Pictorial Recap of Saranac

I took well over 1000 pictures during the week at Saranac. With editing, I whittled that down to a cool 400 on my computer. I decided that only 370 NEEDED to go onto Facebook. I will try to
keep it to my top 20 or so on here.

Yes, black t-shirts are back in style. So is fluorescent lettering. Large fluorescent lettering.

I designed these shirts myself and felt like a fool wearing it the whole week. But my cabin LOVED them.
So did guys. Also...the girls wanted MEDIUMS instead of SMALLS. Gasp.

Ah young love. Does it get any cuter?

We were pretending to be on the cover of Teen Vogue. Yes, yes we were.
Thank you Hills for giving me ANY references that make sense to 15 year-olds.

Classic High School Musical Shot.
One girl from my cabin was chronically missing from EVERY picture from the week. I just couldn't find her, ever.

Well, you can guess how the ropes course went.

Doesn't it make you want to be back in high school again?
Wait, don't answer that.

So stinkin' cute...you know they get in trouble ALL THE TIME.

I cried when we left Saranac this time.
I don't know if we will go back next summer.
It was like saying goodbye to my high school self and my memories.
It has been like opening an old wound to return there and be healed.
What a gift these last three years have been to me.

About 15 girls from Asheville stood up at Say-So and proclaimed that they had given their lives to Jesus this week.
I cried buckets of tears.
I have prayed for Young Life at Asheville High since I moved to Asheville nine years ago and I was blown away by seeing how mightily God has moved there this year. After all this time. Amazing.

Yep, they are only 15 years old. I don't think they come any more beautiful than this.

Oh great, it does get prettier.
It definitely makes a mom of two kids in her 30's feel awesome about herself to hang around these girls.
Let me just tell you.

We managed to get the sunset parasail on the last night of camp. It was gorgeous! The light was amazing and the girls had a great time; except for the fact that they spent two hours straightening their hair and doing makeup to then go do this. But they forgave me. Maybe.

We brought 75 kids to Saranac-all first timers! It was a great trip and we are so excited to see what happens in the next year and the rest of these kids lives due to what happened this week.

But of course, a great reminder that kids are still hiding so much.
From themselves, from us, their parents and from God. We love them and they still hide. There is nothing that holds us back from God and each other like fear does.
Pray that walls would continue to fall even now that we are home.
We are in it for the long haul and we need endurance!

Catching Up

It's always hard to come back home from camp, and the beach and camp cause your house looks like crap, you have a million things to do, people want to hear about it all and really all you want to do is sleep.

But the truth is; with two kids, a dog, kitchen renovation stalled out, high school kids leaving for college, college kids leaving for home, friends that are moving out of town...our life just never stops moving.

This week is a great example. Our dear friends Greg and Lucy got to take their sweet baby boy Wesley home from the hospital at last on Friday. Amazing! After three months in the NICU, he's free from tubes and home!

Counter that with Matt's boss Lynn whose husband unexpectedly died of a heart attack on Saturday evening after she hasn't seen him in three weeks while she has been on assignment with YL at Frontier Ranch. We have his funeral on Thursday to attend.
By the way, I think I can say this without being glib, his services while being devastatingly sad will also be what I am sure to remember as a "FUN-er-ALL" meaning, every person that we have ever known on YL staff will be there remembering how crazy and fun Paul was. It was will be the saddest party that I will ever have the pleasure of attending. I am so sad that Paul won't be there.

Just when I think things slow down, the speed seems to pick up. How does that happen?
We spent the whole day today preparing to work on the kitchen. Not actually working on it. Just preparing. Buying stuff. Throwing stuff away. Calling people. Buying more stuff.

We can't seem to gain traction. But throwing stuff away was big. Like the dishwasher that has been sitting in our yard for two months.

The crackhouse is starting to return to normal.

Four Years Since We Met

Four years ago our little Asher was born.

Here we are at Saranac missing his sweet little birthday.
I know that we will celebrate when we get home, but I am not going to lie...I definitely welled up several times today knowing that I wouldn't get to kiss or hug him today.

