Trail West Family Camp Day 4

My FAVORITE day!  It started out with the Wrangler Breakfast.  You can either ride a horse or the red wagon to a campsite where breakfast is cooked for you usually on a campfire, but because of the burn ban, it was done on a stove.  It was my favorite breakfast of the week!  Yummy breakfast quesadilla and a Mexican omelet...sooo good!

They also would flip the French toast to you to catch on your plate.  SE tried, and of course, my athletic husband had to show off his talents catching a piece while holding Fin and then catching a piece holding the plate under his leg.

It was also a great place for some fun family pictures!

Once we got back to camp, we got swim ready and headed to the high school Young Life camp, Frontier, a few miles away.  There is a hot springs fed pool with an amazing water slide that both Sean Edward and Finley loved!  Again didn't get pictures until the ride home of two sleeping babes, but by that you can tell how much fun they had!

Those are puffs stuck on Fin's chin!

That afternoon, SE and Fin went to kids' club, and Sean and I got to try out the ropes course.  The ropes course was probably my favorite activity we did at camp.  There was a rock climbing wall, the actual ropes course and a zip line.  Sean and I got harnessed up and ready to rock!  Little fact about Sean, he is scared of heights.  So once we climbed our way up to the start, reality set in for him, and he was a little hesitant to begin.  Don't worry, I kindly encouraged him and didn't make fun of him one bit (yeah right)!

Once we got to the tower to wait on the zip line, the girl inside said that (1) we were the most fun family of the day and (2) that was the first time she had ever heard a wife encourage the husband.  Ah sweet Sean!

Then it was zip line time.  I didn't realize that you could sit down because you are harnessed and attached to the zip line so I held my entire body weight in my arms the entire way down before I started falling and noticed that I wasn't really falling.  Again, the zip line helper commented he had never seen anyone do that before.  Awesome!

That evening we had a cookout in the Aspen grove and then a square dance followed by a major dance party on the basketball courts.  SE and Fin joined the fun and busted out some rad moves!

SE thought the music was too loud so he used tennis balls as ear plugs!

The dads and Romney performing to Tonto!

Family pic to end the evening...Fin was exhausted!

And all of that combined was why Thursday day 4 of family camp was my absolute favorite!  So many fun memories from that day, so much amazing family time, sweet moments stolen with my husband, the sheer joyous laughter of SE and Fin flying down the water slide, and the crazy dancing to end the evening.  I'm channeling my inner-Repunzal from Tangled...BEST DAY EVER!!

Trail West Family Camp Day 3

Hiking day!  We hiked up to Cottonwood Pass beginning at roughly 12,100' and ending at (again) approximately 12,500'. 

 

Finley got a great seat on the way up to the top...in a backpack on Sean's back.  It was so cozy, she ended up taking a little snooze. 

Too bad for her, she missed a lot of beautiful views!

Let me sing the praises of my husband.  SE, whose praises I will sing in a moment, was having some issues walking all the way up the mountain.  I mean you would think he was 3.5 years old or something.  He didn't want to walk, but he also didn't want to ride in a backpack.  The other options were to either be left or carried.  Honestly, we tried to leave him, a couple of times, but he would start screaming, and we didn't want to ruin everyone else's walk up the mountain.  So my amazing (and Ironman) husband walked up (most) of the mountain with one child (thankfully asleep) on his back and one child in his arms.  He is a rock star!

Fin woke up to enjoy the view from the top!

As I said, SE had a few issues.  He started off great as evidenced below...

Then I guess the trek on the narrow, rocky path overlooking the edges of the mountain spooked him a little, and he kind of flipped out.  After we made it to the top, I looked around and realized that any other child within a year (plus or minus) of SE was not walking on their own accord.  Oops...apparently it might be a little too much to ask a 3.5 year old to walk up the side of a mountain.  But SE did it, and later when we were asking him what his favorite things were, he said the hike up the mountain was one of them so hopefully we didn't traumatize him too badly!

My brave boy!

After we got back to camp, SE got to go on a pony ride.  Again, I was super impressed with my brave boy.  As we were walking up to the stables, he said he didn't want to ride the ponies.  We said that's okay, SE, you can just look at them and pet them and if you change your mind, they will be available to ride.  When he saw the ponies up close, he agreed to ride one of them.  He did choose the more gentle of the two ponies and rode him twice!  Sean and I were so proud of our little man!

