It was beautiful

Well it's official: the term "Malibu" is now synonymous with "beautiful, lovely, peaceful, close to paradise." This camp was incredible.
We started our journey there at 5:15 AM, when we picked up eight 11th and 12th graders in the YL van. There was a great ratio of 4 girls to 4 boys, and they were an awesome tight-knit group of friends who reminded me of myself and my friends at that age. We boarded the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale at 7:20--and let me tell you, these ferries are nothing like what I've been on in Michigan. They are delux. It's like being in an airport or something, they have a full cafeteria (which sells cartons of milk for $2, bagels for $4 and burgers for $8), a coffee shop and a gift shop in addition to their three car decks and three people decks. And I over heard other passengers saying, "Oh, looks like we're on a small one today," which really makes me wonder what the full sized guys look like. Nothing like the Beaver Island Boat Company ferries I was used to.

Us on the ferry.

The sun is finally up!

After an hour, we landed in Langdale and hopped on a school bus, which took us the hour and a half to Egmont.

We look awake, but more than half of this group was sound asleep most of the bus ride--including me :)

And from there, we took a water taxi over to Camp Malibu.

Our happy campers

And it was beautiful--just unreal. We sped along the inlet, surrounded by rocky cliffs, snow peaked mountains and trickling water falls. After an hour, we caught sight of Malibu, a beautiful, rustic looking camp perched on the rocks overlooking the water. It is completely indescribable, so I'll just include a lot of pictures.

The camp itself was built in the 1940's as a playground to the rich and famous. YL bought it in 1953, and has built tons of new boardwalks and buildings. The group we joined this weekend consisted of around 70 teens and leaders who were there to work around the camp--help clean up from the winter and prepare it for the summer camps. Our basic schedule looked like this:

• Wake up at 7.
• Walk outside to be stunned by the sun coming up over the mountains, the mist melting away in the hills, and the eagles stirring flocks of seagulls into a frenzy.
• Eat a hot breakfast. 
• Work work work until noon.
• Eat a hot lunch. 
• Work work work until 3.

Then, it was time to play. After dinner, we'd all go to Young Life club, where we'd sing and have crazy skits and games before listening to a speaker. Then we'd head to our cabins to discuss what we'd learned. In the cabin where I stayed with the girls, our cabin time was interrupted on two different nights by the visit of a small gray mouse who we named Gus-Gus. I'll admit, from my safe perch on the top bunk, he was a cute little guy. But I couldn't stand the thought of him scampering across my feet. After cabin time, we'd bundle up and head outside for some sort of activity--usually a game that involved running around in the pitch dark, hoping you won't run into a tree or off a rock into the ocean. It was exhausting, sometimes frustrating, and sometimes just crazy. But overall it was awesome.
We played  lots of games of four square and Dutch Blitz. We played lots of frisbee golf.

This picture may have been staged :)

The group ghost walking one of the guys

The frisbee golf course was awesome

live action shot

Showing off the guns I got from all that staining and shoveling

We had fun with the random hobbit door on the golf course.

We took one incredible afternoon excursion to a nearby provincial park called Chatterbox Falls. In the summer, it's a hot spot for yachters. Our kids donned their rain gear and jumped right in--mind you this water was definitely glacial, and it didn't get above 50 the entire trip. But they had a bast.

They all got soaked. It was awesome.

I  dipped my feet in--that's it though.

And we did a lot of work. My girls and I braved all sorts of ladders as we stained trim on one of the new buildings--a task which I was pretty accustomed to after a summer of doing just that in Michigan. Sometimes we lagged, sometimes we helped our boys shovel their gravel instead, but we worked hard and got the job done.

 

And fortunately, the group made the work fun too. There was a lot of laughing. A lot of giggling and flirting. And a lot of singing.
All in all, the trip was great. And it reminded me all over again of what it was like to be a teenager. Did we really talk about boys that much? (Yes. Yes we did. Probably more, now that I think back on it :)

And now we're back in Langley, sighing as we head back to a real life that doesn't involve six hours of work followed by eight hours of playing outside. But lucky for us, the sun is shining and it's still beautiful.

This Crazy Beautiful Life

I just want to thank everyone for allowing me to share this past Wednesday, and to thank you for all the words of love and encouragement. I am confident that this Wednesday I will have a very different feeling, as I will have had two more job interviews under my belt! Yesterday I traveled into Washington to interview, and went into it with courage and confidence, knowing that I was surrounded by all the support and prayers of my amazing family and friends. And in about two hours I have another interview with a different company in Abbottsford. I promise to provide updates with the results of both interviews when I can!

Bright and early tomorrow morning (as in 5:15 AM--yikes, that's earlier than I've gotten up all year!!) Jared and I will be boarding a van, a bus, and two ferries as we travel with a group of Young Life kids to a camp called Malibu. This place is super remote--here are the driving directions from their website: "There are no roads to Malibu." But to give you an idea:
Our starting point, Langley, is not on this map. It is a bit to the right of Surrey (on the bottom right hand corner). From what we can gather, we drive by van to Horseshoe Bay, take a ferry to Langdale, drive by bus to Edgmont, then take another ferry up to Malibu Landing. We're already planning on bringing lots of Dramamine for me and any other queasy ferry-riders :)

But we've been assured many times over that the trek up there is well worth it. We'll take lots of pictures while we're there, but here are some previews from around the web of what we're looking forward to:

Basically this place is right on the ocean, but on a protected inlet too. We're taking a group of around seven kids from Langley (it's they're spring break) to a work camp, where we'll join campers from other areas and help prepare the camp for the summer. It should be a lot of hard work and late nights, but we're both really excited for the trip.


