Sunday, November 29, 2009

Big Thanks.

Thanksgiving Camp was a lot of work - 120 people, tons of food and a whole bunch of program coordination. What could have been a huge amount of stress was levied by the attendance of our family. Trevor's parents, siblings, nieces and nephew were up here for the whole weekend, giving Trevor a chance to practice some time-honored child-rearing techniques:

Not sure where Pippa got the beer...

Donovan prepares to "pancake" catch the frisbee.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A sunset hike

Today we took advantage of our day off to go on a sunset hike. (Now that the sun sets around 4:45, you have to really plan a day around this kind of thing.). Before we even got to the trail, we'd had a good dose of nature:


And then we headed up the mountain. The best place to see the sunset at camp is from a place called Upper Meadow. As the name conveniently implies, it's the highest point in camp, and the trail that takes you there is a great tour of the land. These days, that land looks a little bit different, since, as many of you know, there was a fairly devastating fire here in September 2007.


Though it looks a bit haunted, in many ways fire is healthy for land,
and the scorched landscape actually provides great learning opportunities for kids.

The fire was started by some trespassers and their campfire in front of a mine below the trail to Upper Meadow. It mostly spread downhill from there, so there's no sign of anything fire damaged once you get to Upper Meadow.




In fact, an unforeseen benefit of the fire is that – now that all those pesky trees are out of the way – you can see the sunrise from the same spot. So that's next. If only sunrises didn't require us to be, you know, up before the sun.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

12

The last two weeks have been pretty crazy. 12 days in a row of work at camp! Non-stop action! There was a lot of variety in what each work day looked like (ropes course stuff, polishing wine glasses for camp VIP weekend, working a regular summer camp-style week with kids), which kept it from getting tedious.

Conveniently, the most stressful day of the 12 days just so happened to be Halloween. The weekend was jam-packed and Ashley was the ringmaster of the circus. But it is pretty hard to be stressed out when you are dressed in a lime green fat suit in order to represent a Black Eyed Pea.
The Black-Eyed Peas after doing some dishes

On the Sunday night of the crazy weekend, we somehow managed to make it to LA to go to a Kris Kristofferson concert with the Wilcox fam. We made it back to camp around midnight after the show and the next morning we were back to the grind for our first full week program for sixth-graders. To make things even more adventurous, Ashley and I worked together as a "duad," which was a first. So the two of us were leading around a group of 11-year olds around the forest for 6 days, helping them experience everything from making orange cakes to putting on a one-act play about habitats. I don't think the children knew that we were married to each other, but they knew that we were the best darn nature guides they'd ever met. Full success.

By the time the 12 days were over, it was time to unwind and celebrate the birthdays of Ashley and Abbey. We did a bar crawl of San Diego's North Park area with an all-star group of current and former camp peeps. It was one of the better Monday nights we've been a part of, this is for sure. And we stayed at the W Hotel for the night -- the same place we were stationed the day after our wedding.

A replication of a chalk board we did 2 years ago at the W Hotel in San Diego. That one read: Marriage: Day 1.

So in conclusion, we are glad to be in a place where you can work 12 days in a row and not feel the least bit defeated.