AND...the hits keep on coming.
My mom called this morning to let me know that she had to take him to ER last night to get stitches in his forehead after Asher fell off the playground.

So that was awesome for her. And me. And Asher.
Happy Birthday to you!

I love him like crazy. Since my last post about him making me insane, we really had a large turnaround in his behavior and I could not have been happier with him. He really turned into such a big boy over the past month and I love him so much.

I can't wait to see both kids on Sunday when we get back home. It has been quite a few days since we have seen them.

Four years. Four years ago, I had no idea how my heart would burst over hearing my son talk to his dad on the phone. I can't wait to see what the next few years brings.

What I've Learned About My Cabin

These girls that are going to be driving this year...
are 15 and were born in 1993...
were in the second grade when 9/11 happened...
were in kindergarten when Britney Spears came on the music scene...
will be graduating from college seven years from now. In 2016.
When I will be 38.

When my kids will be 11 and 9.
ummm.

Nothing like finding these things out to make you feel a bit old.

Saranac and the living is FINE

We are heading into Night 3 here at Saranac and it has been amazing so far. I can't really catch you up except via pictures, but it we have had a lot of fun.

My cabin is filled with very fun-very silly freshman girls. It has been a challenge-more so than I imagined before getting here. And that has caught me off-guard. I am missing my old cabins and old friendships that were developed here simply because they have the benefit of age on them. New friendships are hard and take time and it is always hard to start over!

But it is really exciting that we have 75 kids here with ZERO second-time campers. That is almost unheard of in YL camping and it is really amazing. These kids are seeing this place for the very first time and experiencing Young Life for the very first time. What a privilege to be along for this ride.


One again, I see ghosts of high school past around every corner. I feel like a nut because I seriously remember nearly every minute of camp from when I was in high school.
I remember sitting on the boat dock, laughing, skiing and having the time of my life. I spent so much time RIGHT HERE when I was here as a high school kid.

It is awesome to be here. I love getting to be with girls as they experience real life.

What I Love About Weddings

That last walk with your dad. So sweet.

A first kiss as a married couple.

Brides that couldn't be happier to be married.

Lusting after shoes that I would never be brave enough to wear.

Girlfriends that all look like me and I look like them, in cute dresses with fun necklaces.

Cute dating couples that make you remember what it was like to say goodbye to each other at the end of the night.

Pretty flowers that make me wish I had more fresh flowers around my house. If my kitchen wasn't destroyed.

Wedding dresses.
Do wedding dresses EVER get old to look at?

Seersucker and bowties on boys.

My incredibly handsome husband who is incredibly way too large of a person to wear seersucker without looking like he a clown at a wedding.
Since it is not a 4-year olds birthday party, he chooses to stick with the classic button-down and khakis look that the GAP invented.

Beautiful country fences at sunset with all their imperfections that make you think that you could be pretty too with all your imperfections. And that a house in the county might not be a bad idea.

Oh yeah. We live here. We love it. Thanks for having a wedding to remind us.

Fantasy Town

On my drive to Panama City and back, I have to drive through a small town in Alabama called Eufaula.
I have no idea how to even pronounce this town name. But I love it.

One day, I want to live there.
Not now.
Cause, we really really love Asheville and the weather is fantastic.

But one day, we could live in Eufaula.
There is a huge lake, the cutest downtown and all of these AMAZING homes that I fall in love with every time we drive through.




One day.
One day I could live here.
Maybe they need Young Life in Eufaula?

Lamb Siblings

The beach trip was the first time since my sister got married TEN years ago that my brother, sister and I have all been together without spouses.

It was great to have time with just my siblings again and to laugh at growing up together and to get to enjoy life together as grown-ups and not so grown-up moments.

Check out how we look nothing alike straight on, but on the profile-we all have the same noses.



I'm a crazy genetic scientist to have seen that one.

