"We're Going To the GRAND CANYON!!!"

Hey everyone! I'm so sorry for the sporadic posting...they have been having some troubles with the wireless internet here. We have SO much to share with you guys! I'm going to kind of do this in reverse order, starting with yesterday. So...as I'm sure you can tell by the title of this post, yesterday the kids were surprised with an all camp trip to the Grand Canyon!! The kids were so excited...Claire actually thought that they were joking. That pretty much consumed the whole day yesterday, and boy was it worth it! It was such a great opportunity to give a visual of God's love for us. You can't help but look at the little tiny part of the canyon we were in and think, "Wow, God is big enough to make this beautiful place and he loves ME more!" I think it's hard to imagine God's love and bigness, and when you see something like that it just blows you away. We had some great conversations surrounding the Grand Canyon and the kids even tied it back in to our cabin time talks later that night, so I know it left an impression on them.

The absolutely stunning Grand Canyon

Most of the group crossing paths

Van and Brett checking it out

Claire grabbing some lunch

It was amazing how fast the skies changed from sunny to cloudy

I have to be honest...after experiencing the Grand Canyon yesterday, it's hard for me to recall what we did on Wednesday (and I don't know how to turn off this underlining, which is really frustrating)! OH how could I forget?!?! Wednesday was our western night! We had a carnival and a huge dance which was hands down the best dance I have ever been to at a Young Life camp! Here are some pictures of our fun:

Water Olympics during the day

Nan and Alison heading to the carnival

Tom got pied!!

And so did Van...

And so did I...

Maria and Claire kicking off the dancing

Tom spinning Maria:)

The girls were having an AWESOME time dancing!

Isn't that awesome???

So that is the last few days in pictures. Wish I could post more but it's time to run off to club and finish up our last day at camp:( This week has gone so fast and we can't believe it's time to go home tomorrow. We are sad to leave but excited to see our families again. Have a great day!!

Zip Zip Zip

Alright, on to the rest of our second day at camp. After lunch we had free time, which means lots and lots of swimming! Brandon, Brett and Molly were all really excited to check out the slides, particularly the big fast yellow one! It's cool that this camp has an actual pool with slides, and then the zipline and blob are in a little man-made lake.

Molly almost losing her lunch:)

So we mostly spent our time by the pool, but then the girls decided it was time to head in and take a shower. The boys were on for the zipline at 5:00, so we thought it would be fun to grab some ice cream and go watch them. I mentioned before that this one is longer than Castaway, so I think it was a little more scary to actually let yourself go at the top from what the guys told us. Here are some pictures of Brett, Brandon, and Tom coming down:

After the boys all got done doing the zipline Brett decided that he was ready to try the blob. Tom went off first and then Brett jumped on to "blob him".

It looks like it could be a little scary to jump from the deck, but Brett did awesome. Then he got blobbed and we all got out to get ready for some dinner.

Tom and Brett celebrating a job well done

After dinner we found out that they had planned an entertainment night for us. It was hilarious and we all laughed like crazy. When we were walking out of the club room they surprised us all with hot chocolate and smores...this place rocks! After that we all headed to our cabins to hit the hay. The girls were in for a surprise though...we had a huge moth in our cabin, sick! It was flying around like crazy in our room, and everyone was having a laughing attack trying to kill it. Finally we swatted it down and Molly killed it.

I don't think I've ever heard Claire laugh so much...it was a great end to a great day! Today has been filled with alot more fun, an awesome club talk, and some GREAT cabin time! I am excited to share with you all tomorrow...until then have a great day, I know we will:)

Day 2...Making You All Into Dancers

Good morning! As I'm sitting here to write this I am realizing that the blogs for this week are probably going to all start pretty much the same. They are going to go a little something like this: MAN, was yesterday awesome!!! I just don't know what else I would write, so I hope you don't get sick of reading it:) Day 2 was jam-packed, but in a good way. Lost Canyon and the assign team has been so great about scheduling the day in a way that makes it much easier for us to get more sleep and just tackle the day head on. Yesterday we woke up and had a wonderful breakfast and then waited for them to give out some "wacko" awards. We haven't gotten any yet, but I have a feeling they will be coming soon! Then it was on to club. Can you believe it? Club in the morning! What a great change of pace. It is so much easier for us to all stay alert with club being in the morning instead of at night after a long day outside.

Trying to keep up with some crazy hands song...it was pretty hard!

After club is was time for a dance team bootcamp (the theme this week is that they are trying to make us all into superstar dancers)! There were a bunch of stations that we went to in our team uniforms. It was a blast...my personal favorite was the soccer game with a HUGE ball.

The girls being just perfect

The boys showing some muscle

Alison and Abbie rounding the bases in kickball

Molly playing soccer with that big old ball

Alison making friends with one of the characters of the week

Van and Brett hanging out

Alright, we need to scoot off to breakfast, but I have many more pictures to post. The guys had their turn on the zipline yesterday and they all did awesome! The zipline is probably 5 or 6 times longer than the one at Castaway so it was a new challenge for all of them. Hope you are all well, have a great day!!

Tasha

Welcome to Arizona, where it's HOT HOT HOT!!!

Hello from beautiful Williams, Arizona!

Wow was yesterday awesome. We took off from the airport in Minneapolis right on time and landed in Phoenix after about 3 hours. As we were landing the pilot said that it was 101 degrees! Crazy! We made our way up to Lost Canyon camp, and after a quick stop at McDonald's and 7000 feet in elevation we made it only to be welcomed with a bang! There was a ton of people cheering and the music was going...in true Capernaum style, we had a dance party right there...I could tell instantly that this is going to be one of the best weeks of our kids' lives!

The view of camp from where we got off the bus...we have it rough this week hey??

You can see that striped bag looking thing in the middle...that would be the blob! None of the kids have tried it yet but when they do I will be right there with video! These guys are like kids in a candy shop, it's great!

After the dance party they announced that there was free ice cream for everyone, so we obviously had to go check it out!

We went to check out our cabins...they are SO nice! The middle one is where the guys are staying all week

The girls hanging out watching the boys play some yard games

Finally it was time for dinner...we were all getting pretty hungry at this point after a long day of traveling (which everyone handled like champs I must add:). The dining hall here is beautiful as well...it's so cool to see a different camp, though I must admit it does feel a litle weird.

Again, in typical Young Life fashion, the spread was D-Licious!

We feasted on lasagna, salad (and great ranch dressing of course), awesome bread and...THE BIG COOKIE!!! Alright, so it wasn't a full blown big cookie, but it was pretty close. For all of you readers that have had kids go to Castaway you might know that the big cookie is the dessert highlight of the week...it was pretty sweet to get it on the first night:)

After that we headed to yet another mini dance party and then off to club. The speaker here seems great and I think everyone is going to love learning from her. Of course there was some awesome worship and EVERYONE was dancing like crazy. Here is one of the more tender moments...I think it's safe to say that Brandon and Tom are getting along just great:)

I couldn't believe that our whole group was still going strong after that extremely full day of travel. So that's about it for day one. It's just about time to start day two and get the kids up and moving! We'll update soon!

Tasha