MH at Home

This was to be Ella's first year up at HiCamp, the high school version of the Mount Hermon Family Camp we called home for one week each summer for a whole decade.  Mount Hermon had to cancel all their summer programs, another bummer of a loss.  Though we weren't registered for Family Camp this summer, we mourned the cancellation with Ella and decided to support this beloved ministry by purchasing their Mount Hermon at Home box.  We reserved a week to dive into all the devotionals, activities, and speaker links the kit provided. And we made our own list of ways we could still enjoy some of our MH favorites at home.

On our first day of MH at Home, we got creative.  We took the challenge to recreate an old picture from a Mount Hermon summer in the past.  How we giggled at how huge the girls have grown!  And yes, I can still lift Delia! :)  We also decided to make our own banana slugs to hide and find around the house, which turned into the wacky art project of turning them into different characters!  Fun tidbit: while searching for banana slugs in the house, we found an old iPod that's been missing for 6 years! ;)

Part of our MH at Home experience was a menu intentionally full of some of our favorite Mount Hermon meals.  We cooked up the First Night BBQ picnic, complete with a bike dash to the store to grab our favorite ice cream bars.  At MH, you literally have to run to get the one you like best!

Instead of a strenuous early morning hike up the hill to Pancake Ridge, we instead took a mid-morning stroll to the Waffle Factory.

And we had to make Tuesday Night S'mores happen!

Tuesday night is also Glow Stick Zumba Night at Mount Hermon.  A link to the instructor still leading it from the field house lawn was given to us in our box, so we glowed and Zumba-ed around our living room!

An old favorite at Mount Hermon was always the day the girls got their turn on the giant, wild Day Camp slip'n slide.  On our list was digging the old slip'n slide out of the shed so we could recreate this fun.  We had a ball!

Our last day of Mount Hermon was always enjoyed with a beautiful afternoon hike along the redwood forrested creek. We decided to head to the local river spot we discovered this summer instead.  And we brought Ivy along to splash around while fetching her tennis ball, which she absolutely LOVES.  It was a good substitute. 

One of my favorite parts of MH at Home was the time we were encouraged to carve out each day to connect with God.  Links to a morning and evening speaker were provided in our kit, as well as devotional books for us all to work through.  Mount Hermon forces you to embrace a week where the wifi is weak, but the connection to God is strong.  Even at home, it was good to get a small taste of this.  As we learned about David and Moses we were reminded again of God's faithfulness, deliverance, provision, and promise to go with us when we feel anxious and uncertain.  SO applicable today!

Honestly, any excuse at this point to do anything out of the ordinary is quite welcome!  We've fallen into a bit of a dreary routine.  By tweaking that just a bit to include intentional devotion and family time, and a few special activities and foods, we were able to create a memorable Mount Hermon at home experience that we'll tuck away as yet another of 2020's Plan B oddities.