Wednesday, June 20, 2012

...off to camp...#1...


...right after Church on Sunday...the kids grabbed a bag and stuffed a lunch to eat on the way to camp...

...then they loaded all their gear...

...and then themselves...and headed off to camp for a week...it's really quiet around here...we sent him off with a new little point and shoot camera...so hopefully he'll take a few pics to share with you...but I'm not sure he inherited my picture taking gene...so we'll have to wait and see...

~Have a lovely day!

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

...Belated Birthday...

...we celebrated Scout's Birthday a little bit late this year as the Man was out of town on the actual date...

...cards and presents...mostly summer/camp clothes...and you can see part of the I.O.U. that I printed out for the game that Scout asked for...it's not been released yet...but the trailers are out...so he'll get that as a really late birthday present when it's released later this summer...

...Scout chose his cake...Devils Food...and we grated some chocolate chips to make the pretty little border...we lit 14 candles...hard to believe...

...and Scout blew those out...just a simple little family birthday with his Papa home on the eve of Church camp...

~Have a lovely day!...

Monday, June 18, 2012

...Exploring WV...the Kanawha State Forest...


...We spent a nice hot day in the nice cool forest...

...there were these wooden bridges everywhere...

...as the path criss-crossed the creek...

...we followed the moss-covered trail...

...through a section of labeled trees...that was fun...I knew most of them...

...another bridge...

...and the Snipe Trail...I had heard of the snipe hunting custom but have never participated...

...we just followed the path...

...which followed the creek...

...then we came to the Bog...

...which is an entirely different eco-system...

...it was lovely and green...and boggy...

...I was trying to get a photo that showed how far above the creek we are...probably 60-70 feet and pretty much straight down...but I don't think it looks that way in the picture...

...lots of fallen trees...that happens in a forest...

...next we came upon this underground resevoir...

...with its leaky cap...very interesting...

...then we found an abandoned coal mine...

...you could really hear the water echoing through the tunnels...

...it's all blocked up now...

...right next to the coal mine...they had built a slag pile dam...

...the path across the remaining portion of the dam...

...it broke and destroyed part of the camp...I would have liked to have seen the lake behind it...
...this is the other side of the broken dam...you can see the difference in the colour of the soil and the slag...

...this is what the slag on the top of the dam looks like...

...the trail is a loop back to the campground where we saw the remains of an old power plant...

...some knobby trees...

...then back across the bridges and then back home...it was a fun afternoon...

~Have a lovely day!

Saturday, June 16, 2012

...V.B.S. Highlights...

...V.B.S. was this week...and of course the Man was out of town...and I was on-call at my work...to make things super hectic...but it was still AWESOME...

...the kids and their families gathered each evening for supper...

...The setup and decorations were spectacular...and really took a lot of work!

...the hallway leading back to the classrooms...with the Sky decorations...

...and rainbows...

...and even a storm tunnel...

...with lightning and thunder...

...I taught the Bible class...with a different interactive story each night...here the kids are wrapping Lazarus...getting him ready for his tomb...

...each evening at the closing there was another mini-lesson...here Scout (left) is a big cloud blotting out the sun...you can barely see her...she's a bunch of yellow ballons with streamers...

...another interactive Bible story...here the kids are helping to carry Jesus' cross...

...each night the kids got to stick a 'cloud' on the God Sightings board for anytime they had seen God in their lives that day...

...and they collected money...OVER $400 for mosquito nets to help prevent malaria...

...and pinned a cute little mosquito onto the net...

...there was a bouncy house and slide...

...and the Youth did a free car wash...

...and then the Grande Finale!...

...and the clean-up...

...lots of clean-up...

...and getting things back in place for worship on Sunday!...

...it was an AWESOME week of V.B.S.!

~Have a lovely day!