Youth camp

As I mentioned in my last post, youth camp this year was fantastic! We had great weather, great youth, great cooks and other volunteers, and just an all-around great time!
There were three activities to choose from on the Friday and Saturday... canoeing, hiking, or the "lazy day" of going to the Othello tunnels and then just hanging out at the beach at Kawkawa Lake.

There was lots of time for other fun and games too:

One of the biggest hits was the "slip and slide" that a couple of our youth came up with. The camp is built on a slope, which was perfect for this! They spent hours on it!

We also used it in a relay-type game of "Ultimate Spoons". Definitely a fun twist to that game! (Going around the crates down the slip and slide, running for a ball, putting an olive in our mouth on the way to popping a balloon for a ribbon inside it and then running up the hill for a spoon!)

I got to spend my birthday up at camp this year. They decorated the dining hall for me... and this was my "breakfast birthday cake" :)

As the intent for this weekend was not only to grow in our relationships with others, but also in our walk with God, we also spent some time in His Word. The theme for the weekend was "Denying the power", which is a little phrase taken from 2 Timothy 3:5, which says that in the last days, there will be people "having a form of godliness but denying its power". The focus was on powerful godliness - what prevents it, and how we can have it. Definitely practical and relevant.

We had a fantastic bunch of youth come out for this - and it was a tonne of fun getting to know them. Of course, something like this can only happen as a team effort... and so again, thanks to those who met with us several times to plan the camp, those who volunteered to chaperone and help out with driving, etc., our fantastic cooks, and our speakers. Camp wouldn't have been the same with out each one of you!

Where to start...

We've had a few busy but fun weeks the last while... and I'm trying to figure out how to best tell about them. The second weekend in July was youth camp, which was a fantastic time! After that, we had a few days to clean up from that and pack up for the next thing... our trip to Ontario! The last few years a group of Martin's cousins and their families go camping out there, and we figured it would be fun if we could book a trip to Ontario around that time. Finally this year it worked. It was definitely worth looking forward to this trip! There was lots of driving and visiting (some of Martin's old acquaintances from when he lived out there, his brother and family and other relatives, my brother...), but it was relaxing too.
I think I'll just do what I did last year after our vacation and tell about it little bits at a time.

I discovered...

...that I really enjoy digital scrapbooking! I've been thinking about doing this for a while - but didn't have a good program for it, and just wasn't sure if I'd like it. Our adoption profile had to include some picture pages, and I had to make several copies of it, so I figured it would be a good time to try it out. A friend of mine let me know about a great Costco coupon that made the program I wanted (Photoshop Elements) much less expensive - which is always nice :). Then another friend of mine told me about an online course that was super helpful! I'd recommend it to anyone that uses photoshop.

What I love about digital scrapbooking:

• you can make anything any color you want
• all the freebies you can download - free paper, embellishments, etc, etc!
• you can do so much more with your pictures
• it's way faster (for me anyways)
• NO MESS!!!! I think this is my favorite part. I can work for awhile - then just save it and close the program - no pile of papers sitting on the table for days until I finish the layout!

Here's a couple of the layouts I made while taking the course: