Ode to Brush Creek!

Oh, beloved Brush Creek…..how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:


Brush Creek is a quiet little campground, literally in the middle of nowhere (technically about a half-hour drive from civilization), where I spent the majority of every summer every year for as long as I can remember. I remember staying in a cabin with my family.....with nothing but one stupid little, barely-working oscillating fan to cool us in the middle of July.......I remember going to my first camp here without my parents at the age of 7 (you weren't supposed to go 'till you were 8, but I went a year early when my mom worked as a cook), and then going to my age-group camps for a week every year afterwards.....I remember volunteering as a CIT (counselor-in-training) and then later as a counselor for the younger kids' camps. All in all, during my junior-high and high-school years, I'd spend 5 or 6 weeks of the summer at Brush Creek. So it will always hold a special place in my heart. I have SO MANY fond, crazy memories of this place.....it's truly priceless to me.

We haven’t been able to stay for a full week of church camp reunion since Matthew was a baby, and this year, we decided that we’d put aside any grand travel plans and do just that. And I’m SO GLAD we did. We had an amazing time at Brush Creek. It was wonderful and so much fun to get to spend time with my childhood friends: Kerri, Sarah, and Sue……plus all their kids, who ran around wild with ours!

We put on our best ‘summer casual’ outfits for church services on Sunday:


The kids behaved themselves as well as they ever did during church, sitting with their friends instead of us….and God Bless overpriced electronic gadgets for keeping them quiet and occupied:


The kids went to classes every morning with kids their ages:




Then just about every afternoon we’d hit the pool:



And why yes, that IS a picture of me in a bathing suit…..and here I swore I would never allow such a thing to exist! But since it’s a cute picture of me, Kerri, and Sue….I’ll allow it to survive….this once. :D

This was a special reunion….the sesquicentennial (that’s 150th for those not familiar with such big words), so a little more stuff was planned for the week. The church historian was there for the week, and he organized a photo of those of us who are descendants of the original church members that started the Brush Creek congregation……and since my great-great-grandfather was one of those people, we were included in the group:


And since it IS my lineage, here’s a picture of our kids in front of the Caudle school house


Alaina spent the week running around with Kerri’s girls, Tatum and Tessa…..Matthew found some other little guys who had as much videogame knowledge as he did:


And Zach stuck pretty close to me…..although he did win the little kids’ tricycle race that they had:


Our 12th anniversary was Sunday, so our romantic anniversary dinner consisted of greasy cheeseburgers from the concession stand! (they WERE yummy though!)


During the week, Sister Emma Smith was worshiping with us……She never failed to remind the men (as they sat and drank their coffee each morning….Karl among them!) of the evils of strong drink……LOL……she was too funny:


And in her honor, we didn’t smile when we took pictures with her…..she said smiling was vanity, or something like that…..and I had SUCH a hard time with that…..I was cracking up!

She also didn’t approve of all the “devil gadgets” that everybody carried around with them:


I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in awhile like Josh, Jon, and Nathan:


(Jon and Nathan being the cheaters at Spades that Kerri and I demand a rematch from!)

Karl and I went to the young adult class, taught by Seventy Larry McGuire:


It was just nice hanging out together throughout the week:


We'd do a lot of socializing standing in line for meals:


Or in the back of the church where it wasn't very quiet:


Alaina and Tessa sang in the talent show:


And Karl "moved a mountain", aka Larry McGuire with 3 teenagers using only 2 fingers each.....and no, I won't tell you how the trick works, so quit asking me!


So it was an amazing week.....I'm glad we were able to go....I'm glad the kids had fun.....and it really warms my heart to see mine, Kerri, Sarah, and Sue's kids.....this 'next generation' of friends hang out together:

(even if they won't all hold still for a picture!)

and most importantly, I'm glad I got to reconnect with my dear friends:


Hopefully next year we can be there again for the week of fun, food (I ate WAY too much ice cream!) and fellowship with my dear church camp friends!!!

Quickie Scrap Recap!