After the ponies, we decided to play a little Frisbee golf.  It has become an SE favorite as with any other sport.  He is actually probably better than I am. 

SE ducked any time I threw the Frisbee.  Ha!

I had to quit the game a little early to go get this precious face who was napping like a champ back in our room.  Oh yeah, you can leave your kids in the room to nap, and they are perfectly safe!

After Fin Bug got up, I got a few shots with some of SE's new buddies.  He made friends with some of the kids in the room next to ours.  Mason, Henry and Susie Grace are all he could talk about from the moment he got up to the moment he went to sleep.

Wednesday was a full day for us.  It was also a revolutionary day.  God revealed some pretty amazing things He wants to do in this season of our lives.  We aren't sure what exactly that will look like, but we know we've heard Him speak.  And we want to be obedient to His voice.  He is, after all, the One who created the beauty we saw on our hike, instilled the bravery and friendliness in our SE, gave my husband crazy strength and created our Fin to have one of the most joyful hearts I've ever seen.  He has nothing but goodness in store for the Boyd family, and we got to see so much of it on day 3!

Trail West Family Camp Day 2

White water rafting day...and of course, I didn't get any pictures.  But if you go here, you can see a little video of our rafting experience!  SE and Fin didn't meet the age requirement so they stayed at the lodge and got to swim with their very own kids' club wrangler.

Oh let me tell you about the kids' club wranglers...they make up part of the camp work crew, and they are literally there to take care of your kids while the adults are having adult time or on adventures of their own.  They are fabulous, awesome, extraordinary, all things good, and they LOVED our kids.  Each one knew our kiddos by name; they knew every kiddo by name, and there were a LOT of kids at camp.

At Trail West, like at every Young Life camp, there is some sort of program and club time.  The program at Trail West revolved around Trip and Trey (TNT) and Pixel MacVector, who wanted to upload Trail West into a virtual experience.  They were absolutely hilarious.  One of our friends who has been to Trail West on 7 different occasions said this year's program was the best he had seen.  I haven't seen 7, but this one was definitely rolling on the floor laughing worthy!

Trip (and Trey) had celebratory status around camp

 

During club time, they donned different personae becoming Juan and Juan...really funny stuff.

 

Here are a few random pics of SE and Fin adventuring around the camp.  SE loved climbing and jumping off of the rocks, and Finley, well, she just loved being able to go, go, go without anyone telling her no, no, no!

Trail West Family Camp Day 1

For a year now we've been hearing about how awesome Trail West family camp is.  Thus, we decided to check out just how awesome it is for ourselves.  We set out on an adventure excited to arrive at camp, to spend some quality uninterrupted family time together, to discover some new things about us and to see how revolutionary He can be.

On our way

We stayed in Salida, CO before heading to camp on Sunday.   There was a fun little play area by a river with walking path, climbing wall and playground area for the kiddos.

Sunday we headed to camp, and it immediately lived up to what everyone had been saying about it.  Driving down the path to the lodge, you can feel the excitement and welcome.  Our kids couldn't stop waving at everyone they saw, and Finley gave a high five to each person she passed.

After settling into our room, we got ready for what the week had in store for us.  Monday was rodeo day.  We headed to the rodeo arena, split up into groups and played a couple of games against the other groups.  For the first game, people carried a bucket of water on their head, raced down to another bucket where they dumped the water in the bucket on their head into the bucket on the ground.  I took my eyes off of Fin for one second, and she somehow got in the line of fire, or water, and got it dumped on her head.  It, of course, didn't phase her at all!

I volunteered for the egg race.  For every race, you had to ride a "horse".  Ha ha!

Sean did the race where you had to spin around the horse 10 times then run back to the next person.  He fell several times.  Thankfully, he wasn't one of the guys who took out another person or a baby stroller!

The rest of the day we spent exploring the camp.  I definitely learned a couple of things about Sean Edward during our trip.  He is one who likes to know his surroundings.  It was kind of tough to get him to go places by himself at first; he really wanted Sean or I to go with him.  But then after he would go there once, he could get back to it and didn't mind going it alone.  Sean and I were so proud of SE and his accomplishments throughout the week; I'll share more of them in the following posts!