Happy campers!

Last weekend we had our annual Parish Family Camp. 33 adults and 28 children came together for a fantastic couple of days. Our youngest camper was 8 months old, and our oldest was 96! Go Ruby!

Our weekend was Olympic themed. First everyone was put into teams. Each team had to create a country and come up with its name, national anthem and flag. Our games opened with a march past, singing of each team's anthem, the taking of the oath by the athletes, and of course the Olympic torch relay!

‘Fagamalama carries the Olympic torch

Dylan, Leah, Deija and James take the Olympic Oath on behalf of all the athletes.

The events ranged from Javelin (with swimming noodles), Parchery (archery with paper!), Shot Put (throwing water balloons at Dave!), Discus (gumboot toss), and a Pentathlon which included three-legged races, piggy-back races and egg and spoon races.

The grand finale was hilarious... each team presented a dry-land version of an Olympic Synchronised Swimming routine! (You'll have to wait for the video for that one!)

There was one casualty unfortunately, one of the horses was injured during the equestrian event and is now hobbling around on crutches. (Hope you're feeling better soon, Bee!)

Saturday afternoon saw a new record breaking water-slide by Kerry (Johnny came a very close second!) and the record for the doubles was taken out by Philomena and James. Wahoo!

Philomena had us all sharing our most embarrassing stories as part of our Saturday night entertainment, which was followed by a game of Spotlight for the night owls among us.

We all put together a creative church service on Sunday morning, which included some fantastic live music with guitars, ukuleles, percussion and we even learnt some Tongan children's songs (thanks Ronnie and team!) The drama team, expertly led by willing volunteer Johnny, performed the Mem Fox story, 'Koala Lou' about a koala bear who enters the Bush Olympics.

We were extremely well looked after by our Waipara Master Chefs, who made sure we were very well fed with tasty, healthy food to keep us high performance athletes fueled, and special Olympic chilled water (with orange/lime slices and mint) to keep us hydrated. There were even ice-cream cones after the water-slide rides! Delicious!

We also celebrated three birthdays over the weekend, which meant three cakes! Happy birthday to Richard, Leilani and Andrew.