Day 33 Lake Tahoe

Today was a wonderful day. In the morning we walked to a local coffee shop and spent a little time there. Then we went to look at some shops for inner tubes. We passed an art gallery that had a painting of a close up of several children's books on a book shelf. I thought it was so cute and may replicate it with a picture for a future kids room decoration. We were unsuccessful at finding inner tubes that were a reasonable price so Joshua called tire shops and found a place selling them cheap Yay! My sisters, Willie, Lexi, and my Aunt Becky went with Joshua and I to float a river. It was a two and a half hour float and very relaxing. The end of it had a part with a lot of rapids and rocks and I felt out of my league being in a small black tube. As I was going down the rapids as I watched a girl in front of me wipe out.... but we all made it! Joshua and I went back to the condo and made enchiladas for the family and we celebrated Michael and Joshua's birthday. Tristan wanted to help blow out the candles. We ended the night with a family game! 

Day 32 Lake Tahoe

Happy Anniversary Meeks'!!!!!

So we woke up Sunday morning for an early hike to a waterfall in Tahoe. The signs said the trail was easy-moderate, but I'm thinking it was more like moderate-difficult. Mom came expecting it to be fairly easy on her foot which underwent surgery not long ago. Not so much. Sorry mom. But she did make it through alright. We reached the waterfall, hung out for a while, took a few pics and shot back to the trailhead. We hadn't gotten enough sun on the trail, so we went from there to a local beach to hang out in the cool Tahoe water for a while. Willie and I made it through the shallow waters to the deep blue, before I regretted not bringing the snorkeling gear. Hopefully next time. The fam all hung out for a while in the water before Allison and I took a nap in the sun for an hour or two. Not really sure how long, actually. Time flies when you're sacked out under the sun. No sunburn though. Thank you Jesus! For dinner we had an awesome barbecue in the picnic area of the condo and some good ol' family fellowship. In the evening Lexi and Becky went to a magic show, while the rest of the fam went to take pictures of the sunset. Allison and I opted out and instead walked to Starbucks and the grocery store to spend some anniversary time together. Off to a great start at Lake Tahoe.

Day 31 Lake Tahoe

Joshua and I got up early and packed up the car to get ready to leave. We stopped by the hotel Lobby for breakfast and were lucky enough to see Scott and Ryan and get to have breakfast with them. We then hit the road to drive to Lake Tahoe. We got to drive in between Death Valley and Yosemite National Park. It was amazing views of peaks and lakes. We saw one field that looked like a huge salt and mineral lake and was very mysteriously pretty. We arrived in Lake Tahoe in time for dinner with the family and make plans for the week. I am so excited to be on vacation with them.

Day 30: Celebrate Recovery conference day three

Day three of the conference was the most exhausting and most rewarding. We woke up to another morning of free breakfast and fellowship, packed our backpacks, and drove together to Saddleback. We strategized what would be the best workshops to finish the conference with and every workshop was very encouraging and informative. It was exciting to get fresh ideas and talk about how we could implement these ideas into serving when we got back. The conference ended with a large barbecue for everyone in attendance to the conference, but most of us opted to have our own barbecue back at the hotel and spend some time together, concluding our time with fellowship and planning. It was also really nice to just spend some time getting to know each other better, and hanging out- something we've been looking forward to for a while. A couple hours of basketball, some time in the pool and hot tub, and a late evening playing games and sharing testimonies ended the night wonderfully. Looking forward to an amazing week with the fam in Tahoe!
The pictures are of me (Joshua) coming out of a replica of the tomb Jesus rose from, Ryan playing with a cactus and the price he paid (little thorns in his finger), Allison holding a unique flower I picked for her, and J.R. showing off his yo-yo skills.

