Our big family trip this summer was visiting
Trail West. Trail West is a Christian family camp in Colorado. It is a Younglife camp and Stephen and I are currently on the local board to bring Younglife to our town. If you have not heard of Younglife, it is a great ministry to high school age kids, please visit younglife.org to learn more about it!
The arrival to camp is unlike any welcome we have ever experienced in our lives! It is so special and unique and fun but I will keep it a secret in case any of my readers ever visit! This picture is a few minutes into our visit and those smiles did not leave our face for seven days.
So excited to finally be in Colorado!
Addison showing me Cowgirl Attitude!
All ready for our first dinner. This camp is all inclusive so the meals are prepared beautifully and served by high school Younglife volunteers so they get to know our children and greet them every meal with hugs and high fives and by name.
Every detail is thought of in this camp and just seamlessly flows to the next exciting adventure. After dinner each night we have "club." Club is essential to Younglife and is a wild, crazy dancing party followed by a short message of Jesus love for us. At family camp, we would have the wild, crazy party (songs and skits) with our kiddos and some great worship songs and then for about 20 minutes the kids go to their individual aged club and the parents get to wind down at our own club.
Then after club, we all come back together and this night, we were surprised with a huge carnival down in the grove! Games, cotton candy, popcorn-all they can eat, all included! So fun! When they turned the lights on, the kids eyes were as big as saucers and they all ran squealing.
The stars of the week (Hank and Weezy) the hilarious cowboys of the camp. The staff and volunteers constantly came up to Stephen and I and told us Addison is the best hugger and is so full of love. It was so fun to watch her make connections with all of these amazing people at camp.
At the carnival, when the kids won the games they got to do crazy things to the staff like throw a pie in their face! Or squirt gun whip cream beards off!!!
And when I say staff, I mean volunteer high school and college Younglife kids who have given a month of their summer to serve others. Truly awe inspiring. They clean the rooms, serve the food, take care of the kids and the parents, do skits, give hugs. It brought tears to my eyes to see how much they loved Jesus and brought that compassion to my kids as they loved on them.
Addison and I on the way to Wrangler Breakfast. (Daddy and the big kids rode horses through the mountains to get there!)
The Wrangler Breakfast was listed as Amelia's top three events at camp. It is an early morning horse ride to get to an old fashioned breakfast made by the Wranglers. Of course fun and silliness ensued as well as a delicious humongous breakfast (made to order omelets, breakfast burritos, hot chocolate and coffee, sausage and the best part french toast). But par for the course, everything at camp was extra special...
The cook throws your french toast to you and you catch it on a plate of syrup!!!
So adorable and fun!
I LOVE this picture! And of course, the cook doesn't care how many attempts it takes you to land your toast. He makes it so fun for the kids!
(Did I mention the whole trip has a photographer and videographer, so a moment is never missed?)
Amazing.
More love from Addison! This time because she requested Lucky Charms and he drove back to camp to get them for her! Seriously, the service is crazy good.
Luke lining up for his french toast. Look at all the missed pieces on the ground! Luke nailed his piece on the first try!
The background of our breakfast was so beautiful.
Love these smiles...
We wrapped up breakfast with some visits with the horses and a morning devotion and got ready for the rest of our day!
Time for the Rodeo!
The Rodeo was tons of family games-dragging kids on the back of shovels, tug of war, etc.
Luke trying to spin ten times and then run. The kids were great at this but the parents were terrible. So many dads wiped out completely onto the ground, it was big belly laugh fun.
Addison lists her top three things as the ponies, the ponies and the ponies. Luckily she could ride Sunshine and Breezy as much as she wanted. And she took full advantage of that!
Next up, an off road Jeep tour through the mountains! Stephen loved driving a jeep again!
Our view from the jeep!
The kids thought it was TOTALLY AWESOME to be able to stand up in the jeep. All the excursions are included in the stay so they have every detail planned out so perfectly that we get to enjoy all the fun without any of the planning! For this OCD chick, it was perfection!
(We know Luke looks like he is in a Mexican drug cartel but he said this is how cowboys keep the dust out of their mouth).
On the jeep tour, they take us to a little abandoned Old West town called St. Elmo. And then they give us this chipmunk feed and we are all, "What in the whole wide??" (sorry inside camp joke) Anyway, we don't know what is going on but all of a sudden 100 little chipmunks come out and you can feed them by hand and it was more magical than even Disney can pull off.
The kids couldn't get over how cold the water was in the creeks!
More Western Wear for dinner and club. Each night at dinner and usually at breakfast, Hank, Weezy and Kaki come out to do these little skits which of course lead to this great lesson at the end of the week. So all of the meals were so fun and energetic. And Stephen and I loved looking around our table and seeing our kids belly laughing together. It was the best!
Time for a hike to the top of the mountain!
This is at the base of our hike! Again, the way the camp takes care of us was amazing. All of the volunteers come on the hike so if a little one got tired, they put them on their shoulders or in a backpack carrier or just encouraged with high fives! And not only that, our camp brought two porta potties to our trail! I mean that takes it to a whole other level for me. I was amazed by the forethought.
You can see our trail of campers on the way up. Needless to say it was gorgeous and one of my favorite memories of the week. To walk up that mountain with my whole family (which they all did with zero complaints) was breathtaking. We talked about how amazing God's creation is and to be able to look out over all those mountains...blessed.
WE MADE IT!!!!
So exciting to have us all up there together and we prayed and it was so beautiful.
(We are right in the front, my arm is raised holding Addison and the rest of the family is to the left).
I just thought this was a great picture from the photographer of Amelia's club group! The kids loved going to club and would run out as soon as they heard their music!
Going on a trail ride through the mountains.
I've mentioned some of Amelia's and Addison's favorite things. When I asked Luke for his top three he said, "Everything, everything and everything!" It was a perfect answer.
Whitewater rafting was ridiculously fun! (Addison was not quite big enough so she stayed with the Kid Wranglers who took her swimming, gold mining and pony riding. Needless to say, she was not bummed at all about not going).
Ahhhhhh!
We made it! Luke and Amelia absolutely LOVED the rapids.
Love this memory too!
I just love this girl. She is a trip. She asked me to take this picture and it is a fave.
Addison with one of her Kid Club Wranglers, Camille! These young men and women were such a blessing on this trip. They facilitated so many amazing family memories but also gave the parents a break to go to a devotion, or just go take a shower or one night where we had a great date night. So special.
This is at club together as a family. Probably not a better sight to warm my heart than watching my babies worship together with such joy and exuberance.
Me and my Mims.
One of Stephen's favorite nights...this was an all camp DANCE PARTY!! It started with square dancing but morphed into an all night Dance party and it was so ridiculously fun. We were all just soaked with sweat after but it was so fun to all just let loose the whole night.
More fun with Weezy (when Weezy isn't Weezy, he is a Younglife area director in Oxford, MS!)
Did I mention all the excursions are included too? Amazing.
It was our day to do the ropes course, rock walls and zipline. Addison had been waiting for this day all week, Amelia and I had been praying about this day all week.
Luke and Daddy handled the ropes course like champs.
Amelia and Addison both handled the rock walls like pros.
Amelia scampered to the top of both the easy and moderate walls like a little spider.
Ready to zip down the zipline!
Woo Hoo Luke and Daddy!
The kids were all super impressive on the rock walls. I happily took pictures and movies but I had promised the kids I would do all of the course. I think most people know my tiny little worry about heights has turned into a full fledged phobia.
Addison was my partner and she was amazing. She really helped calm me. This was the only picture I put on here because I am still smiling. After this first part of the course, I was not smiling. I was wimpering. I wish I was joking.
We got to the next section and Addison could no longer reach any of the obstacles. She would just have to hold her own harness to get herself across. So I saw the worry in her eyes as she looked at me and I was (again, I wish I was kidding) holding onto the pole with both of my arms and legs while whimpering.
I told Stephen after we finished (which we did) that it was the first time, my own fear hampered me from taking care of my children. I was legitimately scared, as Stephen described it, to the point where I was literally paralyzed with fear. So after this, one of the wonderful staff, Juan, came out to Addison, who by the way, never cried or fussed. She just calmly told me she could not reach and needed help. Juan, had Addison hold his safety harness and together they crossed the next two obstacles. He was amazing, I love Juan.
I was so happy to see Addison on the other side but then I looked and I was now by myself still death gripping the pole...whimpering.
But my kids were watching and we had talked all week how this is like our faith walk and it is going to be hard but we need to persevere with Jesus's help. So I walked, well, I more like wiggled across, very slowly. But I made it. Phew. I could finally breath.
Crap, I just realized now to get down, I had to zipline.
So Addison and I are all harnessed up to zipline like 100 miles/ hour down and I am like, seriously? This is insane. And then, the girl counts down 3,2,1 zip!!! And I look beside me and Addison is still sitting there too. Neither one of us left the platform!
Taking that first leap was so scary, but we did it eventually, on four, and then oh my word, it was so fun!!!!
Addison, of course, thought it was AWESOME!!!
Amelia was not worried about the rope course or the rock wall but she was terrified of the zipline. We talked about it all week and we talked about conquering fears and having faith.
Here she is at the top with Daddy, needing to take that first leap. I was video taping her and just shaking (because I had just done it and was still thanking Jesus I lived and also because I wanted her to conquer this fear). You can see the fear in her face.
And then she did it!!! And I cried.
And I am crying again as I write this because I was so proud of her.
And of course, now the zipline is in her top three moments of her week.
Amelia and I racing to the top!!
It looks like I am winning.
Nope. Amelia already rang her bell and was on the way down.
This is the last night and the smiles still hadn't left their faces. Trail West advertises the camp as "The Best Week of Your Lives." They did not disappoint. It was definitely the most amazing vacation we have ever taken. But it was so much more than that, our family was so blessed by this trip because we got to delve deeper into our relationship with Jesus, all the while laughing and joking and having the time of our lives with experiences we will NEVER forget.
We have been back home a week now and we have not stopped talking about the trip, it comes up in every family meal, we have been singing all of the songs and acting out the skits and talking in cowboy talk.
Stephen and I so often talk about making memories with our kids. And this trip was beyond our imagination, so many beautiful family memories.
