Wednesday, August 9

A Summer of Fun

I will be posting some pictures soon of our exciting summer, but first of all let me tell you alllllll about it! In June, Alex went to the Grove Christian Camp for his summer camp trip. He had a real blast and in fact they used his favorite movie, The Chronicles of Narnia, to study the truth and reality of Christ. I then went off to my own camp, and directed a camp of about 80 Middle Schoolers! It was a crazy fun and wild camp and I had a great group of staff as we looked at the Grace God has for everyone throughout the ages.

Then the fun parts. The day after returning from camp, we headed off to Nebraska. That's right 5 kids, a minivan and road full of fun. We left Cottage Grove on Sunday after church, and arrived Tuesday the 4th of July in Nebraska, just in time for a fireworks show put on by the city of Alliance. We stayed for about 6 days on my Uncle Mark's farm. It was a week of new experiences for all of the kids. From Combining wheat, to cultivating and laying pipe for irrigation, we got our fill of the farm life. Uncle Mark has lots of room for all the kids to run and explore and lots of toys for us to play with.

It was also a blessing to be able to spend time with my Grandparents. Grandma was prepared as usual with WAY too much food but I didn't hear anyone complain. Grandpa is still recovering from his hip surgery, but he was feeling well enough to take all of the kids on tractor rides. Oh what fun we had in Nebraska.

From Nebraska we traveled by to Idaho to spend a few days with my folks. We stayed each night in RockSprings Wyoming, about the mid point from Boise to Alliance. We were able to swim in there pool and enjoy the cramped life of a one bedroom lifestyle. When we made it back to Idaho, we spent a day at the Water Park near where my parents live. Besides our sunburns the park was a blast. Alex and Heidi were daring enough to take on the two newest and most daring rides, the Avalanch and the Vipers Vortex. The Avalanch starts way up in the air and drops you into a half pipe and you ride up and down the half pipe until your tube looses its momentum. The Vortex is like one big toilet bowl, as it drops you into a bowl, you go around until you loose momentum and exit the ride through a whole. You may have to experience that yourself by watching the video of the ride on www.roaringsprings.com.

Finally we arrived back at home in Cottage Grove on July 14th, only to go the next day to a family reunion in Mrytle Creek. It was great to relax and see family and when we finally got home, we had put over 3,000 miles on our van. What joy and what fun.

From there, we had one day to recoup before our Vacation Bible School began. VBS was great this year, at the church we had more than 60 kids during the week. We had a FIESTA at this year's VBS, and it was a real blast!

We than had one week off before heading to the Coast for our Coast to the CIY Conference trip. On Sunday July 30th, we camped in a Yurt at the coast, those things are GREAT! It was perfect for our family and we realy enjoyed in the time we had together. After the weekend, it was off to the CIY conference for me and I even had to ZOOM back at the end of the week for wedding. What a great time, here are some pictures of CIY. I will be posting some pictures of our trip soon and very soon.

aaron

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