Jared and I have gotten the chance to explore quite a bit while we're up here, it's been a lot of fun! Recently, our travels have been thanks to our friends Jared and Elise. Jared is a native resident of Langley, but his wife Elise is originally from Colorado, so we're all having fun getting used to the tiny cultural differences between US and Canada. Last week, Elise and I drove down to White Rock (a town about 20 minutes away) where there is a beach. So far Jared and I have focused so much on the mountains, we almost forgot about the ocean :) But here are some pics I took to prove it is there:

It was a cloudy, rainy day in Langley when we went, but apparently there are always blue skies in White Rock :) It felt so great to get my face in the sun again!


And on Saturday, the four of us traveled up to Cypress Mountain. It's a ski resort just on the north side of Vancouver, and it played host to the freestyle ski and snowboard events during the 2010 Winter Olympics. We had a blast on their tubing runs--it was really icy snow, so we went really fast! It was incredible how quickly we drove into snow too. In the city of Vancouver, flowers are blooming and spring is definitely here. But just 20 minutes out of the city and up into the mountains there was tons of snow. Here are some pictures of that too:

This is overlooking the city of Vancouver

Being from Michigan, we're pretty accustomed to lots of snow and tubing. But what we're not used to is being surrounded by mountains while we tube, and looking out to see the ocean too. It was pretty spectacular.

Oh and just to make everyone aware of some new features of my blog, there is now an easy way to follow this blog through email. Just enter in your email address in the "Follow by Email" box and you'll receive email updates each time I post.

Images of Spring

While this weekend graced us with beautiful blue skies and sunshine over the mountains, the forecast for the next two weeks looks like this:

 Yuck Yuck Yuck!
So I thought I'd use this post to give myself some images and words from around the web of what a beautiful spring should look like. So here we go!

Snow drops on my walk to the library!

It's spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!  ~Mark Twain

Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"

Squirrel sugar cookies

Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire.  ~Virgil

April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.  ~William Shakespeare

This is actually in Vancouver, we'll be taking a trip there later this spring I'm sure

Spring has returned.  The Earth is like a child that knows poems.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

  

 April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. ~Edna St. Vincent Mallay

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
Seasons
Quotations by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Source : April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. Edna St. Vincent Millay | Quotes | Dictionary of Quotes - quotes

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
Seasons
Quotations by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Source : April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. Edna St. Vincent Millay | Quotes | Dictionary of Quotes - quotes

 Thanks for reading through my spring madness. For all you back in Michigan who still have snow on the ground, spring is just around the corner! But if you want to jump start it, there's a futon with your name on it out here in Langley. Just give us about 10 days for the weather to clear up ;)

Lynn Canyon

 This past Saturday Jared and I skedaddled (which, by the way, is a real word. I looked it up :) over to Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver with our friends Jared and Elise (another J & E!) to explore this  free (and much smaller) alternative to the Capilano Suspension Bridge, which is a popular attraction in the Vancouver area. Both parks feature bridges suspended over a rushing river and overlooking beautiful waterfalls, but while Capilano's bridge is  450 feet (137m) across and 230 feet (70m) above Capilano River, Lynn Canyon is only around 50m (about 160ish feet) above the river. But while Capilano costs 27.95/person, Lynn Cayon is FREE!! and that almost always wins for Jared and me.

Despite its smaller size, it's a spectacular and beautiful park. After weaving through groups of tourists and stopping to throw things and spit off the edge, as you must do when you cross a bridge, we took a short hike through the woods to another waterfall. The river was small but mighty, and had to work hard to get through narrow canyons and boulders and rapids. It was a gorgeous clear green color, so clean it made you thirsty just looking at it. 

We snapped a lot of pictures too, but were disappointed when we looked through them. Some turned out way too dark, probably because of the thick trees in the woods, but the ones that did turn out just didn't do the place justice! But here they are anyway:

The bridge

The view from the bridge

Spitting off the bridge :) Elise is in the front, you can just see my purple hood behind her

Jared exploring a giant tree trunk. This thing could explode with one good kick, it's so decayed

This isn't actually my photo....but it's a great view of the bridge and the falls. Our version of this photo didn't turn out

 We spent the rest of the evening at Jared and Elise's house, where we ate some delicious homemade pizza and tried our hand at a new game that's huge around here, Dutch Blitz. Being 50% Dutch and from West Michigan, you'd think I would have heard of this game before now. But that's ok, now that we've learned it and have been soundly beat by players more experienced than us, we can only get better. Mostly I just love the look of this card game:

We could frame these cards and hang them in our kitchen, and they'd be a perfect match. Which might happen if I don't start winning sometime soon :)