End of Summer Update

Summer camp has ended and we are well into our conference season here at Victory!
August has been an incredibly busy month for Justin because we are short handed on the Guest Services front. Everyone has been wonderful about picking up slack but because August is one of our busiest (or the busiest) month for guest groups, it still means many hours and long days for everyone working. We are nearing the end of the month now and getting ready for blackout week, when we purposely schedule no groups, so that anyone who wants time off can get it.

Here's a quick recap of the second half of the summer!

Justin spoke at chapel here and there during a couple of weeks of camp. We had no scheduled speaker so the camp staff took turns speaking on different topics each night. I always love watching my husband speak because he may not fully realize it but he's a gifted preacher! :) I wish I could have captured the energy of evening chapel in a photo. It is awesome to have so many young people in one place and watch God be lifted high in singing and in talking about Him and in just having a ton of random fun! You know it's a good place to be when we arrive at Spruce Lodge and Grady starts yelling "CHAPEL TIME!"

I got to fill in at the gift shop and run espresso for several days. It is one of my favorite things to do around camp because not only do I get to make espresso and enjoy the incredible smells all day, I get to interact with campers and staff that I normally wouldn't see as much. I love talking to people and making them happy with coffee!

Evie lost her top two teeth over the last month. She now has an adorable gappy smile and she somehow still manages to say her S's the same and not lisp. She's preparing now to go into 2nd grade and she is counting down the days till we start school! Tonight we begin the AWANA year at church and she's celebrating the fact that this is her last year of Sparks and next year she'll be in T&T!

We capped off the summer with a formal staff dinner (which I didn't get pictures of because I was home sick :( ) and then a bonfire at the Matanuska River. It was definitely as cold as it looks and I for one was thankful for a huge fire to stand around! 

Both Evie and Norah got swimmer's itch this summer....TWICE. Once from both lakes here at camp. We then determined that neither lake was safe and so ended our swimming career for the summer! But seriously, don't let Evie's thumbs-up fool you. It was several days of misery each time they caught it, with endless itching and waking mom and dad up in the middle of the night to apply itch cream multiple times. What a huge bummer!

Another photo of the bonfire at the river. I'm not sure why they're out of order but I try not to wade too deep into technology because I'll never find my way back. :P

Early morning fog lifting off the pond outside our house. We had higher than average temperatures for June, a normal July, and a chilly August.

Norah shows her marshmallow at the river bonfire. She looks cold! Norah is about to start preschool which she's very excited about. She will get to do big-kid school time with Evie. She's also about to begin her second year of Cubbies.

The IDEA homeschool group had family camp here at the beginning of the month. It wasn't much of a retreat for us since we live here, ;) but we did get to do horse rides. The kids were super excited!

If you look closely you can see the blue lollipop smooch on my cheek from Grady's kisses. This boy just turned two! He enriches all our lives every single day. He is most definitely the clown of the family and loves to make us laugh. He is also a great communicator for someone so small and a very compassionate little boy! He always has a glint of mischief in his eye!

We had a nice hot day and the girls decided to do a lemonade stand. They made two whole dollars!!

A peaceful evening on Shallow Lake. There is no summer like an Alaskan summer!

Grady's first horse ride! This horse is named Gold Digger and is also the horse that Evie rode when she had her very first horse ride several years ago! Grady got a little nervous when we put him up there, but he was beyond excited and talked about it for a long time!

We took a family trip on one of Justin's days off and went day camping at Eklutna Lake. We 4-wheeled, hiked around a little bit, threw rocks in the lake, made mud pies, and cooked over a fire. It sprinkled rain on us off and on but it didn't stop us from having a fantastically fun day!

This little mama had her 7th birthday last week. We had a double party for her and Grady since their birthdays are 4 days apart. But we still put candles on every food we could and sang happy birthday several times on their own special day!

Evie made homemade party favors/thank you notes and a decorative hanger and sign. Perhaps she has a future in event planning?

Birthday boy shows daddy his ice cream. Notice the frosting on the cupcake is all licked off. ;)

Birthday boy is happy to be eating pizza for dinner.

Evie's dear friends Alison and Lucy at the birthday party

I'm not sure if you can tell in the picture but the trees higher up are yellow! We're getting an early fall this year and many of the trees around camp are yellow and the road is already dotted with fallen leaves. I'm not quite ready to let go of summer yet but winter is coming, ready or not!
All in all we had a great summer. I wanted to share a couple of stories from this summer. We keep a book in the staff lounge for counselors and staff to write the awesome things God has been doing over the summer. Here are just a couple of stories. Praise God for the awesome works He's doing in the lives of young people!


This past week I had a really difficult bunch of campers who came from some tough family backgrounds.  Two of them were sisters and the older one struggled with an eating disorder.  She told me she didn’t believe in God because when she had prayed that her parents would stay together, He didn’t answer and they still divorced.  Throughout the week I kept on telling her that God loved her no matter what and that even if she didn’t believe in Him, He would keep pursuing her.  Dori and Hail also talked to her a lot and at the end of the week she rededicated her life to Christ.  I could definitely see a change in her at the end of the week – when other campers started arguing and crying; she’d pull them aside and ask to pray with them.  Also, in our last cabin discussion, she got up in front of the campers and talked about what God had done in her life that week and how He saved her.  She’s still a work in progress and it broke my heart that she and her sister had to return to a really difficult, broken home, but I know she’s in God’s hands.  Praise God for His reckless love!

I’m writing this because I feel that God wants me to.  I’m activities and one time while I was at a campout doing a game I sat down next to a girl.  She was one of the Adventure girls in week 6.  We started to talk about our families and she shared about her past.  She has had a hard background and I asked her about if she believed in the Lord and she said she believed there was a God, just because her grandma said so.  I told her that she has to do her own evidence.  I sat with her on the porch for lunch the next two days and we had a solid talk about God, life, etc.  On Thursday evening she rededicated her life.  I was so thrilled.  I gave her a Bible and she has already been reading and showing in her actions that she is a new person.