Family Camp

This weekend we went away to (choose one) our church's "family camp", aka "all-church retreat", aka "family retreat", aka I'm sure there are others. From late Friday through mid-day Sunday on this weekend each year we stay at a campground nestled in the redwood forest in the Santa Cruz mountains near the Pacific Ocean. Each cabin has bunks with a full bath (showers, sinks, running water, electricity), so it's not camping in the pitch-a-tent sense.

There's no smell quite like a redwood forest. It is amazing. Calm, soothing and fresh. There's a clear cut space in the middle of camp with a grass field for playing, but the dense forest and very tall trees limits the sunshine. Near the coast it's cool. This weekend saw a heatwave in the Bay Area with temps in the upper 100's. It cooled down to about 90 at the coast (extremely hot for them). We (my family) always spend Friday at the beach town of Capitola. Our ten month old loved the sand, and our other kids loved the ocean waves. We ate dinner at the beach before driving up into the mountains to the camp.

We have five or six sessions of teaching/preaching during the weekend from a guest speaker and take the Lord's Supper on Sunday just before lunch. This year saw thick swarms of lady bugs filling the air in the early afternoons. The kids went nuts. Our three year old stunned the entire church with his amazing ability to hit the ball and run around the bases. The kids slept all through both nights so we were blessed exceedingly.