Catching up

Alright...it is official, I am bad at blogging! Ha! It's been what, 3 months!? oops.
I will try to get better now that things are picking up here at camp. But here's a quick update on things that have happened!

ROAD TRIPS!!! 

Sam and I have been doing a lot of driving the past couple of months. First we went to California. Sam was in a wedding of a friend from high school. It was fun to meet his buddies that I've heard so many stories about. It was also nice to be in the 75 degree weather, since when we left Durango it was about 15 degrees!

On the way there and back we stopped at some fun places! We saw some dino tracks in Tuba City, Arizona, spent the afternoon at the grand canyon, headed to the beach for a few hours, and camped in Joshua Tree National Park. It was fun to see parts of the country I've only ever seen in pictures or movies.

 

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The next drive we did was up to Denver for our annual Hope For Youth fundraiser. That was an adventure for sure. We got up there on Friday, and on Saturday, the day of the event, it snowed about a foot. Which cut the attendance of the fundraiser by half...which really was a bummer. But it was a good time anyways.

Sam trying to stop the bleeding in his cut thumb... :(

Sam and I were in charge of cooking...not sure this was a good task to give us, since within 15 minutes of starting the meal we both cut ourselves! With some bandaids and gloves we continued with the cooking, and received lots of compliments. :) But really the credit goes to Tim for picking the menu and recipes. We just got it ready! 

 We all got decked out in our western clothes for this event! There were lots of people with hats and boots. And everyone enjoyed doing out old western photo booth we had set up. Here's Marci and I on the left, sporting our western getup.

 The camp presented Nick and Tracy with this picture of the view from camp. They had people sign the mat.

The guests! Imagine twice as many...as it would have been without the snow.

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The last road trip we did was down to Albuquerque, New Mexico for a camper retreat. We had a lot of fun! We got to catch up with campers who came last summer (of course I didn't know any of them, but other staff did!) and we got to tell a bunch of new kids what camp is all about. Many of them were very excited to sign up.

News from the camp

Things are getting busy around here. First of all, the entire full-time staff is here living at the camp! Yay! it gets very cozy working in the office now. It is fun to have everyone here. I get more people to ride horses with, we have game nights, prayer nights, and just some good hangin out. It is great seeing stuff happening too, from so many hands! The program for the summer is coming together. And our new business director is busy registering kids for camps..we are almost full already!

As for me, I must admit, I am SICK of Colorado spring. I even miss Oregon rainy springs. Here it is wind, wind, dust, wind, dust, wind...you get the picture. So much so that you can't see the mountains from all the dust in the air. And when you breathe it tastes like dirt. :( Plus the wind makes it cold and really annoying to be outside.

Once it teased us that it might rain...it tried. It sprinkled. But it only resulted in MUDDY RAIN. As you can see on our truck, it literally was dirty rain. Really gross. And it didn't rain enough to clear the air and wash things off. Just enough to get everything that WAS clean nice and dirty.

It is supposed to start warming up here in a few days. I am anxious! I was washing saddles today with a girl I give riding lessons to, and we were using warm water, but our fingers were still freezing from being in the cold air. I am looking forward to it being so warm that giving a horse a bath and "accidentally" getting yourself a little wet too sound really good. :)


And another note about living here...our chickens are rock stars! Here is a days collection...18 eggs! we get probably 10-12 a day. The other families and us take turn collecting them from the coop. 

All in all, things around here are good. Summer fever is in the air as we plan for camp. And in about a month, Sam and I will get to move in to our new home! Our little cabin has been a wonderful home. :) But I am excited to have room to have guests over to play games and eat meals. And to have a couch to sit on to blog. ;-) I will probably be better at this when I don't have to hike up the hill to get internet.

Please be praying for the summer! For the campers- that they will have open hearts to hear the gospel, for the staff- that they will have a passion for reaching out to the kids and the energy to keep going all summer long, and for the horse program- that our new horses will catch on to the routine of things and can enjoy their job.