Working on the second Crest O' the Wave sock. I'm hoping to finish these this weekend. I'm on a wanting-to-finish kick - if I get these socks finished, I think I'm going to pick Zelda back up and try to do more on the sleeves.

Spent all day yesterday out on a field trip. We took the Youth Group kids up to Chickasaw National Recreation Area, a national park about an hour away. (It's free to get in - and there aren't any lines. Much better, in my mind, than the water park we went to last year).

We had 11 kids and five chaperones. We really didn't need that many, the kids are really well behaved. For example, some older kids (not with our group) were climbing a tree and jumping off of it into one of the swimming holes. Our kids REEEEAAAALLLY wanted to (I could tell) but they came and asked me first. And when I told them no, because we were responsible for them and didn't want anyone to get hurt, and if someone did get hurt, we'd all have to leave, they went along with it. They were kind of sad, but they didn't try to sneak over to the tree or anything.

I will say it's really heartening, in such a technological age, with Game Boys and mp3 players and all that, the amount of enjoyment a bunch of kids can have sliding down mossy rocks into a pool of cold water. Their teeth were chattering (the water really must have been COLD - I didn't go in because I'm so prone to ear infections that I decided I didn't want to risk it) but they kept going in.

I think they got a total of almost 6 hours of swimming in a couple different places. We fed them lunch midday, and then bought ice cream cones for anyone who wanted them on the way home.

It wasn't the funnest day for me - lots of sitting around, and the occassional shout-out to remind people not to jump in the water when there was someone right under them - but I did it anyway. I did it not so much because of it being a day of Fellowship or any of those kind of high-minded things, but mainly because I liked the thought of these kids, 20 or 30 years later, thinking back and remembering the fun day when they got to go swimming in the middle of summer. Not even so much that they remember ME or any of the other chaperones, fondly or otherwise, or think of the people who came up with the trip or organized it - but so that they could remember going swimming in the summer when they were kids. A few of them, as I've said before, come from somewhat challenging backgrounds, some of them are already working on a youth-training program (but they were able to get the day off for a church activity), some of them have problems in school. So it's nice to be able to see them just being kids for a day, jumping in the cold water.

I look back on a lot of the things I got to do as a kid fondly - I remember the times (and this was when I was REALLY small; my brother was just a baby in a Snugli) we went out hiking as a family. And I remember my parents taking me to the library. And I remember my mom driving us to Cascade Park when we were kids (a small city park with a tiny waterfall) so we could look for salamanders and stuff. And I remember getting to go with my friends to a swimming area called Silver Springs. And I remember going fishing with my mom's best friend, and going to catch turtles and tadpoles in her pond. And while I know some of the kids get to go fishing and stuff, I think some of them don't get a whole lot of just plain unstructured time to have fun.

And you know, that's kind of sad - I mean, piano lessons and baseball league and all that are very nice, but I think kids do need a certain amount of "downtime" to go and look at bugs or squish in the mud or make "noses" out of the fruits from maple trees. 'Cos when you're an adult, if you've not learned how to have downtime, I think it's hard.