The Best of Santa Cruz Rolled in One Day

Dave was able to take one day off this Spring Break and we did not want to waste it sitting home, so a fun beach outing was planned!  Gotta hit the beach over Spring Break, right?  Strangely, though, the beach in Northern California is a chilly place to be!  We were more freezing here than we were up in the snow in the mountains!

Santa Cruz has SO many fun options, we let everyone in the family chose a destination they for sure wanted to hit.  Dave picked the pier, where an hour long stroll affords you the view of all kinds of wildlife.  We saw otters, a whale, and these hilarious and noisy sea lions, amusing us with their attempts to haul their blubbery bodies up into the air and onto a narrow balance beam of wood under the pier.

 Ella loves fish now! Her must-do for the day was to eat some local seafood.  We had lunch at a lovely restaurant and were even brave enough to eat outdoors-- under one of the blasting heaters. :)

My choice was beach and hiking.  By visiting Natural Bridges State Park, we were able to do both.  This is such an iconic beach with the dramatic rock arch right off shore.

We loved hiking all sorts of terrain here-- from the rocky shoreline to the fragrant Eucalyptus groves to the forresty swamps.

After an afternoon stop at the world's best ice cream shop, Marianne's, (which was ALL of our choice!), we concluded our super fun Santa Cruz day with Delia's pick-- the always fun pirate mini-golf on the Boardwalk.  We all played a great 18 holes and this picture captures the intensity of Dave tallying up the within points of each other final scores!

We have a few days left in our break and a few more plans to get together with different people, but probably nothing I'll blog about.  It's been a good mixture of relaxing, playing with school and church friends, and adventuring on fun outings this break.  Just what we needed to recharge for that final push till the end of this school year-- 6 weeks, 3 and a half days (not that we're counting or anything!)

Spring Break Snow Day

It's officially Spring Break!  However, with Dave having to work and Ella having play practices still, we're a bit limited in our Spring Break outing options this week.  The girls and I did have an empty square on yesterday's calendar and were excited to spend it hunting down some snow.  We were even more excited to learn that my friend and co-worker, Joy, who has kids the same age as mine, also had a busy working husband and the exact same idea!  We coordinated a Snow Day getaway with them and the six us had a fantastic time!

We found a great place, a little over 7000 feet up in the mountains that still had a load of snow and rented tubes for a day of play on the hills.  

 Tubing was SO fun, but even running starts, racing each other, and making trains got a little old.  We spiced things up by starting this "tube surfing" down the hill.  Trying to make it all the way down without falling was a challenge and had us laughing a lot.

Joy and I spent a good amount of time just sitting in our tubes by this beautiful snow-bordered creek talking about school.  She and I have never actually been paired to teach together, but we get along great because we're very like-minded in our approach.  While we had this lovely, long chat, our kids kept busy building snowmen and jumping their tubes off huge snow-covered boulders.

Snow in California is SO AWESOME!  We wore shorts on Easter and the very next day, after just a bit of drive, were sporting snow pants.  While we needed the layers to keep dry, we certainly didn't need them to keep warm!  The day was sunny and gorgeous and multiple hikes up the steep sledding hill had us quickly sweating and shedding layers.  Every one of us even came home with a bit of sunburn!

We're so thankful to get to know Joy and her kids even better in this super-fun, amazingly scenic setting.  It was a wonderful Spring Break day.

Happy Easter!

Easter 2018 was another time to bask in the joy and celebration of Christ's love, sacrifice, and power over sin and death.  We spent the day doing the things that make Easter a favorite holiday: going to church, eating ham, hunting for eggs, and playing with friends.  

 We had a beautiful Easter service, full of all the best songs and preaching!

Then we headed over to Phil and Jetta's.  Their bunny just had babies, so loading up our arms with the 6 TOTALLY ADORABLE baby bunnies had us all squealing with delight.