Only 4 layouts to post this time, so I'm just going to get this out of the way before I start the big camp recap:

First up.....after what seems like an eternity...Sya's back from her 'designing break' and has released a grab bag with 3 template packs inside it. Here's what I made with one of the templates from "The Chosen One (set 5)"

This is a picture of us at the kids' school sock hop way back in April (yes, I'm THAT far behind on my scrapping....it's quite aggravating to me!)


And Haynay's release from a couple weeks ago (bad blogger that I am and all, just now posting this!) is the June mini for her Chronicling Life series:

The kids' swimming over Memorial Day weekend:


The last 2 layouts I have to share don't have any plugs associated with them.....They're both from my/Karl's trip to Atlanta back in April....

While Karl was at his conference during the 1st day, I wandered down to the Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta to hang out there most of the afternoon....reading a book, people-watching....it was a great place to relax:


And then that night, we all got dressed up and went out to a nice dinner:

On the way back to the hotel, we walked through the Olympic park and decided to take some silly pictures with one of the statues there.....

so that's all the scrappin' I've got to share. pretty sad really.....I thought I'd get bored at camp and have time to scrap stuff.....and I totally didn't! I was on the go all day long into the wee hours of the morning. it was great! So once we settle back into our regular ol' lives I'll have to sit down and try to get some more scrappin' done!

Another blog post to come......a recap of our week at camp!

A worthwhile accomplishment!

Before I do my camp report of our AMAZING and WONDERFUL week at Brush Creek that we just finished, I want to post a few pictures from the Race for the Cure, held last Saturday (June 12th) in St. Louis.

I was so excited to be a part of this event! I've been training for MONTHS to make sure I didn't embarrass myself too badly in public. And I'm quite proud of how well I did with the race itself. I ended up raising $675 for the Susan G. Komen organization, and I'm so thankful to everyone who donated to my run!

It was SUPER HOT and SUPER MUGGY that morning....figures! Ever tried to run when it's 88 degrees and extremely humid? yeah, I don't recommend it! :P

First up, when we got there was the survivors' procession, which will move anybody to tears...seeing all those pink shirts, knowing what that represents.....it makes me cry just thinking about it! I wish there were more pink shirts out there!


Next I had to get my race numbers....then find the spot for the team photo we were having taken. I am quite thankful that even though I'm not a huge fan of lime green.....it beats the old drab blue shirts they used to give us....so Go Team Boeing!



The best thing about this picture is that Boeing donated $100 for every employee that walked/ran in the race!

As soon as the picture was done, I ditched my green tshirt and headed over toward the start line to find my place....

Here I am, all ready to run!


Oh, and just for reference, this was the LARGEST EVER Komen race......over 71,000 people were downtown that day....and if I'm not mistaken, they were all ahead of me in line for the porta-potties! lol! ;)

You can barely tell it in this picture, but that street is wall-to-wall people...as far as you can see....


Anyhoo.....the race itself went quite well for me. I was one of only a handful of people that actual ran the entire thing. And I don't blame people for not being able to handle it...the heat/humidity combo was killer!

Thankfully, the St. Louis Fire Dept. was on hand to cool us off in a couple different places along the route.....

(I ran through the first one of these but then decided it probably wasn't the best idea since I had an ipod strapped to my arm and was carrying a phone too)

I never saw who was blowing all the bubbles at mile marker 2, but thanks....it was a nice surprise and kind of uplifting to run through this:


Once we turned the corner after mile marker 2, I could see the arch way off in the distance....and the crowd had thinned out considerably:


This is my "omg, am I there YET?" self-portrait:


And the finish line....a blessed thing to see:


And here's that semi-official picture of me at the finish line......I say 'semi' official because I had to call Karl and we had to find each other before he could actually TAKE this picture! :P


So that, in a nutshell, was my first-ever experience running a 5K race. I'm thrilled I was able to finish it (in a personal best time too, go figure!) without collapsing......and I'm happy to have raised as much as I possibly could have to help find a cure for breast cancer....so that next year there will be more pink shirts out there and less "I'm running in memory of" tags. I will gladly do this race again. It was an amazing event to be part of and I'm so glad I did it...for the cause it supports and for my own personal achievement of running a 5K.

See you next summer in muggy downtown St. Louis!!!