when bruises make you cool

This past weekend Chrissy and I went up the hill on a junior high group snow trip with the church. We're in a small group with the couple that leads the group, and they needed some extra hands/eyes/older persons to help keep things on the up and up with about 25 or so junior highers. So that meant us. After a day of remembering how to/teaching kids to snowboard, another day of playing and tubing in the snow, a couple devotions, some stupid human tricks, etc., we're pretty sore and tuckered out, but we had a great time, let me tell you.

• We mediated radio station battles on the way up, mostly involving the pros and cons of the All-Disney station. Never in my life did I expect kids to be in a debate between AM and FM bands and have them all choose AM radio.
• I helped build the coolest snow fort I've ever seen---and all I did was dig where I was told. Seriously, it was six feet of snowball protection from trench bottom to wall top. Add in an actual tunnel, an ammunition closet and a staircase, and you'll know what I mean. And that was just the guys' fort. The girls had a twenty-foot long trench, complete with ergonomic snow seats. A World War I general would be proud.
• Those forts were later part of the most epic snowball fight I've been part of for as far back as I can remember. The only hitch came about halfway through, when one of the kids accidentally broke the "no snowballs above the shoulders" rule and clocked me with a direct hit to the forehead. It smarted a bit, but it was the open-mouthed looks I got that told me it was more serious than it felt. Needless to say, the band-aid on my forehead has had me tell the story many times in the past two days.
• Chrissy won the group over when the plastic sled she was riding slid her directly into a tree. It was one of those crashes that you just knew wasn't a good one. You should see the tape. But fortunately the sled made most of the noise, and she walked away from it with "just" a hefty bruise on her leg. But the way the junior highers tell it, the sled might as well have deployed air bags.
• What else? It was camp! There was spaghetti, worship songs, arguments about pool tables, pre-teen flirting, glow-in-the-dark football, criminal background checks, a one-upping water-balancing competition, and surprisingly good coffee.

We had a great time. It'll take us all week to recover.