Camp is Awakening

Today was wonderful! We spent the whole day exploring camp and the neighboring farm. The weather finally broke today and the snow on the mountain is beginning to receed, which means the pond starting filling up yesterday and breached the spillway this morning.

After Tristan napped in the van for an hour, we hiked up Tablerock and Abigail served a lunch of snow, bark, and mud. Yummy!

We were then invited to the neighbors farm for a lunch of delicious pea, mushroom, chicken, fiddlehead fern soup and bread. The couple that live at the black bear farm have llamas, goats, a horse, 3 dogs, chickens and a donkey. Tristan cooed and babbled in the backpack on the mile and a half hike to the farm. And Abigail was in her element splashing in puddles, petting the dogs, helping the neighbor stir and taste the boiling vat of maple syrup, romping in the mud, checking out the animals, and taking her very first horse ride! Dannie the horse is quite old and gentle. I was excited for her to ride but skeptical that she would actually go through with it. As soon as Dannie was ready, Abigail got right on (with help of course) and rode that horse like she was born to be a cowgirl! I was so proud and so was she. With all the exploring, falling, getting wet and dirty, and new experiences she is encountering thus far, I think we are going to have one tough girl on our hands by the end of the summer.

The assistant director arrived this week and Abigail has taken a shine to her. Ab also made close friends with the neighbors today. Matt and I have decided that she is going to probably become the camp mascott this summer. I am sure she is going to love all the staff and kids and they are going to love her. And Tristan's spunk has really started to show this week, especially now that "NO!" has been added to his vocabulary thanks to his big sister's coaching. Watch out Mass!

Sunshine

The sun showed its face today, woohoo! It is good to see the blue sky. I was beginning to feel like we were still in Pittsburgh with all the rain and gloom.

So we spent the afternoon at a nearby playground while Abigail ran off some pent up energy and Tristan enjoyed some lunch.

So (in you are interested) here are a few random but nonetheless striking observations I have made about this town over the last few days of exploring.

1) Most of the curbs in town are made of marble! Seems like a strange use of resources to me for a blue collar town. But I must say that curbs are in really good condition, not crumbling all over the place like in TC, and look like they have been there for a long time. (I told you this was random!)

2) There seems to be a high rate of teenage mothers for a small town. The school is on spring break this week so kids are out and about and I have seen at least 7+ way-t00-young moms in the last 2 days. Sad.

3) This is most certainly a small town. People you don't know chat with you on the street, stop there car to comment on your cute children, etc. New and a bit alarming for me.

Adjusting to this new way of life is going to take a while for all of us. But Abigail seems to be having the hardest time right now. Many of the pillars of her life (nanas and papies, her yard, her dog, her bed) are not here, everything is different, and camp is not what she expected. We realized on the way up that she was thinking that we would go to the camp as soon as we got here, life in a house there, and there would be lots of kids her age around to play with. It is hard to watch a child so young struggle with disappointment. We are enrolling her swim lessons which start next week and hope to do some other things that will bring some structure and familiar faces in her life. The sun is shining with a promise of warmer weather to come, we are making connections to people and God has always provided for us and will do that once again. It is a joy to watch His work.

We are here!

So I really don't think we could have packed another thing in the van!

After driving through a Nor' Easter, we arrived in North Adams, MA Sunday morning to our one-bedroom guest condo and unloaded our overflowing van to our new (temporary) home. Today we got a tour of the town from a North Adams native that works with Matt. We checked out the the local grocery store (the Big Y), ate at the pizza place that we can see from our windows, listened to the fire trucks about 4 times a day (fire station is right around the corner), typed to the sound of the church bells, and have seen a lot of rain. All and all we are beginning to discover our new hometown.

On the list for this week? Check out the laundry mat three blocks down, stop at the post office at the end of the block, check out the library on the other corner, ask around about the local farmer's market (yes, even though there is snow on the ground here, it is melting fast and I am thinking SPRING!), sign Abigail up for swimming lessons at the Y, get to see the camp sometime after they can open up the road...and whatever else Matt and I can think up!

I am excited to explore the opportunities here and make this town our home but I am also leery of the work ahead to settle in. Ah, maybe I am just sick of the rain (it has literally not stopped once since Saturday night!) so pray for sunshine! And give thanks for God's provision of people that we are already starting to make connections with. Miss you all!

Easter

We spent Easter in the hustle and bustle of visiting with family. It was a good holiday, even if Abigail didn't find a new dog during the Easter egg hunt like she thought she would. As you can see, fun was had by all the kids, grandparents and great-grandparents.

And today was spent eating jelly beans, reading new books, putting together a Dr. Suess puzzle, and trying to explain exactly how Jesus is human and God.

At least we figured out the puzzle.

Come on in!

Welcome to my very first blogging experiment! I got the idea for the name of the blog from an email that my husband sent to our church house group in Pittsburgh, PA about a month ago sharing and explaining the details of a major change in our life: a new job for him and a move to western MA for our family! His email explained so poignantly the reasons we felt called to make such a life-altering change for our family:

We feel that as Christians, we are called to offer our services to this arena and to make an impact in parts of the world that many Christians are uncertain how to be involved in. It is very difficult to say “no” when God has offered the support necessary to fulfill this position, the great opportunities for our children, and has prepared our hearts to desire serving the Kingdom to underprivileged kids in a secular establishment.

The title of his email, "Adventure Revealed!" has stuck with me over the last fews weeks of packing, planning, dreaming, crying, explaining, hoping, and fearing. And what I have realized is that email was the beginning of the record of this new journey and I hope this blog to be the recorder the continuation of our adventure. Change is a hard and fearful thing for me even when that change carries the promise of life-giving work. There is loss within this gain, there is grief within this hope. But I am discovering to stand between those places is to live within the story of the Gospel. As we travel on this road, I invite you to come along side us, peek in once in awhile to see what's unfolding, not because WE are so interesting but because God is working here and that is a glorious thing to behold even in the midst of all our messiness. And we need fellow travelers to survive so please share your story with us!
peace