Can You Hear Me Now?

I am officially on vacation between now and Monday, January 9th, thanks to vacation days and furlough days at work.  YAY!!  I remember when I was little, it took FOREVERRRRR for Winter Break to come around.  Now it seems that September - December flies by.

This past weekend I went on a retreat with my Leadership kids from work to a retreat center in the Copperopolis hills.  I was not too sure how it would go being only one of 4 adults with 30+ teenagers.  Well, it was amazing!  The one thing that a few kids were not happy about was that the only way to get cell phone reception was to hike a few minutes up the hill...it was funny to see the way that some of them reacted to this information.  For the most part, though, the kids were fine with it, and so were we adults.

We got to the cabins around 5:30 Friday night, so it was pitch black while we were unloading the bus.  It took us about 2.5 hours to prepare the lasagnas, salad and bread for dinner, so we did not eat until 8pm!  We had so many snack out though, so our bellies were full.

It was cool to see all these teenagers in the same HUGE room, playing board games, talking, and having dance parties.  They even taught me a few new moves, which I am hoping will not end up on Facebook or YouTube!

The next day, we woke up to beautiful weather, so after breakfast us chaperones went on a short hike.  The kids were hiking all day long and enjoying nature.  So many of them never experienced anything like this before...it broke my heart finding that out.

I spent a few hours on the deck, reading my latest Kristin Hannah book {started it Friday evening and finished it early Sunday morning}.  After dinner, we all sat around the campfire, talking and singing songs {or at least the most memorable 80's rock anthems}.  Seeing how many of these teenagers knew songs from the 80's made me happy!

After that, I sat in the main room with about 15 kids, talking until 1am.  It was really cool getting to connect with these students and hear their perspective on different things.

Sunday morning, we were ALL dragging.  We also had a herd of "Wild Copperopolis Cows" mosey through the grounds.  When we first heard them coming, we thought it was a bear in the wild...obviously, most of us are from the city!

Our bus came an hour early, but we had time for one group shot by the campfire.

It was a fun weekend, but I was definitely thankful for my own shower and bed when I got home!

On our way!

Old skool wood stove!

Part of the "wild" herd!