Camp Highland summer camp officially ended for the summer on August 3rd when the summer staff left to head back home, to school, etc. It was a great summer for camp with attendance holding steady to last year, which is a great thing in the current economy. Numerous kids came to know Jesus, and so many more made another step in their walk with Him, and that was exciting to see - that’s the reason that camp exists!

For me, personally, as I was not involved in the day-to-day happenings of camp, I was most thankful for the 17 people who were a part of our summer staff this year and the way that they loved on Jackson, Morgan and Mackenzie.  I absolutely could not have managed up at camp this summer alone, knowing that Gavin would be working most of the time we were there.  These awesome people just loved on my kids, doing everything from playing silly games (Jackson throws a rock and they run and get it - sound fun?), snuggling with Mackenzie (she fell asleep on so many people this summer), and joining in on the never-ending search for ‘balls’ (little air soft pellets that are scattered all over the camp main area - Jackson and Morgan found and re-found these balls the *entire summer.  It never got old… to them anyway).

The staff helped me out in countless ways, and touched my children’s lives in such a wonderful way this summer.  I know that Jackson will be talking about and naming them off for months to come, much like he did last year.  So Camp Highland Summer Staff 2009, if you are reading this… THANK YOU!!!

Here’s a few pictures of them with the kids.  Most are of Claudia because I got the pictures from her, but most of these pictures could have any of the summer staff’s faces in them:

a little Mackenzie-lovin

Jackson and Claud

asleep on the school bus coming home from a day trip

Morgan and Jamie

tag-team tickle by Zach and Jamie

so sweet

always happy to see a smiling face

Liz and Morgan during tribal games

Jackson and his buddy Zach

the whole crew

This is how our family gets around camp sometimes. The kids LOVE it (despite the look on Morgan’s face)    Other times we take the John Deere gator.  Fun stuff.

Mackenzie must be distracted by the person coming down the zip line right above us!

For some reason Morgan was in most of the good pics from camp this past week! There were a few of Jackson, but just one that was really good, so I included it here. Camp is halfway over for the summer - 5 weeks done, 5 to go!

Here is Morgan with Liz, one of the summer staff - they were playing tribal games (Liz is part of the blue tribe):

Hanging out on the field watching games:

The kids had a lot of fun this week playing in the sandbox (aka sand volleyball court).  It became our late afternoon activity while we waited for all the campers to come up for dinner.  Somehow they both still found energy to run in the sand in the midst of the extreme heat (I sat in a chair in whatever shade I could find!)

Morgan and the ‘woof woof’

And finally, a good picture of how exhausted Jackson gets at camp.  I’m still waiting for the kids to sleep better and to actually still be rested at the end of the week!

And Mackenzie sure is a cool kid sitting in her bumbo seat!

As promised, here are pictures of the chateau, our summer home up at camp. I used a wide-angle lens to take pics of the inside, so it’s slightly distorted, but you can see pretty much everything that way. First, this is a view of the whole scene - the Chateau, the deck Gavin put out front, the patch of sod that was laid and the swingset that is not quite assembled yet. We also put a kiddie pool out here. The gravel was put down our 2nd week, which made a huge difference with all the mud:

Here’s more of a closeup of the Chateau - our awning broke in a heavy wind/rain storm a couple weeks ago, so hoping to get that fixed so that we can have some shade over the porch.  I can’t begin to tell you though how much I love the porch - it’s SO nice to have a place to put chairs, shoes, etc!

This is the back bedroom (the left part of the trailer as you see it in the picture above).  Gavin took out the queen bed that was in there and built in some bunks - the top one isn’t finished, but Mackenzie isn’t sleeping in here at night anyway.

In between the back bedroom and the main room is the bathroom.  This picture is taken from the bathroom looking into the main living area.  We sleep on the futon we brought from home, and Gavin again took out the little couch/twin bed that was there and moved over the table to fit our futon.

Finally, this is looking from the kitchen end back into the trailer, and you can see the bathroom straight ahead - you go through the bathroom to get to the kids room.

So this is our summer home!

Last week was our first full week up at camp.  We had been there a few days on and off the prior 2 weeks, but last week we went from Monday to Friday.  We are living this summer in a travel trailer (approx 33 feet or so) that has a bedroom in the back, a bathroom in the middle, and a living area/kitchenette in the front.  It’s small, but it will work well for us, and Gavin has been working to transform it to fit our family a little better.  I’ll post pictures after our next week up there!

Here are a few pictures from our first week of camp.  First, Mackenzie spent a bit of time in the Baby Bjorn.  This is one baby item that I have had since Jackson was born, and it has gotten so much use!

Thursday at camp is camper’s choice day, where they can choose between horseback riding, water sports, or rock climbing.  Gavin had to drive the bus for the horseback group, so the kids and I tagged along with him.  After the group was done the guy at the stables let Jackson hop up on the hourse and ride around a little bit.  He did great!

After horseback riding we took the group to eat lunch at Fort Mountain State Park.  It had beautiful views, and as we ate our packed lunch, we ended up having to run back to the car/bus to avoid the downpour that came quickly.  So here we are all sweaty and dirty, with some of us too hungry to stop eating for the camera.

Here is Jackson and Zach.  Zach has been an intern at camp this past semester and has more of a leadership role this summer, and my kids really enjoy hanging out with him.

And finally, here’s a picture of the 2009 summer staff.  They are an amazing group of people, and have started off the summer doing an awesome job.

