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!

Easter Events

As SE and Fin grow (stop!) and get older (no seriously stop!), holidays get more and more fun.  Easter was no exception.  Sean Edward was delighted when he was told that he not only got 1 Easter egg hunt but 4!  The first one was the Norman egg hunt at Andrews Park.  The Grigors were going so we thought we would join them!

Someone didn't like the bunny

Someone else was a grumpy pants

The slide made him a little happier

BFFs

On the lookout for that scary bunny (seriously stage 1 clinger when she saw it)

Kind of getting the egg hunt

Happy (maybe?) with his winnings

Finally a smile!

Next party was SE's music school party on Wednesday.  We had dyed our eggs Monday with the Grigors and Bentons (no pictures of that process of course).

Grace on a mission for eggs

SE wanted to find 20; they could only get 4

I love watching him in his element...such a mighty leader he is!

This one made herself at home!

Saturday it was time for our 3 year tradition of going to the Liddell Easter egg hunt.  It is one of my favorite events of the year.  There are sooo many kids there and so many eggs.  It is so fun to watch the little ones run all over the place finding eggs.  They put out some golden eggs this year so that was angry birds obsessed SE's mission (he succeeded!).  And sweet Fin finally caught onto the egg hunting and came home with several eggs in her basket too!

Sweet Sophie got a little excited and helped herself to her own start!

Ready to hunt!

And then Sunday held the most fun!  Our Easter tradition that Sean's parents did for him...a trail of eggs to SE's Easter basket (and Fin's when she is older), family coming in for lunch, another egg hunt for the cousins and church celebration that included an awesome baptism service.

Following the trail

Dad led dying eggs

I wonder how many people would refer to Fin as "he" even though she is wearing a pink shirt

For serious does it get much better than this?

Dressed up and ready for Easter Celebration

I didn't know how much of the true reason for Easter SE would get.  We haven't talked much about dying so the concept is fairly foreign to him, but we told him the reason we observe Easter...because Jesus died on the cross for us and was resurrected on the 3rd day (in 3 year old terms).  He definitely got the "Jesus died on the cross for us" part!

"But He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption."  Hebrew 9:12