Painting Rocks

I can remember moments in my life when I said good-bye to different seasons of my life.  Often, when saying bye, I was also leaving behind an entire world in and of itself.  Those times have long since passed, and I've learned to never completely say good-bye to any one part of my life.  Why?

Because it's usually the things you write off that tend to suck you back in (feel free to say something such as "preach it!").

A few years ago I worked at a camp playing in the band and leading Bible study.  We started our day around 7:30 am and usually wrapped up with our staff meeting around 11 pm.  Seeing as we didn't really have much time to ourselves during the day, we typically took a little time to get stuff done.  That meant going to bed between 12 and 1 am.  When it came time to say good-bye to that life I was ready.  I was really, really ready!

That's why I found it so odd that I started my summer off as a "guest artist" at that very same camp!  I stepped off of the plane wondering how in the world I had ended up here.  How and why was I back at camp?  It didn't really matter once I found out that I really only had two 30 minute jobs to do each day.  The rest of the time was mine to do what I wanted!

Camp without all of the responsibilities?  I'm in.  Especially when we walked out of evening worship each night to look at this!

One of the best parts of the trip for me.  Not having to be involved in every facet of camp also meant not having to eat every meal in the cafeteria!  If you've never heard of Harry's Roadhouse you need to buy a plane ticket to Albuquerque right now!  Not only have they been featured in magazines and food shows while becoming a hot spot for celebrity sightings (apparently, those happen every other week of the year except for this one), but they have pretty good food.

Suggestion: Close your eyes, point to something on the menu, and order it!  You won't be disappointed.

I said bye to camp, ended up saying hello again, got excited about a slack schedule, then the apparently inevitable happened.  After a few days spent eating at restaurants like Harry's and going to Santa Fe for the day, I started looking for something else.  I wanted to be involved in something.  Next thing I know I'm…

...painting rocks with these rocks...

...playing, and losing, my first round of Phase 10 with some kids...

...helping set up the most elaborate domino train EVER...

...and refereeing a few games of air hockey.

Stay tuned!  Today is a double header since I forgot to publish this last night when it was finished.  Whoops.