Lamb Family Reunion

We had a great time at the beach and the kids did what kids do at the beach:

They swam in the ocean!
They played in the sand!
We took pictures of it!

Then they cried cause sand got in their eyes!
And the ocean is salty and it stings!
And the wind blows!
And the sun shines!
And I'm breathing!
And you're breathing!

Then they wanted to do it all over again after lunch.

Isn't a beach vacation fun?

We should all live at the beach.

Asheville

I have more pictures from the beach trip, but truthfully...I exhausted from uploading pictures to blogger this summer. So I am going to take a break for a post or two. :)

Since we have gotten home, the weather here in Asheville has been MARVELOUS.

For example?
We have not had the air conditioning on, no fans in the windows, no attic fan going and yet it is 72 degrees INSIDE our house. While it is still 78-80 degrees outside.

I have no idea how that happens. But I love it.
We are still sleeping under the comforter, feeling very cool and comfy at night since it is getting into the 50's. It is amazing.

Why live ANYWHERE else?
I love being home.

Pirate's Cruise

While in Panama City, we took the kids on a MAJOR excursion: a PIRATE SHIP on the ocean.

Of course, the only cruise we could schedule was right in the middle of our typical nap time; 3pm, so we were in for some tired kids. But it was totally worth pushing through.

I just want to tell you before I get started that this 2 hour cruise was amazing AND I could totally see Matt retiring someday and running a company like this for the rest of our lives.

My nephew looking like we all felt after the ship was rocking and rolling in the ocean.
We recovered, but the water's were a little rough that day!

We boarded the pirate ship and they took us out of the harbor, where they shot off a real life cannon scaring the crap out of my kids. All four kids (my niece and nephew) were crying and we thought for sure that this could be the longest two hours of our lives.

After they had a water fight with another tourist cruise (that was really cool but the kids were crying too hard to notice), they painted the kids faces. While the girls were being painted, the boys got to "swab the deck." I am going to incorporate "swabbing the deck" into our house as soon as possible.



Then they moved onto to an all boat sword fight! Asher got really into this one and then he was off and RUNNING!

After the sword fight, the kids got to shoot a cannon into a basket which was fun and really just killed a lot of time. We also got to see some dolphins around this time out in the ocean which made the trip for the adults.


Asher had the best time. He was very into EVERYTHING. They took us downstairs into the dungeon and told about the buried treasure in the sea and how we had to look for an orange buoy with a large "x" on it and if we saw it we had to yell, "Thar she blows Cap'n!!!" Then they threw a large grappling hook like from Deadliest Catch into the water, all the kids got to grab the line and pull the treasure up from the bottom of the sea.

Then they took a look into the treasure chest and did a little program about it that was really silly and got the kids giggling, but then the kids got to come forward and select the treasure; the littlest kids first.



After this, they had a huge dance party (ala YL dance through the ages) which of course all the kids loved (but my kids went crazy for), handed out tambourines, and danced all over the ship. After this they put pirate tatoos on all the kids, gave out pirate treasure necklaces and we were back in the harbor.


It was a packed-out two hours and they did a FANTASTIC job. No doubt this will become our family tradition every time we go to Panama City. And, I think that Matt will have to look into this a future business endeavour. No kidding.


If you ever wanna check it out, click here: Pirate Cruise

Away for a Few Days

I am away for a few days with the kids in Panama City Beach-we couldn't take not having a kitchen anymore!

Just kidding!
My parents managed to wrangle an extra week at the beach house and my sister with her two kids, and my brother all came down to spend the week together. This is the first time since my sister got married that we are all together just as "The Lambs" again! It is so much fun.

I will update again when I get home and near some internet access again :)

I Blame it on the Boogie

Michael Jackson's death that is...

My Bag of Taters

We got home on Sunday night and traveling went well.
Asher did throw up on the bus, narrowly missing the inside of my pants inside the bathroom on the bus. (another story for another day-but let's just say 'thank God that didn't happen')

The kids did amazingly well and we very nearly cried tears of joy when we saw the Blue Ridge Mountains on the horizon at sunset on the plane ride. I didn't know that we really love living here until we had been gone for nearly a month in the coldest place on earth, that we were so happy here!