We wanted to do a post so that you know what a week of camp looks like at Camp Highland.  Summer camp started the second week of June, and has run for 8 weeks with a week break for the 4th.  The lowest number of kids at camp for a week has been in the high 30s, and the highest number was close to 70 (totalling about 90 people at camp when the 22 summer staff are included in the number).  I was able to grab pictures of most all the activities, with the exception of lake day/water sports, and rock climbing.  So here’s a little weekly schedule for you:

Monday: campers arrive starting at 10, do registration, and get split into their cabins/groups for the week (split by sex and age.  There are 8 cabins that can each sleep 10 campers and 2 staff).  Between Monday and Tuesday, each group gets to do the high ropes course,

Low ropes course,

and a handful of initiatives and field games.

Wednesday: This is rafting day, where the whole group piles into the camp bus (or buses depending on the size of the group)

and goes to the Nantahala River for a day of rafting.

And of course there is always the potential for added adventure if/when one of the buses breaks down (only happened once, thank goodness!).

Thursday is campers choice day, where they get to select between water sports (wakeboarding, waterskiing, or kneeboarding), horseback riding (contracted out at a nearby farm), or rock climbing (also done offsite for the day).  I only have pictures right now of

Friday is lake day, with tubing and the same water sports listed above.  Also, each cabin group will do the Pamper Pole and the Drop Zone, high-ropes activities that make your stomach drop!  The oldest cabins get to do them, and/or the ropes course, at night in the pitch dark!  It’s one of the things campers really look forward to as they come back to camp each year - to finally be in the oldest cabin and get to do these things at night.  Here’s the Pamper Pole:

Each night everyone gets together in the Pavillion for some worship and teaching, before going back to the cabins for bed.  Heather, one of our summer staff, led worship this summer, and is unbelievably talented.

We had our share of storms, although they were almost always at night.

Campers had the option to sign up for a 2-week session in July, and so they did some fun stuff over the weekend - rapelling and caving.

Then on Saturday morning the parents came starting at 11 to get their campers and hear all about the week.  Then Monday morning it started all over again!

Here is the amazing staff that has served this summer, and we hope many will want to come back next year (lots are already talking about it)

And Erik and Liz came on staff full-time this past spring, and have been huge in making this summer happen.

Overall it has been a very fulfilling and rewarding summer, although a bit hard on our family life.  But we know that this is where we are supposed to be, and feel like the Lord is doing great things through Camp Highland.  We had record attendance this year, even having to close down weeks because they were too full.  A few campers came to the Lord, and many more went farther in their Christian walk during their week here.  It was also pretty amazing to talk to campers and see just how many are returning for their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or even 6th year.  One camper who was one of Gavin’s campers back in 2002 when he was 9 years old was at camp this summer for 4 or 5 weeks as part of the servant staff - he is 16 years old and has been here for 7 summers straight now, and hoping to be camp staff next year.  It’s stories like these that make it so worthwhile, as we really see camp as being a place where students can grow year after year.

This post turned out super long, but hopefully it was enjoyable and you got a good sense of camp life, and what we (well, Gavin mostly) have been doing all summer, and to see in more detail what some of you have been praying for and investing in!

Ok, as promised I finally have pictures of our ’summer home’.  No, it’s not a cabin on a lake or anywhere quite as peaceful/nice as that… it’s a school trailer set up for us at camp!  This is where we have lived this summer (the truck just happens to be parked there, it’s not attached to the trailer or anything):

I tried to make the inside as livable as possible, since we only had 1 huge room.  I had old curtains that I brought in and hung up to make a divider so that the kids had their half of the room and we had ours.  The pictures are taken from the dividing point, so you can see the 2 halfs of the room.  It’s a bit messy - I should have picked up before taking these pictures!  It also looks a bit bigger than it really is because of the wide angle lens (you can see that my computer screen looks like a bit wider than it should!).  But it was a good size, I won’t complain about that. This half is our side - we brought our futon from home to put on the floor, as well as an old desk so that I could work remotely.  The 2 doors go to a toilet and sink, and then a shower on the other side.

Here is the kids side - I put up more curtains around Morgan’s pack and play, because if she can see anyone, she won’t go to sleep (our little socialite).  Gavin called it her ‘cage’, but I thought it was just a cozy little room. :)  Jackson had a mattress on the floor, then lots of room to play with toys, as this was the only air-conditioned place we could come at camp.  He also enjoyed the huge whiteboard that came in the trailer (like I said, it’s really a school classroom).

While it has worked just fine for us this summer, I’ll be glad to return permanently to our real home.  Camp really wants to build some staff cabins in the very near future, so I’m hoping that they will be done before next summer!

This is Majka (pronounced Maika) and Faith, 2 Slovak girls who have come over to work at Camp Highland for the summer.  We were put in contact with them through a mutual American friend in Slovakia, when we were looking for some Slovaks who might want to come work at camp.  They have been so much fun to have here with us this summer - Gavin has gotten some great Slovak practice in (and I have gotten good listening practice - my spoken Slovak is pretty rusty), although they both speak great English.  They have been such an asset to the camp staff this summer, and we hope that they will come back next year (they would like to).

Camp Highland has been in full swing for the spring programs, 2-3 day events for a variety of different groups. Unfortunately this spring in Atlanta seems to bring rain every Friday and Saturday, just when the events are happening, so the kids and I didn’t get up to camp as much as we had planned, because being up there with them in the rain is a little difficult. But we did make it up a couple of days, and Jackson is just in heaven. He is going to love spending his summer up there! Morgan was a little more high-maintenance, but if we can just get her to decide to actually walk, then it will make things a little easier on all of us! Jackson also enjoys all of the fun vehicles that are at camp, so here he is attempting to drive off in the Gator - Morgan is a little unsure of the whole thing:

As long as it’s not raining, most groups that come up go through the high ropes course as part of their weekend. Here’s a shot of a few people going through the course: