her old church in Eagle River, to share about being a missionary at Camp Daniel. Right now, Molly is at her parents, recovering from strep.
Since the Kelly's got back from their Montana trip, Tim has mainly been working in the dorm bathrooms. With help from the guys, they did prep work and two coats of plaster in two baths in the Lumberjack Lodge. This week, he's polyurethaning the walls in the fourth bedroom in that same dorm.
After finally getting all of the Christmas decorations down, Karol started doing some work on camp crafts.
Last Thursday, Tony and Tim went to a Lion's club function in Wausaukee. They did a 15 minute presentation, and thanked the men for the support that they've given Camp Daniel.

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.