sarah mcVey: Sibs and Glacier.

Man Alive! I am on a roll with this blogging thing today, guess that's what you get for having pink eye and being stuck in isolation for 24 hours huh? dang it. butttt I drove to deer lodge and got myself some special eye drops and I will be back with my girlies tomorrow!

I'm getting ahead of myself though, I need to cover last week!!! So, last week was Sibling camp. It is specifically for kids ages 6-17 that have a sibling or parent that had/has cancer and even though the campers don't have cancer, this is one of our most important camps because a lot of the time, the focus is on the person in the family that is sick, so the other siblings and kids sort of take a back seat and this week at camp is for them. This week is all about them, what they want and how they feel. Its actually the most insane week here at camp too because on average we have about 40-50 campers... we had 62 this week. They seem to have unlimited amounts of energy and it never runs out. I was back in Pintler and will be there for the rest of the summer, I had 16 girls ranging from my littlest which was 6 to my oldest which was 14..... quite the age rage you say? yes. yes it was. It was pretty intense trying to entertain a 6 year old, a 10 year old and a 14 year old all at the same time but some how, we managed. I had 4 volunteers again, one of which had been at camp for the two weeks prior to sibs camp as well and became a really great friend and lifesaver because shocker shocker, I was down for about 36 hours last week with some kind of fever/flu/stomach issues where I was stuck in the Health Center laying on the floor trying not to throw up, one of the little camper boys was sick too so we watched Despicable Me and played some slap jack. Everyone was really sweet when I was sick though, I woke up to cute notes from all the girls in my cabin and had tons of visitors including one of my new really good friends that came by to read me some ab work outs from the Men's Health Magazine during his break. super nice! besides being sick and not eating anything for about 72 hours, the week was just as awesome as every other week so far this summer! Run down of activities... first of all I am just saying that we won the Golden Plunger for the cleanest cabin on the first day... Go Pintler! I spent some time with the older girls doing the high ropes course and actually got to go up and help guide them around from the post I was on for most of last summer, it was fun to be back up there! My girlies loved the horses like always and I actually got to zipline with my little 6 year old, pretty neat. We volunteered at the marathon in Missoula and then spent the day at the water park called Splash Montana and I spent the majority of my day on the lazy river with some crazy campers that made sure I went directly under every single waterfall (they thought it was pretty funny) and going down some pretty legit water slides. Of course it rained on camp out night which is totally a bummer so I let all my girls sleep in the common room of our cabin only to discover they were planning a farting war. side note: one thing I cannot control my laughter with is farting, needless to say this was not only my highlight of the week but I may have been egging them on just a little bit. let me tell you, there was quite a bit of talent in my cabin. Tons of other awesome experiences this week including an epic water fight, getting pie thrown in my face, dance party, early morning fishing (still no fish. lame. need your help dad!), getting chased and tackled by the entire little boys cabin only to get dog piled on over and over again, and playing some ultimate go fish and poker games. I will leave it there because this is getting pretty long, I will end this one with a quote that may not mean much to anyone but me... there was a girl in my cabin that was very very home sick all week and informed me on day one that she was planning on being sad all week and not having any fun- before she left, she gave me a hug and said "even though I probably won't come back next year, I actually had fun today."

After all those crazy cats left, staff packed up their stuff and headed to Glacier National Park for the most amazing camping trip I have been on in a long time. Glacier is the most beautiful place in the entire world, I have never seen anything like it! So we showed up and went on three of the best hikes I have ever been on in my life. The first one was completely snow covered so we had to trek through snow the whole way and we got in a very intense snowball fight. We also got super close to some mountain goats- I probably could have reached out and slapped its butt but it had a baby with it and real sharp horns so I resisted the urge. Also on our trip, we got about 15 feet away from both a moose and a black bear, super amazing! Then we went on a 10 mile hike (yeah sounds long and miserable) that took us to the coolest glacier I have ever seen in my life! Totally worth every mile. Then on the last day, it was pouring rain and on the way back to camp, Blake, Amy and I stopped and did some mini cliff jumping. another really great break with great friends.