The sun is coming back, and it is so beautiful. We have been able to spend a lot of time outside enjoying the snow. Kacie has been getting into cross country skiing and really enjoys it. Going for walks with the kids is also a pleasure. Jared has had some snowmobile outings with some of the guys. The big "Mountain Man" outing is soon to come. Next week actually. It's a week long over nighter where a bunch of men go out with their sons and stay in tents with their snowmobiles and cook over the fire. This camp out also involves bad manners, going to the bathroom outside and lots of tall tales. No women allowed of course. Jared, Kenten and Nicholas will be heading out on Monday. Nicholas has been talking about it for the past 3 months. He is so excited to be a part of what his big brother was able to do last year with Dad. 

Here are the adventures.  Also the moose are starting to come back around.

Walking to the lodge to play at the playground and check the mail.

Nicholas being Nicholas... Always wearing a smile.

Skiing with Evelynn. I think Evelynn liked it.

Here's a picture of Ryan in the creek. The snow machine went over a part of the creek that collapsed. No one got hurt, but they had a blast.

 A yearly digging up my last year flowers to munch on.

Not to late

This past month you may have noticed the Facebook posts of broken and frozen pipes. Here are some pictures and details of all the frozen mess.

Still working long into the night.

You may already know, camp gets all its water from a spring up on the mountain. It supplies not only all of camp, but also to some of the community and staff houses down the road.

When the water comes down from the hillside it forks. One side goes towards camp and the other side goes down the hill towards the community. The pipe ruptured at a low weak spot near the main entrance. The road actually started to wash out. This is where everything started. We were forced to turn the water off. We dug down to get at all the pluming. That sounds easy enough, but you have to understand for much of the month of December it was in below zero, and January was not much warmer. The frost was above and below the pipe. The excavator struggled to puncture the ground. We eventually gained access and repaired the break as soon as possible. When the water was turned back on, there were very few frozen pipes in camp. With a little work and steaming some water lines, eventually all of camp had water. That was a blessing because there was a retreat group coming in that next day. The very unfortunate thing though, there was no water to the community and staff houses. So the crew of maintenance started their long all nighter of steaming lines. We were able to get one of the 9 houses with water that day. The community jumped right in to lend a helping hand. That was a wonderful blessing. It took 3 more days of steaming and running lines over the ground to reach 3 more house. We were forced to run new lines because in that time we found broken pipes. We kept the lines open by allowing a continuous flow of water so there was no chance of it freezing up again. We worked day and night and gained very little. Though we eventually won the battle. In total it took 9 days from start to finish. There were many hours spent in crawl spaces and snow. It was wonderful to see God using all of this to have community and staff working side by side bringing glory to Him. You kind of forget the pleasures of precious water. We are so thankful for everyone who was patient during this time without water.  The funny thing is, none of the maintenance guys who were helping with this dilemma were without water. That was very interesting to ponder. The above ground pipe is working good for now. We covered all the line up with snow for insulation.The maintenance will change it over in the summer with the help of work teams and fix everything so it is up and ready for next winter.

We are so thankful for all the help and the watchful eye God had over all of us during that time. No one was hurt. Everyone got water back. We were blessed with much warmer weather this month. There is so much to be thankful for.