Winter Retreat 2011

This past weekend, we hosted the Southridge Junior Youth for their winter retreat.  Long story short is where they were supposed to go didn't pan out...so Steve and I opened up our home/lodge for their event. 

It was a fantastic weekend - tiring, loud, noisy, cold, warm, great food, sore feet, sore back, wonderful fellowship, exhausting...BUT A FANTASTIC WEEKEND.  We had 35 people in our home from Saturday 9:30am to Sunday 1:30pm.  And we can't wait to do it again! 

Here are some pictures of the weekend!  

Ezra having a looksey at the mayhem that hit our house at 9:30!
The teens came in and dropped their stuff off and then headed outside for some sledding.

Steve and I gave up our bedroom.  I'm pretty certain that
I won't see this in my bathroom again for a long time.
The girls hung their wet clothes up to dry! :)

A quick picture of what 35 glasses look like on my bar top :)

This is a calm picture...what till the next one a few pictures down!

Since the boys went paintballing....the girls did a spa and watched a chick flick.  

And even through it all...while making cupcakes, popcorn for snack, spaghetti sauce,
I was able to take time to watch Matt Kaminski play the gold medal game at his
tournament.  All at 10:30-11:00ish at night!

Watching my husband and his little counterpart (Andrew) :) try and get the
bonfire started.  

10 females slept in our bedroom...4 on the bed, 5 on the floor and 1 in the closet :)

And two in Ezra's nursery

And this is what our entranceway looked like Sunday morning.....

Breakfast time Sunday morning...the girls always ate at this table.  

The boys and a few female leaders took over this table.  We put a few at the
bar top, and the rest ate sitting on the floor.  

Sunday devotional time.  

Heading out to the sledding hill again. 

Special HUGE THANK YOU to Rick Murphy (our neighbour) for lending
us his tractor.  We used it A LOT - between the sleigh ride and pulling the tubes,
the kids had a fantastic time!

The mode of transportation to and from our home!

A HUGE thank you to my mom for taking the three little dogs and also Ezra and Zeke for us for the weekend.  I'm sure that she had the hardest job all weekend :)

I was reminded this weekend of how great teens are!  They were so respectful and polite...I can only hope that we do as good of job raising our children, as the parents of these teens have done.  

Winter Retreat 2012...I'm sure that you will bring many highlights as well..

Now....off for a nap I go again :)