Craters and Slides! Oh My!

On our way to Glacier National Park, we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument. It didn’t so much resemble anything that would make us think of the moon. It was a volcanic lava field. We climbed what would have been the peak of the volcano which gave us a really neat view of the surrounding mountains and countryside.

We also walked through a cave created by underground lava flows. We had lunch here and then continued north on a scenic highway towards Glacier.

The boys had fun in the caves.

After driving through farm land that looked like northern Michigan, we drove through a narrow hundred mile river valley surrounded by mountains. It rained hard ahead of us but only sprinkled on us. We had to keep our eyes on the road because of all the possible hazards such as free range cows, game crossings and rock slides. Shortly after we passed a sign warning us of possible rock slides, we went around a bend and were surprised to see our whole lane blocked by big rocks. We went around it and after another mile we came to where there was a back up of about 30 cars. It was another slide of mostly rocks and hard mud which we were able to get over in our 4-wheel drive Durango. After crossing a couple more mud slides like this, we came to one that was a little bigger. We watched another 4-wheel vehicle almost get stuck in the soft mud, big rock soup. People were guessing the soup was at least four feet deep.

After a couple of hours, a bulldozer came and dumped it all in the river while a hundred people watched. We then continued on our way.

Rain in the Desert

Today we spent the day traveling through Nevada. It was desert. We saw lots of salt flats with some yucky looking water. We thought we smelled humidity which seemed strange because we were in the desert in the summer. Then it looked like rain ahead and it turned out that it was not a mirage. We got rained on in the desert. We even saw some lightening.

After the rain, things looked a little greener than you would expect, but what was most noticeable was the smell. It smelled like a mix between Pine Sol (something we need to pick up for our bear repellant) and B.O. We couldn’t decide if we liked the smell or not. At first we thought it was some factory in the town where we stopped to eat, but when we smelled it way outside of town, we decided it must be some smell that the desert bushes let off after rain.

As we headed north to go from Nevada to Idaho, we drove past the northern part of the Ruby Mountains. They were really pretty. See pictures below.

We're Off!!

We are leaving sunny California today. We are headed to Glacier National Park where we will spend 3 days, then off to Yellowstone. Please pray that we have a safe trip home and no suprises!

DRAMA/MUSIC CAMP

Josh as Uncle Mordecai

Alex's class rehearsal

Collin running the sound system

Everyone doing the Boogaloo

Josh is a Dork!

So I thought I'd let you all know what Josh is doing at this moment. He's playing with a little toy cash register. He's speaking into the microphone playing "store manager".

"Shoppers it's ten minutes til closing time please complete your shopping."
"We need a price check for register 3, price check for aisle 3"
"I'm sorry sir we can't accept this coupon, it's for Trader Joe and this is Walmart"

and the list goes on.

So anyway this is my entertainment for a Saturday night, sad but true.

Let Me See YOU Boogaloo!

Pastor Doug, the pastor of congregational life at church, has the job of filling time at the end of music and drama camp. Doug worked at a kids camp when he was younger, so he has some funny camp games and stories. His rendition of the “Herman the Worm” story was excellent.

The hands down favorite of everyone in camp, though, is “the Boogaloo”. We had never heard of it before. It starts with everyone getting in a circle and holding hands. The leader leads a chant that goes like this:

Leader: left . . . left . . . left, right, left
Let me see you Boogaloo!

Everyone else: What’s that you said?

Leader: I said let me see you Boogaloo!

Everyone else: What’s that you said?

Leader: I said let me see you Boogaloo!

Everyone else: What’s that you said?

Then the leader does a silly dance saying “oh, ah ah ah, oh, ah ah ah” and everyone else mimicks him. Doug led us through more and more rounds of the game where the thing he asked us to do changed, and the noise we made while we did what he told us changed. We did “let me see you play dead”, “let me see you shoot the moon” and “let me see you do the Schwarzenegger”.

Our favorite, though was “let me see you do the preacher”. The dance for that one was accompanied by “bla, bla, bla, bla . . . bla, bla, bla, bla”.

The guy who was hired to preach at the church said it, not me.

Real Life or Art?

Some of you will appreciate this more than others but I have to share it with you, it's just too funny. Today started our Drama/Music camp at Granite Springs. I am a coach for the 3rd graders (yup...some of you know how much I love to teach other kids). The musical that we are doing is based on Mark 5 with 3 stories-the demon possessed man, the bleeding woman and the dead girl, all of whom Jesus heals.

During our small group time, Arianna (the other coach) was reading part of the bleeding woman story, in our scene her problem isn't bleeding but farting. Arianna gets to the part where no one wants to be by this woman because of her smells and noise, when one of our students lets out a very loud fart. The kids all burst out laughing and started to move away from this poor girl. It's just like the skit unfolding in front of us. We could not have planned it better. It was all I could do to not laugh too. We just moved along to the song about how she makes us sick with her smells. Don't worry it all works out in the end. Hopefully Sunday's performance will go as well as this one:)