We got picked up by our friend Kristen and her boyfriend Kyle who had an American flag ready to be draped around Matt's neck, had a posterboard declaring Matt to be "an American Hero", flowers for me and a slew of balloons for the kids. Everyone thought that Matt was returning from the Middle East fighting a war. Nope, just doing Single Ladies for a bunch a 16 year olds for Jesus.

So we get home to see that our yard had in fact turned into a jungle. And these few things were also waiting to be discovered:

just in case you forgot, we have NO KITCHEN.

But we do have a fridge, full of month old produce. Awesome.

Yes, that is my coffee maker. Apparently, this is from the coffee that we made when we LEFT FOR COLORADO.

ewwwwwww.

And the obligatory sippy cup that you forget has just enough apple juice to make penicillin in a months time.

But I have found that this is no big deal.
I am really missing our community from North Asheville and I am having a hard time living in our new house in the summer. I don't even know where a POOL IS.

I don't have many close friends down here and instead since we've been home, we've been making the 30 minute trek to Windy Gap to see friends that are on assignment there and to see our friends in Weaverville because that has been more comfortable.

It's not what we have been called to and I need to learn to live down here in this part of town, but with my kitchen being a mess; I think I want to go away again.
It is really hard to find out that my bag of potatoes is really in my own heart and I just want to not be living where we are and I want my old life back again.

I miss my friends and how easy it was to be on assignment. It was fun to be around people all the time that were in the same place we were and loved to laugh and knew us. It is really hard to start over, even in your same town.

What's Your Bag of Potatoes?

Every year we go on assignment and every year we come home from our assignment at Young Life camp.

This year is no different.
We will arrive at home in less than 24 hours.
And the conversation has begun.

What will be our "bag of potatoes" this year?
About six years ago we came out here to Crooked Creek, and we came home to an awful smell in our house. When I say awful, I mean the worst smell you can imagine.
After a month away from your house, the possibilities are endless and so you have to do investigations. But there are also about 4,000 other things you have to attend to like mail, messages, yard work, spider webs throughout your house, you realize the a/c has been set to 62 for a month, your garden is shot to you know where, a tree might have fallen in the yard and you have no groceries in your house, you have come home with 6 tons of laundry to do because it was too hectic leaving camp to do it AND you leave for your summer camp trip in something like six days and kids are dropping off the trip left and right. Plus your mom and dad call right when you walk in the door.

All of this happened to us six years ago. Well, not all but say 75% of it. We didn't have a/c. And a tree didn't fall. Everything else? True.

AND WE HAD A TERRIBLE DEAD ANIMAL OR ROTTING LIFE FORM IN MY HOUSE.
So I had to find it because Matt was on the phone with his parents.
It didn't take long.
A bag of potatoes had rotted into pure liquid form while we were gone, thanks to the no a/c thing.
They had leaked into the wood in the cabinet, onto the floor and was dripping into the main part of the kitchen. (We were lucky to not have lost our deposit over that thing.)
I started to clean. For about 3.2 seconds before dry heaving. I thought I was going to puke and had to walk through the house, past Matt (on the phone still) to go stand over the toilet.
No puke.
I regained my strength and went back.
Nope. Dry heave again.
Again the walk of shame past Matt on the phone.
I repeat this about six times before he comes to investigate and HELP FINALLY.

It was filthy.
Trust me.

Every person on Young Life staff has their version of the rotten potatoes story.
It could be a tree fell on their house and no neighbor called.
It could be a toilet ran for the whole month and the house had to be gutted.
It could just be that the power went out for three days and all the food in the freezer was ruined but they had no idea and got food poisoning and ended up in the hospital only to later find out what happened.
(all true stories by the way)

It is also a great metaphor for things in our lives that probably need to be different when we come from a month away from our lives.
Like less work, more play.
Less TV, more reading.
Less other people, more family.
Or for summer staff and work crew, less people that aren't good for them and more people that are good for them.

