If you ever went to summer camp as a kid, you know the feeling. That last week hits different. There are talent shows, bonfires, inside jokes you will carry for years, and that bittersweet countdown to the bus ride home. Turns out you don't need a lake or a mess hall to get that feeling. You just need to work at Better Bookkeepers during the last week of August, right as summer was winding down and school buses were gearing back up. For the first time ever, our annual Retreat Week landed at the true tail end of summer, and let me tell you, it delivered camp energy in the best imaginable way.
Photo by: Lenora Stein Photography
I kicked off the month with a trip to North Dakota, soaking up quality family time. The trip home was its own adventure. A delayed flight and a layover that stretched five hours meant getting back to Houston took a lot longer than planned, and I was thoroughly done with air travel for a while. Later in the month, we dove into our fourth Lunch & Learn of 2026, hosted at The Woodlands Chamber. Our guest speaker was Mike Totah, founder and CEO of Outcome Orbit AI. He's spent nearly 30 years in tech, including stints at Dell and Google Cloud, figuring out how to make AI practical for businesses that don't have a Silicon Valley budget. His tagline says it best: Growth, Automated. In a room full of bookkeepers who spend our days making sure numbers make sense, it was refreshing to hear that AI does not have to be scary, it just has to be useful.
Then came the big one: Retreat Week. If you're new around here, Retreat Week is sacred. It's the one time a year our entire team, every Director, Team Lead, bookkeeper, and admin are under one roof at the same time. Lynn flew in from the East Coast, Heidi swapped her home office for a desk in the bullpen, and for five days, BBK felt like one big, slightly chaotic family reunion. Oh yeah, did I mention each day has its own theme? Monday - Sports Day, Tuesday – Disney Day (a few us of decided to go the Villain route this year), Wednesday – BBK Green Day (because YES, we wear green on Wednesdays), Thursday – Twin Day, and Friday – Hawaiian Day.
Monday started strong with Megan Alarid from Heightened Leaders, who taught us how to stop waiting for growth to happen and start chasing it down ourselves. She paired us off into accountability partners for the next 90 days, so consider yourselves warned. We're all checking in on each other now. A mystery prankster left a red squishmallow sitting out just to torment Jennifer (Gerald the cardinal, is that you?). He was repeatedly attacked by her with a nerf gun, but to her disappointment, he survived every dart. Possum stickers and notepads mysteriously appeared for Cindy, who is deeply, sincerely terrified of possums and should never have told us. That afternoon we headed to Brkthrough, where we were split into random teams of four for two hours of intense competition. My team, (myself, Crystal, Rebecca, and Gail), crowned ourselves "The Chosen Ones," and in a plot twist nobody saw coming (except us, obviously), we won. We closed out the day at Chuy's for Happy Hour because nothing bonds a team quite like cold drinks and hot queso.
Tuesday looked completely different. We spent the day volunteering with Compassion United, a Montgomery County nonprofit that started with two people feeding the homeless out of their car and has since grown into one of the most comprehensive support ministries in the area. We served lunch to their friends and heard firsthand what it takes to run outreach on this scale. It was humbling, it was grounding, and it was exactly the kind of reminder we needed about what really matters.
Wednesday was a lighter day, which was perfect, because it was also my BIRTHDAY!! We spent most of it working and taking turns in front of the camera recording content for social media (you'll be seeing us soon). The best part of the day? The Shenanigators (you both know who I'm talking about) set me up perfectly. We'd been filming a reel where you shoot a Kleenex box off someone's head, and I was walking back through the bullpen with a lighter target when I see Jennifer standing there, phone up, saying, “Come here, I have to show you something!' I should have known better. She had that same too-giddy smile she gets when she's sitting on a scheme, but target practice was calling, so I brushed it off. One step past the first desk, an ear-ringing BANG went off. I screamed, jumped, and threw some kind of ninja kick before I even registered there was confetti raining down all around me. Touché, Shenanigator crew. Shots have been fired. Retribution is coming. Still, hands down the best part of my birthday this year. There may or may not have been nerf gun wars breaking out around the office later that day and in the week. I will neither confirm nor deny my involvement.
Thursday started early with our client appreciation breakfast at Black Walnut Café, a small way of saying thank you to the people who trust us with their books. The mood shifted later that day when Sheriff Ashlie Wilson joined us for an active attacker training. It is a hard truth that this kind of training is necessary in the world we live in, and watching real footage from past events was heavy. There wasn't a dry eye in the room more than once. We left with a better understanding of how to protect each other, and honestly, a deeper appreciation for the people we get to do that for. On a lighter note, the Team Leads dressed up as Sour Patch kids for twin day. Yes, it is safe to assume that multiple confetti cannons were launched that afternoon as well. And yes, I believe they may be banned now.
Friday started with a short workday, but it came with its own field trip: Crystal, Cindy, Melanie Bush, and Jennifer headed out to the LMC Luncheon and came back with real food for thought. Dr. Makai's question stuck with everyone: is this going to contribute or contaminate? They also came back repeating a line about leadership: you can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility. From there, we headed to Bush's house for drinks, laughter, and genuinely unhinged rounds of Left, Right, Center. A few of us hatched a plan to change into pajamas once we got there, just to plant the idea that we were staying the night. And in the boldest move of the evening, Christina strutted in wearing a full inflatable shark costume and, in an act of true stealth, smuggled Fred into the house right past Bush's very intentional bag check. To this day, Bush has no idea how he got in. We're not telling.
Summer camp always ends the same way: tired, a little sunburned, and closer to the people you spent it with than when you started. Retreat Week is no different. We laughed, we cried (both from Sheriff Wilson's training and from losing at Left, Right, Center), we grew, and we remembered exactly why we love who we work with. As we trade Retreat Week for the season when school starts back up and head into the last stretch of 2026, I'm grateful for a team that can go from a heartfelt volunteer morning to a full-blown shark costume heist in the same week and make it all feel like home.
See you next month for the next chapter of BBK Backstage!