After a delicious ham dinner enjoyed in the warm, outdoor sunshine, the kids embarked on a crazy egg hunt.  Everyone is getting older now, so none of this "just toss the eggs on the lawn" business.  These kids had to WORK for their chocolate-- climbing trees, searching the chicken coop and pool fountain, digging in the sandbox, even dragging ladders out to retrieve the eggs hidden in the gutters!

We stayed 6 hours at our friends' house, visiting, laughing, playing badminton, and getting a kick out the creative fun our big bunch of kids always cooks up when they're together (this time acting out the entire Peter Pan play-- complete with a goat on a leash playing the part of Nana!). 

We obviously know that Easter is not about the bunnies, eggs, ham, or even fellowship with friends.  But all these wonderful pleasures sure enhance our celebration of Jesus' Victory!

Girls Camp

A couple of weekends ago, all 3 of us girls got to go away to camp for 3 days.  We went with the girls group we're involved in at church and since I teach Delia's class every other week, Ella asked me to be HER cabin counselor for the weekend.  When it comes to kids, the younger the better for me!  I must admit that I was a little nervous about a whole weekend with middle school girls, but they were a delight!  Noisy and not very excited about sleeping, but a delight! :)

It was the first year at camp for Delia and I and, though Ella told us a bit, we didn't really understand what to expect.  Pretty much everything about camp exceeded my expectations!  The girls were kept busy the entire time with worship, organized group games, and rotating around various station activities.  

We spent an hour at each station.  (You will see mostly pictures of Ella since it was her and her friends I was in charge of hanging out with this weekend.)  One station was a super cute art project.

At another station we were challenged by a speaker about not just "having the right Christian answers", but putting our faith into practice.  The girls were given some practical tools for making Bible reading, gratitude giving, and praying a more intentional part of their daily routines.  We then made Prayer and Gratitude Journals.

Another station had the girls get their creativity and teamwork skills on with a doll making competition.  My 7th grade girls wanted to make an Olympic themed doll and they won!

  

The theme for the weekend was "On Your Mark, Get Set, GO!".  We spent a lot of time decorating our cabins with items relating to the theme and for the Theme Night we were invited to wear running and work-out clothes.

That big Theme Night held our favorite event of the weekend too-- a Talent Show!  The girls learned about it when they arrived, so the time they had to prepare was minimal, but we still saw some amazing acts!  Some girls sang, or played piano, or danced, or did gymnastics.  When girls were clearly nervous to be on stage, the crowd rallied around them, cheering and rewarding them with standing ovations.  The encouragement and bravery was such a touching thing to see from middle school girls!  Both Ella and Delia pulled a group of friends together and wrote/performed funny skits.  You know my girls can't resist a stage!

All of us counselors had the plan to surprise the girls when the talent show was concluding with a surprise "Flash Mob" style dance.  Well, the energy in the place was off the charts after all the acts and encouragement and as soon as our counselor song started playing ("Can't Stop the Feeling") and we adults jumped up to dance, the girls automatically did too!  They flooded the stage and instead of us performing for them, it became a giant dance party.  It was such a great moment.

Here's my one picture of Delia and her 5th grade friends.  She had SUCH a great time!  

The worship times were really powerful too.  These girls spend a lot of time doing this sort of thing in school and church.  It's always beautiful to see them get out of their normal routine and meet the Lord in a special place.  I got choked up seeing my own girls initiate postures of praise-- hands raised or arms around one another.   Their faith is real and it's such a gift to get a little peek at how they live that out when they're with their friends.

This camp is a merge of all the area churches bringing their girls together.  We had 135 present.  Here is the group we took from just our church.  I have my own amazing memories of going to camp with my church group when I was this age and I was super blessed getting to experience the counselor side of it.  A week of fatigue followed since there was nothing relaxing or recharging about this weekend, but it was TOTALLY worth it!

(And since my post is lacking much Delia, here are a few shots of her when we got back from camp and started working on making burp clothes for all the babies of our church and pregnancy center for our sewing badge the next week!)