Our Castaway Weekend

We had such a special weekend!  The four of us packed up our entire house (almost!) and left Friday afternoon to spend the weekend with our Young Life leaders at Castaway Club in Detroit Lakes, MN!  Every year, Castaway hosts "Leadership Weekend" for staff and volunteer leaders to plan, pray, train, and fellowship together and kick off a great year of ministry.  As always, we jumped at the chance to spend a weekend all together at camp.  Young Life is such a special organization and we love that our kids get to be impacted by such loving, faithful people starting at such a young age.  Logan and I had not been to YL camp since our month-long stay at Timberwolf Lake in Michigan in Summer '08.  It was Bennett's first trip to camp (Logan had already been TWICE by the time he was Bennett's age!).

We drove to Northern MN and met our awesome EC leaders at camp Friday night.  The boys and I didn't get to attend all the festivities (staying back for bedtime, naps, and sanity!), but we enjoyed running around camp, meeting new friends, seeing old friends, and ramping up for a great year of YL!

This is Bennett hanging out playing with Mr. Lion on the bed while I got a few things ready for the day on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, Logan was more than happy playing cars.  He could play with his Matchbox cars - literally - all day long.  He is so funny: lining them up, driving them around, talking to them, making up stories.  I love to watch!  PS - Thanks for the Vander Top family for this wonderful addition to our toy repetoire!

This is how Logan walked around camp for most of Saturday while we were out and about!  We had a big yummy breakfast in the dining hall with everyone (about 300 leaders in attendance!) and then we went to club where we got to sing and see the "silly guys".  After club and lunch we ran around camp checking everything out.  This was Logan's first trip to camp where he can really explore and start to check things out.  He was loving every minute of it!  So much that we postponed his nap so he could keep on going!

If you asked Logan where he was going, he would say, "School!"  He knows kids wear their backpacks for school because we often see kids in the neighborhood walking to and from the elementary school with the backpacks on.  Hey...as far as I am concerned, the more excited he is for school, the better, so we'll keep encouraging it!

One of Castaway's newest features is a giant swing!  It looks like so much fun, but it doesn't take much for me to loose my marbles, so I didn't attempt it this time.  We had fun watching a few people take the plunge - especially Logan, who couldn't believe how big that swing was!  One of our leaders, Ryan is there helping out with the swing - he worked on the swing during the month of June when he volunteered at Castaway for Summer Staff.

Look at Logan's reaction to the giant swing!

The new and improved climbing wall was right next to the swing, so Logan gave it a try!

A natural!

John and I couldn't believe how Logan really went for it!  Way to go buddy!

Every year in May, Castaway hosts "Work Week" where volunteers come to help the camp with projects and preparations before the camping season begins in June.  This year, I was about a billion month prego, so John went just for a couple days.  In a neat turn of events, my dad was able to go with John to help out at camp and see some of the behind the scenes action at YL camp. My dad and John helped build this retaining wall - here's the finished product!

Always lots of sweet hugs for daddy!

The grounds at Castaway are so beautiful!  Breathtaking!  The little boy in this photo is pretty cute, too!

Bennett spent a lot of time snoozing, as usual, but I think he liked all the action and all the attention!  Everyone at camp loves kids and babies!

Somehow, when we arrived at camp, they didn't have a suite reserved for us in the big house, but they were able to find a room with a queen bed and bathroom for us.  Whew!  It was a little tight, to say the least!  Logan's little aero bed was wedged in the corner by John's side of the bed and Bennett's crib was half-stuffed in the closet!  It turned out to work just great for us and we were just happy to be there!  Bedtime was a little tricky with me in the room along with both boys - in the pitch dark, but we managed!

Logan likes to read his own bedtimes stories these days.  If Bennett is lucky, he gets some stories read to him by his big brother.

Always kisses goodnight

Once the kids were asleep, I went out to the living room to find our group of friends from EC hanging out!  I was so happy they had come to the big house to hang out so that I could spend time with them all while being close to our sleeping babes.  We had snacks, talked, and LAUGHED until way too late!  :)  It was so much fun!  We are so excited about the wonderful team of leaders (this is only a handful of the leaders we have on the YL teams this year) we will be working with this year!  Thanks for making the weekend so much fun!

This morning was so great!  Logan woke up and crawled in bed with John and I and then Bennett woke up and he got to come snuggle with us, too.  All four of us in a tiny bed was so fun!  We just giggled and tickled and enjoyed a lazy morning together before the 9:30 breakfast.

The boys still in bed while Mom and Dad started to get up and ready.  Bennett looks totally huge in this photo!  And, Logan has his cars, of course!

Good times at Castaway can't be beat!  We're looking forward to many more as our kids grow!