Good Times at Youth Camp 2009

This was a perfect week in so many ways!  Orange Beach was beautiful.  The weather was sunny.  The water was clear.  The fellowship was fun.  The camp teaching sessions and devotions were excellent.  The youth were well behaved.  The hotel was accommodating.  The food was delicious.  And everyone stayed safe while traveling on the road!

Here’s Grace (and Lambie!) all ready to leave on Monday morning:

We drove in the lead van with my parents.  Our caravan included nine cars and 54 people!  Grace stayed busy eating, talking, and watching movies for the 5-hour trip from granddaddy’s church to Orange Beach.

My responsibility at Youth Camp was organizing and teaching a little Bible school for the six preschoolers that attended with parents who were teaching or chaperoning the youth group.  We learned all about the 10 Commandments!

 

One of the things we were looking forward to the most was getting to spend some quality time with my sister-in-law and my sweet almost-4-year-old nephew, Vincent.  They roomed with us and the kids had so much fun together.  Grace’s tickle box was always turned on when she got to play with Vincent!

Grace and Vincent couldn’t wait to get to the beach on the first afternoon of free time.  They built sand castles, splashed in the water, hunted for seashells, and dug around in the sand with their shovels.

 

Vincent wanted to play with this beach toy, but Grace was too distracted to actually catch the ball in the net!

The kids’ favorite things at the hotel were the beautiful fish tanks with colorful sea creatures. 

Another fun activity was blowing bubbles off the balcony!

On Tuesday night, we ate at The Shrimp Basket.  We took a few pictures while waiting on our food.  Here I am (on the right) with my sweet sister-in-law Audra (on the left).

On Wednesday night, we ate at Lambert’s Cafe (Home of Throwed Rolls).  Vincent and Grace didn’t really want to catch the flying rolls…they were too hot…but they loved munching on the fried okra!  The servers gave them a toy to keep them occupied while waiting on our food.  It was a very real-looking mouse that jumped out of a box!

Here are some of the kids on Thursday morning right before our last Bible school time.

When Vincent found out that Youth Camp was over and we were going home, he didn’t want to take any more pictures…he was so sad!  He wants to live at the beach!  (Grace didn’t realize yet that we were packing up to leave).

When we got home this afternoon, Grace was so exhausted.  It was really a rough schedule with lots of activity and very little time to rest and nap.  But, she was so happy (most of the time!) and I know that she made lots of fun memories.  She already misses her cousin Vincent and was disappointed that he wasn’t at granddaddy’s house when we arrived home!