Quick trip to Nebraska

The girls stayed overnight and day at the Coburn's. Suzanne and I drove the car and van up to Nebraska around 7am, and had a productive day. We got to see a number of the church people throughout the day.

-We stopped at the church where Bible School was in session and the children had prepared a special welcome basket of food, cleaning supplies, and paper products. Thank you so much. The items will be come in very handy in the coming weeks. We got to see a number of the adults and children there.

-We went to the Geneva courthouse to take care of our drivers licenses, vehicle inspection, title, registration, license plates, etc. We got everything done in less than an hour. It was all in the same building. Gina waited on us, and her daughter Krista also stopped in to see her mother.

-We parked the car in the parsonage garage. It will stay there for the summer.

-At lunch time we went to Shickley and had lunch at Dawg's Cafe with Wes and Don and Shirley. The fish was awesome. We met pastoral people from a local church and enjoyed catching up with them.

-After lunch we took Don back to the farm and then drove back into Shickley. We stopped into the post office to put a hold on any mail that ends up there before we do.

-Next stop was the hardware to return paint swatches for the girls room. We ran into John, Wes, Linda, and Roland there. We then drove around the block to the Swartzendruber construction and flooring. We met with Kay and picked out some carpet for the basement.

-We stopped at the parsonage to take a couple measurements and ran into George, Matt, Ron, Randy, and Brett.

-Finally, Suzanne and I hopped in the van and drove back to Hesston around 5:30pm. It was good to be with the girls again.

It will be here before we know it. I can hardly wait!

Some buildings

This is the main lodge where we had our meals and some activities. The picture was taken Tuesday morning when we were leaving. It snowed overnight.
This was our cabin (Aspen). We lived on the second floor of this building. It was a beautiful retreat center with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. I hope you enjoyed this picture show. We've got more, but I've also got some other things to do. It is going to be 92 degrees here in Hesston today. Looking at the snow makes it feel cooler:)

Everybody hands up

How cute! The girls worked and played hard, and slept pretty well to boot. Alyssa is hugging Courtney. It may be hard to believe, but this is actually Suzanne and I's bed. We got up and then Suzanne took this picture of the "raised hands while sleeping". They are so precious to us. We have really enjoyed spending time and making memories together.

Sawing

One of our assignments was to clear a "branch" off of a trail high above camp. It turned out to be two large branches. We ended up cutting them into about 6 pieces and dragging them down the hill half way. The picture above shows Courtney and I trying saw it together. The girls were real troopers. Hiking up so high and sitting in the rain for a little while. We were up here for about 2 1/2 hours. As you can tell, it was a very steep incline.

We had an option of a gas powered chain saw. But this was a lot more fun for all. Suzanne and I had a lot of laughs. Especially when I was jumping on the log to break it. I lost my balance and nearly fell down the hill. If I would have got rolling, I doubt I would have stopped before either hitting a tree or getting to the bottom of the mountain.

Kettle popcorn

One evening we had kettle popcorn cooked in this kettle. The sugary stuff got eaten up faster than the non-sweet stuff. Here are just a few of the people (out of about 50) that were there during the weekend. I may get some spelling's and names wrong.

(John and Christy Frederick on the far left, Corbin the camp director in the tan shirt and blue jeans, Mary the cook in the dark blue shirt and black pants, 4 of the 5 Voth family members from Hesston starting with father in striped shirt then mom followed by daughters Marie and Dorothy, behind them you will see me talking with Marvin and Vi Miller. My dad and Marvin lived in South Bend together while they were still single.)

A beautiful view

We hiked up behind the camp to "staff ville". It is where the male, non-counselor staff live. We then hiked up on top of this ridge and decided a family picture was in order. In the back ground you can see part of the pikes peak bottom. If you hiked up there, you would then have about 4 miles up a ridge behind this view to get to the peak.

Gold mine

We explored a gold mine that is on the camp. It is a horizontal shaft about 400ft long. It was about as big as you see it here the whole way in. My head lamp batteries were weak and died completely about 2/3 of the way in. I had to confiscate a little girls flash light to finish the trail in. This was about a third of the group that went in.

Suzanne the dare-angel

Suzanne was very brave and decided to go rock climbing and rappelling. She was way up high and out on a rock face. We went hiking out to where she was. I was especially afraid for the girls as they got close to the edges. I was happy to be back on land a little more flat after this hike.

Hiking up the mountain

We all enjoyed hiking on the many trails around the camp. This was a fun morning hike that involved climbing up the side of the mountain that was very steep and very high.

Trip to Colorado

We had a good time in Colorado at Rocky Mountain Camp in Divide, CO. It was a first annual Work and Play Camp. We worked at the camp doing cleanup and other work, and played by hiking and other stuff. The girls loved it! We loved it! It is beautiful.

We met a lot of nice and friendly people. Some of them knew us or our parents. Others were new acquantances all around. I will post some pictures in some upcoming posts. We were there from Friday evening through Tuesday morning.

We had all kinds of weather. Sun, clouds, rain, hail, sleet, snow, wind, calm, 35-55 degrees. We contemplated trying to hike towards pike's peak. There was knee deep snow about half way there. Then it snowed over a foot at the peak the night before we were planning to go up. We decided to just go home instead. We'd love to go back. If you are free next memorial day weekend, I think they are doing the work and play weekend again.