Summer Camp and Upworthy Videos

Last week, we loaded up in our sweet new 15-passenger van (and a few more vehicles obviously) and took 38 kids to Camp Grace. We could not even handle that 14 hour bus ride after last year's ridiculousness at KAA (not their fault, totally our kiddos acting foolishly). Anyways, we had a few (ok quite a few) incidents involving kiddos running away and therefore spending a little extra time with their ministry leaders (aka us). Additionally, we brought one kiddo home with a black eye as the result of a fist-fight in the back of the fancy new van on the car ride home. Despite all that, however, we would call our week a success. For those of you who have been around The Stanley Clan since the beginning, you know how deeply we love camp and what a big part of our story it has been (and continues to be).

If you want something else that might blow your mind, this year Jayci was old enough to be an actual camper, like spent the week in a cabin. Which was bizarre since our first summer at Camp Grace, Jayci wasn't even the beginning of a dream. She has spent nearly every summer of her life at camp, and this was her first time being on the camper-side of things. She obviously killed it and loved it and wishes she could go back immediately. 

We also brought a few of our older boys (and one girl) as CITs (counselors-in-training), and they were amazing. Not that we doubted they would be, but it's always fun to watch kiddos step into the shoes they were made to fill and lead and love the younger kiddos from their own neighborhood with grace and patience and the occasional curse-word, which we aim mostly to pretend we don't hear. 

Caden and Isaiah were in our cabin, along with our amazing friends/Blueprint team members and their 3 even-littler boys. I liked to declare, quite frequently and loudly, that our cabin was clearly the hardest to properly control and keep quiet (never happened). Oh well, at least they're cute.

All that to say, camp was a winner. And we came home for two whole days before we hopped on a plane and headed to Boston/Maine/New Hampshire for a getaway without 40 kids. Turns out our three are more than enough to keep us busy, but that's another post for another day. 

While we were wrangling our kids onto an airplane, I got an email saying that our Upworthy video aired on Facebook. I cannot figure out if it's anywhere on the inter-webs that people sans Facebook can see, so my apologies for that. But my mind has been completely blown by the kind encouragement and feedback that everyone has given us over our debut. I think we can all agree, however, that Ashton is the real star of this video. Not only is he the best ever, but he's taking care of our annoying dog while we are out of town, so he wins even more most-amazing-guy-ever points for that (not that he needs any extra points). We continue to maintain our position that we are the lucky ones in this whole equation, and that we are big fans of our life. I also continue to maintain that staying away from comment sections is always the best policy. 

(Here's the link to our video on FB, in case you can't see it on the blog!)