Happy Wednesday to all of our ILC families!   How excited are you for tomorrow’s big patriotic holiday?  Can somebody say “no work and long weekend?”  Ok, that doesn’t occur for us here at camp but we’re getting pretty pumped for tomorrow’s 4^thof July festivities.  We have some great annual traditions planned such as our morning breakfast speech, music lunch, dinner cookout, and then an outdoor rock concert and huge firework display at sunset.  It’s always fun seeing everyone dress up in their patriotic colors to represent their countries, Americans and overseas staff.  I’ll fill you in with more details tomorrow.  I’ll also blog photos of the kids at music lunch all decked out in their red, white, and blue.

All of us here at ILC hope you’re enjoying our social media updates so you can feel as if you are part of the excitement at camp this summer.  As a reminder, you can find us on the following websites:

1. Daily blogs here on our website
2. Daily tweets on Twitter (twitter.com/IslandLakeCamp)
3. Short videos and photos on our Facebook page (facebook.com/IslandLakeCamp)
4. Photo posts and stories on Instagram (com/islandlakecampofficial)
5. And of course, our daily photos on Waldo and weekly videos on youtube. We’ll send you links for the videos so you can find and view them easily.

This morning we awoke to cloudy skies and temps in the upper 60’s.  The mornings are starting to warm up as summer progresses.  Today we hit a high of around 80 degrees in the afternoon hours with partly cloudy (or shall I say “partly sunny”) skies which became mostly sunny by the time I posted this.

During the morning activities our little 5^thgrade and younger girls went to another camp to play in the Wayne County Soccer Tournament.  They played well, had fun, scored some great goals, but ultimately they lost by only 2 goals.

Today’s riddle is the following:  I come with tales that could not be.  Of wondrous visions the eyes can’t see.  My fables birthed from what you know; yet when I leave they too will go.  What am I?  Here is a reminder of yesterday’s riddle with the answer:  A sundial is the timepiece with the fewest moving parts. Which timepiece has the most moving parts?  Answer: an hourglass!  Props to Dana M. for sending me the correct answer (without googling it I hope!)

Tonight’s evening activity is an all camp Counselor Hunt.  Each counselor has a sealed envelope and inside is their point value.  Counselors are worth positive or negative points, all of different values.  They run and hide around camp (outside of buildings only and not up in trees), and our campers have to run around camp, find counselors, and bring them back to the gym.  At the end each bunk finds out the point values of the counselors they find and a winner is announced.  The group leaders are adding a little edge to the game with some riddles to allow bunks to “steal” counselors and their points from other bunks.  It’s a fun game that should tire our campers out before we put them to bed.  You’re welcome! (Wait, they’re OUR responsibility now!)

After evening activity we have our very first ETB of the summer.  For those of you new to Island Lake, ETB stands for Early To Bed.  This means that the canteen is closed so all campers will go back to their bunks directly after evening activity to get a good night’s rest.  On a personal note, I have to admit it’s one of my favorite nights of the week. Hehe!

Today’s special feature is CIRCUS!  Have a great evening and until tomorrow when we celebrate our nation’s independence from our friends on the other side of the pond, ILCUTHERE!