Day 29 Celebrate Recovery day two

I forgot to mention yesterday the campus of the Saddleback church is the craziest thing I have ever seen. It has like 5 parking lots, trams, huge tents, special youth rooms and beautiful landscaping everywhere. For the teen room they have an amazing building that has a gym, a coffee shop, and a theater all decorated in a modern way. Also the outside of it has a built in skate park around a rock wall. The best part was this huge rock wall that had a waterfall coming down it and a huge pool of water and they created a sandy beach. They also had an outdoor stage for concerts... crazy!!! For the elementary rooms they had the reef for one level which was a floor decorated with aquariums and fish stuff, the next floor was decorated with extreme sports and the last level had a train car in there and was decorated in a glamourous Hollywood way for the kids. It all seemed like such a neat place to bring your kids... They have beautiful rock walkways and buildings all around campus and two baptismal water pools. Ok back to the conference. So we went to more main sessions about the seven keys of the program and heard from many of the directors of CR. It was awesome to learn a lot of ideas of how to run our program better at home. For our workshops today Joshua and I went to the same one's... Maintaining momentum and the Landing. We really enjoyed both. In maintaining momentum we learned how to help our leaders not fill burned out and how to evaluate our program and overcome barriers. The Landing was the brand new 52 week teen program! We got to see some videos examples and hear about how they developed the program to be very hands on and engage the students! We met with our other leader Ryan and asked if he thought we should run that in the fall and he agreed we should. Pastor Adam gave us approval to purchase it we are so excited! That evening all the leaders went to the CLaim Jumper for dinner and to celebrate Joshua's birthday. It was so awesome to spend time with them and hear about what they were learning at the conference. Also to just get to know them since we do not spend much times with the leaders of CR at our church! We all ate way too much and of course even though I told everyone I had ordered a huge eclair for Joshua's birthday two other people ordered desert and the restaurant gave us a HUGE piece of Cake because one of the leaders steak was bad. So everyone went home with a stomach ache... It was a great bonding time.

Day 28: California Celebrate Recovery Conference

Today we had the privilege of attending the Celebrate Recovery Conference with 11 leaders from Life Hurts God HEals and Celebrate Recovery at Saddleback church. When we got there we were worshiping and Pastor Rick Warren came up and greeted Joshua and I and gave us hugs! WE ARE FAMOUS :) Haha but seriously he is a big deal and actually has two security guys with him but seems like a very humble guy. He gave the opening message and it was nice to hear how much he supports the recovery programs and how vital he believe they are to the church. The morning continued with other speakers talking about the history of CR and learned more about their Seven Keys to the program. it was so amazing to be in a room were 3000 other Celbrate Recovary leaders who are passionate about helping people see that Jesus can free them of their hurts habits and hangups. Joshua and I split up for our workshop. He went to Pathways to Leadership and I went to Prison Ministries. I was so blessed to be there. i got to hear from the directors from about 20 different states that run CR in prisons and the work they are acomplishing through taht. I also got to listen to the directors problem solve with many people in the workshop who were trying to start new programs it was awesome! Joshua learned more about training new leaders and current leaders and how to run a better program. I think the most exciting news was when we found out the have brand new curriculum for the teens. We have been using a 13 week curriculum and trying to adapt it to year long and they created a 52 week program with all the lessons and small group questions and videos! We are so excited to learn more about it at the workshop tomorrow. We met back with the other leaders and had dinner at the hotel. Joshua and I hung out in the pool and hot tub with our youth co-leader Ryan and went to sleep. Cant wait until day two of the conference.

Day 27: Arizona to California

After 3 and a half weeks I had finally cleaned my car at grandma's house . I cleaned out the smashed crackers, seashells, sand, popcorn kernels, and wrappers and reloaded our carefully strategized automobile. We said bye to grandma, thanked her for her incredible hospitality and headed to Cali. After driving for hours, making it through the Agricultural inspection and a few rest stops, we finally landed at our next destination- Joshua Tree National Park. Now Im not going to dis Joshua Tree, because (1) I'm sure our effort level to explore at the moment had diminished our experience, (2) the place is named Joshua, so it is by necessity awesome, and (3) we realized we kind of entered into the back door of Joshua Tree. But the trip seemed to be less promising than imagined. Although it seems part of that was due to Allison and I not having a clue what to expect and making up a rainforest paradise of what it might look like. In case you haven't been it is actually a very dry hilly desert environment with much different plant and animal life than you might find in a tropical forest. I had assumed a Joshua Tree was probably a really large, strong, old tree. Nope, just sort of little neat looking bush trees. We did, however, have a chance to see a really cool spring in the park with clusters of palms, rich bird life, and a lot of history. Our ambition ended about there and we shot back for the freeway to the Cook's in Culver City.
There we had the blessing of being able to see Krista, Michael, and their adorable son, Tristan. We enjoyed their company for a few hours as Krista made us a delicious home-cooked dinner. Tristan gave me a green car for my birthday as he promised. He was pretty excited about getting me a hot wheels car just like he had, and I was actually just as excited to receive it. Something about a young child being exuberant about giving you a simple birthday gift, makes the gift worth 10 times more. From there, Allison and I navigated our way to Lake Forest, where we'll spend the next 3 days at the Celebrate Recovery Conference at Saddleback with an incredible leadership team.