The big question of the night and for the next few weeks for us is:
What's our bag of potatoes going to be this year?

What changes are we going to see that our marriage needs to make after this month away?
What changes do we need to make in parenting?
How can we do Young Life differently, better, more passionately? How can we love Jesus more?

I am excited to see what comes from it. But it is always scary. Always intimidating. Cause, I don't like the dry heaves. It ain't pretty. But you have to get in there and clean 'em out or else it stinks.

One Day More

We leave for home tomorrow, single tear.
Seriously we are really sad.
Tonight, the program team performed One Day More from Les Miserables as a finale for campers. All of the guys have loved doing this number this month. Enjoy!

With You, I Can Hike Anywhere

This morning we woke up and the weather was great. All three program guys wanted the day off. But I have been wanting to take Asher and Lucy on the All-Camp Hike all month long. So, much to Matt's surprise; today was the day.

We got the kids up and ready and we took long deep breaths hoping that this would not turn out badly. I mean, if they melted down we would just be at 12,000 feet elevation and five miles from camp rather than just at the pool like the rest of the assigned team, right?

I was praying. HARD.
We strapped Lucy into the little Ergo carrier that the Maslin's lent to us before coming out here. She looks like she in a papoose! She and Matt got to spend some Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y time together today.



And off we went! It was beautiful the whole way and the pace was perfect for the kids and us. It was definitely challenging and long, but Asher made it the whole way with very little complaining-mostly he just wanted lunch. It was simply beautiful and we got to meet a bunch of the campers.





It was a great day with our kids and I think they had a lot of fun. Matt and I really enjoyed the day. It was only three and half hours with a lunch stop, so that wasn't too bad and we got some great pictures.

Yes, we did go to top of this little "hill" and even more.

Mostly, I think we really got to see how much of an animal Asher is. He was a source of inspiration to high school students who were really having a hard time to keep going. After all, if a four-year old can make it, why couldn't they?





He was so sweet and really good and he was really proud of himself for the huge accomplishment of climbing a mountain today. I was fired up and loved every minute of it. Lucy had a great time hanging out and having a good time with Matt too.




Thank goodness this was not one of my worst ideas. I definitely approached the mountain with fear and trembling this morning!

Impossible To Choose My Favorites

Last night was again a GREAT NIGHT. The kids did amazing as did Matt and the program team. One hilarious story to tell you:

A special needs camper wandered into the middle of Tableau (which is a frozen scene involving all of the work crew and summer staff) and involved himself in the drama with the bad guy and the good guys. It was hilarious as EVERYONE was frozen, he wandered around playing guns with the bad guy. The bad guy comes in and does his scene (with this camper) and has to shoot a SHOTGUN, the camper involves himself when the scene "comes to life" and then sort of freezes momentarily until he wanders off. This camper does NOT TALK at all and has no communication skills. Just runs. So he ran off the scene.

The pictures are priceless as is the retelling of the story. I don't happen to have pictures of this as I was in charge of several other children, but trust me; it was REALLY REALLY FUNNY.

So we took about a million pictures last night and I might have to print all of them. I can't decide which ones are my favorites.

Asher is trying to act like Bubba Nubbins before the Opera.

The Many Faces of Shirley Kramers

Just take a look and try not to laugh, you can't. She's that funny.

It's Day 4 again. Our last one. That means more pictures to come tomorrow! I don't know if we can top the previous weeks, but that won't keep us from trying.

Gone and Done It

I left camp yesterday and to buy a Flip Video Camera.
Have you seen these things? Amazing. AMAZING.

If you have kids and a nice camera that doesn't video, this is a must have. Also, it comes with a million accessories like underwater case, a helmet case, a bike mount. The list goes on and on. Get ready for a video bonanza.

So I have already been videoing up a storm. Starting last night at club and this morning with this.

You're welcome.


Anybody else's husband know how to do the Single Ladies dance AND move like that? I didn't think so.