The End of August

The rest of August brought many fun moments. We enjoyed the first rain of the season.

We continued to pick lots of blackberries. One day while Mary and Hannah were picking with me, they decided to squeeze into the stroller together.

 We went to the school library for the first time and enjoyed lots of new books.

First Day of School

We celebrated the first day of school with a banner and cookies. We're homeschooling through Mountain Home School this year. Mary is starting first grade and David is starting preschool.

 The kids had lots of fun mixing primary colors to make orange, green, and purple icing for our cookies at the end of the day.

Grandpa and Grandma's House

The kids and I headed down to the valley to stay at Dad and Mom's house for a few days. They got to play with playdough.

They also had lots of fun playing in the sprinkler and getting all wet.

On Friday, we went to the Trevinos' house. The kids played with the cousins while Dad, Mom, and I helped with the great Trevino remodel. They are in the middle of remodeling their kitchen and replacing most of the flooring with vinyl flooring. We spent the day putting down flooring.

 We made a lot of progress, but it still felt like a lot to do. They were able to finish up the flooring the following day though while the kids and I headed home.

Still Summer

 

It was a little jarring to realize that summer wasn't actually over even though the summer season at camp ended. We made the most of the late summer days though with lots of reading and blackberry picking.

The kids are getting good at picking berries.

Mary has been interested in volcanoes lately, so one afternoon she read to us about volcanoes then we built a volcano and watched it erupt.

The kids then made their own volcano that erupted over the living room multiple times.

The End of Summer

The final week of camp for the summer was a little more relaxed. The kids decided to color themselves with chalk.

We found the first ripe blackberries on our way to breakfast one morning.

I found both girls with books.

For our final Friday dinner, we all went up to Outpost and Christina cooked Outpost pizza.

We finished the evening off with chocolate creme pie.

Saturday was the summer celebration. A number of the summer staffers, including Evan, left that evening, so we had to say goodbye after the celebration. We said goodbye to the rest of them the following morning.

David has been busy working on a new climbing trick.

It's pretty crazy to have finished our first summer back at camp. There were so many good things that happened, as well as a lot of hard things. But through it all we saw God at work, and it's an amazing thing to be part of. I'm very much looking forward to a slower pace and getting to see Joshua more though!

Week Six

We took a little break from summer at camp to visit Dad and Mom. The kids had their first swimming lessons.

We returned home in time to head down to Sherwood for the Week in the Forest dance.

We built a house out of cardboard.

We had a picnic on the mini green for staff dinner Friday.

The Family Week

The week of middle school, Sherwood, and AIM camps we had quite the party in the mountains. Emery, Ezra, Solace, and Amari were campers along with some of our friends from FPC Visalia. Jonah and Michelle were cabin leaders for Ezra and Emery, Heather was the nurse in Sherwood, Gayle came up at the beginning of the week to visit Solace and Amari, Dad and Mom stayed in Cedar Lodge for a couple of days to build bunk beds and watch Elias, and Natalie came with Dad and Mom to stay with Heather. Since Evan was on staff and already here, that meant that almost my entire family was up for a lot of the week. It was fun.

Elias spent a lot of time hanging out with us while Dad and Mom worked on bunk beds. It was so fun to have him around.

We had pancakes for breakfast Tuesday morning.

We went down to Sherwood every afternoon to visit, and Elias, Mary, and David got to make their first Sherwood candles.

We made sure to say hi to The Heather Channel in the infirmary.

Mary and Hannah made a vinegar pie at the end of the week.

I made key lime pies for the staff dinner Friday.

Family Camps

We had two weeks of family camp, which gave us some fun opportunities to participate in kid-friendly activities.

The kids enjoyed playing hide and seek with various staff members at meal times.

 

Mary and David loved going to the craft condo during free time.

The Sherwood faire and campfire were also a big hit, both the first week

and the second week. We had a number of friends at the second family camp, and it was fun to get to spend time with them. Mary and David also got to go to kids club this week, which they loved.

I got to make a bunch of fun desserts to encourage the operations staff halfway through the summer.

The three headed kitchen coordinator from the summer of '06 reunited! Christina, Ben, and I co-coordinated the kitchen team in 2006, and we were all at family camp this summer.

It was a fun, but busy, couple of weeks, and it was nice to have Saturday to be at home together and do usual things, like look for new places to climb.