Many Vintages Later...

Too bad I'm not getting better at posting once a week, eh? HAPPY MAY!

I hope everyone had a wonderful, joy-filled Easter weekend, as we celebrated Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. Kel and I were blessed to spend our Easter here with a camp family. Dan and his wife Kelli, and their four children, invited us to spend the day with them. We ate lunch with their family and a few other staff members, played Apples to Apples, and Kel played on the trampoline with the kids. We ended our day by watching a musical and had a small "leftover-meal" dinner. Kel and I didn't get home until about 10pm. We had so much fun!

     *Kelly and Dan just completed their first go at training some of the full time staff to be lifeguard/cpr/aed/first aid certified! They said he did a great job teaching/training them. :) In a few weeks his summer staff team will come and Kelly will be doing his second round of training people.
     *I was able to Skype with Alissa and Brian awhile ago. Maya is the cutest puppy in the whole world.
     *Kelly had his high ropes and zip line inspection. There was a guy here inspecting the course and all of the equipment, making sure everything is up to the codes and safety standards.
     *We had a pull down ladder installed in our ceiling so we can now access our attic. This is very exciting!

Ladder being installed.

All done!

 *I was recently trained to be a barista at the coffee shop here at camp. Last Sunday I was scheduled to work at the coffee shop ALL BY MYSELF! Sunday mornings are typically slower... but this one was not. I had to call for a helper because there were so many people that came to order coffee drinks. Too many people for one barista!

*Kelly and Dan had to seal all of the high ropes poles with some kind of sealant/stain to keep them protected from the sun so they won't crack. At the end of the day, all of the poles were sealed, and the majority of their clothes needed to be thrown away.

Kel and Dan staining the poles.

25 hours old.

*All of us staff ladies had a baby shower a few weeks ago for our dear friend Kiersten. Her baby arrived two days later! Sarah Isabella is her name. Look at all that hair! Just three hours after Kiersten delivered, she had me and Kelly come over to see their newest addition. They even let me hold her! It was fantastic.
*Due to the fact that Sarah was born at home and obviously had to get a birth certificate, Kiersten needed hand-written proof that she was pregnant and that she did indeed deliver Sarah in her home. Kiersten asked me, along with two other people at camp, to each write a letter proving those specific things (along with a few other important points). We then met with a lady who notarized the letters, signed some papers and stamped our fingerprints in a book.

April was a very exciting month, but the most FANTASTIC part was getting to see my brother NATHAN!!!!!!! We went to the La Brea Tar Pits... I had never heard of them before, but they were suuuuuuuuper cool!  We also went inside the museum and saw fossils that the paleontologists had already found in some of the tar pits. The three of us went to the ocean for a while. That was super fun! There were starfish!!! We found quite a few geocaches while we were out, which was quite exciting. Some were easy ... some were not so easy. I'm sad to say that I do not have any pictures of us climbing up the side of a steep hill on half of an old metal ladder.

Starfish!!!

Kelly and Nathan Geocaching.

First ever In-N-Out burger!

Other news...

     *The camp cat, Chaos, likes to visit us. It is probably because we fed him once. He now occasionally meows at our door in the mornings until we let him in and then he comes and goes during the day. He watched a movie once!
     *Our new neighbors have officially moved in next door, so that's been fun! Jesse and Daniel are 27 & 29 and their son Leif is two and a half. He's so cute! He loves to play with Caleb, too. Laef calls Caleb his "best buddy". The two of them are also learning how to take turns and share. It's a good thing!
     *Kelly and I hosted a paintball birthday party. A lady from a church in the area wanted to play paintball for her birthday this year, so her and 12 of her friends came out and played for two hours! A typical game is twenty minutes long, and we'll let a group play two 20-minute games. But because this was a special occasion, they played for a very long time. It was fun though :) Kelly was the ref. and I was the scorekeeper. He got marked with paint about four or five times. I won because I didn't get marked at all!
     *Have I mentioned how the weather is almost always wonderful here? We LOVE going to the beach!
     *Kelly and I just bought a couch! It is our first official piece of furniture. Almost everything else that is in our house was either already here when we moved in, or was given to us from staff families.


Get excited for our VIDEO blog post... COMING SOON!