Some Pictures

Hey! Well I am not feeling super inspired to write too much, so I will just throw on some pics (which I know you all like anyway) and give a bit of a description for each.Greg and I cleaning up after one of the groups, making things polish...and with enthusiasm!

The past few weekends we have had multiple groups staying at camp, all of which were big groups, so I got to put some of my organizational/scheduling skills to work!


This is me in the quinzhee (igloo) that Greg built. One of the kids decided to smoke in his room on their retreat, so his leader asked us to put him to work. Greg had him shoveling snow for a day and now we have a really sweet igloo built right by the rink for kids to play in. It would be big enough to sleep 3 adults (if someone wanted to sleep in the snow) so it is big, and very cool!


Greg and I out on the lake


"A helping hand" when learning to skate


Sunday afternoon x-country skiing with some of the other staff.


Coming in from skiing


Skiing. Skating. Enjoying a break from the cold. Beautiful. Not much else to say.

Of Camp and Cookies

Camp has been a busy place these last few weeks. We have had 7 different groups here since Christmas break and it is fun to hear the different noise that each group makes as I sit in the office. For example, right now we are hosting a band camp, so I feel like there is a soundtrack to life playing along as I write. Well, that or the theme song to Pirates of the Caribbean (which I guess isn't really applicable to being a soundtrack to my life...thankfully!) Last week I had the opportunity to sit in on one of the worship sessions a grad group was having. It was a wonderful reminder of why I love camp work so much. The speaker for the group was Randy Carter, who spoke at several of the Sr. High retreats I had attended at Evergreen. As he spoke I was reminded of the impact that a few days at camp can have. It is easy here to get caught up in office work, cleaning, and all the little daily tasks that keep this place running without stopping to think of all that is happening with the youth that are here. They are why we do these jobs and the impact that just a few days here can have is huge, and even if the memories fade into a positive thought of that retreat I had at camp once, it is worth it!
...well my life inspiring music has now turned into individual practice, so now all I hear is a lot of playing around on drums without much rhyme or reason...
This past weekend was a restful one for us and we hung around home for the most part. The groups that we had in over the weekend put us at max capacity, so instead of joining everyone for lunch as per usual, we stayed in and ate at home. Kind of a nice change of pace. Saturday afternoon I needed to bake some squares for a worship night here at camp, so I did...then I baked another pan of squares, choc. chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, and apple cinnamon muffins....so we will not go hungry anytime soon and will probably be looking a little more round by the time you see us again! The first couple pans of squares were served last night, so that should help some. We had a worship group from Providence College come out for the evening and put on a worship night. We invited the churches from the surrounding towns and had around 40 people come out. It was fun to bring people in from the area and visit for an evening! And I think that is about all for right now!
Oh wait, it is -30 here once again....brrrr.....

Welcome 2008!

We are now back in our Manitoba home. Christmas was a wonderful break, although it was definitely busy!! We left here in Dec. 21, drove through the day and arrived in Calgary late that night. From then on we were in high gear with potlucks, Christmas gatherings, X-Box parties (Greg), girl's coffee dates/gingerbread house making (Marni), lunch dates, New Year's Party, and time with both families in Calgary and Linden. I think we managed to fit almost everyone into those 10 days, if we missed you, sorry! We then followed up with another 15 hour drive back to camp on January 2. Now it is back to work for us!
We both loved being home, it was something that we had been looking forward to a lot, but we discovered that we were equally as excited to come back to camp and life here. Not to mention that we wanted to get going on the projects that will take us into summer. Greg's biggest project right now is redoing the climbing wall and getting everything together for a zip line, and I am doing a lot of hosting throughout the next couple of months. We have groups everyday straight through till March, and the majority of those groups are hitting 100, so there will always be something to do, someone around to ask questions, or major clean-up that needs to be done between each group that comes in.

Now to review a bit of December. The last two weeks before we went home were busy. Greg's birthday was on the 15th and so as a surprise, I booked us into a hotel in Winnipeg for the weekend. We had many things that needed to get done in the city and instead of driving back and forth everyday, I decided to turn it into a whole weekend. The main attractions were the food (surprise, surprise!) and so I managed to track down some good ethnic places to eat. We went to a Thai restaurant that served us a carrot that was carved to look like an old man (pictured below) and had AMAZING food. Then we found a great Chinese restaurant and a Indian place where I surprised Greg again by have Jeff and Suzanne join us for supper. The majority of our day's were actually taken up with Christmas shopping, because we hadn't had a chance to do any before then. But Greg's most favorite activity was go-karting. I found an indoor track that had 50 km/hr cars and we spent a good hour ripping around the track. Our weekend ended with a stop at the airport to pick up my sister Julie, who spent a week with us here and then drove back with us. She managed to fit in most of the activities at camp and also got to participate in our work Christmas party where we took the whole day off to take in everything that the groups normally do and eat a lot of food!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas....
Welcome to 2008!!

Our cool Thai Carrot Man

Greg eating the cool Thai carrot man
Go Kart's! Well in our helmets and ready to go!