I know I’ve been slacking on my blogging, but it’s for good reasons. I swear! Summer got a little bit crazy with a couple of weddings and a bunch of camps and all sorts of things of that nature.

I figured you might like a State of Oz to know I’m still around. I did one last week on my photoblog, but I haven’t done anything over here. Bad journaling! Bad!

So I thought I’d do a post and try to give you a fat stack of information as quickly as possible. So here’s the highlights reel:

Girls Camp: I survived, but barely! Heat stroke has made this record tying/breaking summer a wee bit miserable. Good news is I stayed busy to counteract it. Girls Camp was put on by my Church for girls in the area ages 12-18. I’ve never been to anything like this before and we’ll just leave it at "interesting". I guess now I can say I’ve been there and done that. I’m sure the girls had great amounts of fun but it just reminded me how much I’m really not into roughing it! Oz and camping = not a good mix. I need my creature comforts like found at the glorious Marriott hotels! It’s all right. I knew I was a pampered princess before going to Girls Camp, so this wasn’t really news to me.

Reading Update: I’m currently listening to one audio book and reading one ebook. I’ve completed 59 books in 2010. I still have a long ways to go to get through the huge stack of books. I’ll do an end of season post later. I will say that the bulk of those books were read this summer. Getting sick (or going into the woods) will do that for you.

Boys: We’ve slacked on school this summer because of many camp opportunities. What kinds of things have they experienced? Caramon went fishing for a week at the Outer Banks. Joram went to his second sewing camp and made a really cool quilt.

Both boys went to Scout Camp and had a blast. They earned merit badges for things like basket making and leatherworking. Caramon earned a badge for small boat sailing and motor boating. He has decided he likes watery goodness! Caramon also participated in COPE which was a athletic adventure with obstacle courses and whatnot. Joram buckled down and earned six other merit badges. He earned: Weather, Environmental Science, Space Exploration, Canoeing, Rifle, and Orienteering.

We live about half an hour from AP Hill so the boys also attended parts of Jamboree this year. They didn’t get in as participants but they went four days in a row! While there they experienced a lot of Armed Forces things, a recreation of the first Scout camp, a wild west adventure, played with robots, and they fell in love with patch trading! Also, they each earned three merit badges: Geology, Genealogy, and Engineering! The last thing they did at Jambo was earn the George Albert Smith Award!

In case anyone is wanting a Boy Scout Update: Joram is wrapping up his Second and First Class ranks and has a whopping 13 merit badges! Not bad for a kid not quite 12! Caramon has decided on an Eagle Scout Project and is lost in paperwork nightmares with that. He’s also now earned 36 merit badges and will be 14 in October! (In case you want to know, there’s a total of 126 Merit Badges not counting the four special ones for this year only. That means Caramon has earned more than a quarter of them!)

One of the other fun things the boys did this year was attend Ferrum College Summer Enrichment Camp for the second year. Caramon took classes in: CSI (the second level), Ferrum Challenge (another one like COPE), Cooking, and Living in the 1800s. Joram took classes in: Drama, Ferrum Challenge, Living in the 1800s, and CSI (the first level). These were super imformative. I think one of the things they enjoyed most was the blacksmithing (1800s) and the zip lines (Ferrum Challenge)!

Of course all of this has left Mom barely able to keep up with life. Especially since I also attended Youth Conference, a special retreat for the teens from our Church ages 14-17. That was an AMAZING event that I got to not only attend but photograph. Wow. I left flat out exhausted but my testimony of God greatly enriched.

So to say I’ve been busy would be an understatement. At least the activities have been good as well as exciting!

–Lady Ozma