This was our first week of Spring Staff! We’ve been having lots of fun, and things have gotten off to a great start. We were very busy last weekend getting ready for the spring staff to come, making our usual “welcome baskets”:
Most of the spring staff arrived on Sunday afternoon, and we all had supper together in the lounge. Matt and Kelly did an amazing job with the food, as usual.
The first school group didn’t arrive until Wednesday, so there were a few days to settle in. They did some stuff like work projects and team building. Judging from this picture, some of the team building was quite fast-paced:
Everything seemed to go very well with the first school group. The staff in charge of programming kept the kids going during some rainy, cool weather. It was good to see Janna’s bright yellow rain jacket back once again this spring. Unfortunately, she says she left the matching pants at home, but will bring them soon, so I wait in eager expectation. It’s always easy to spot Janna when she’s bright yellow from head to toe, and makes a gloomy day so much brighter.
The kitchen staff took no time at all to find their groove and become a lean, mean kitchen machine. Apparently they are working very well together, even behind the scenes. Matt says that when they get overtired, they get crazy (fun) instead of mean and grumpy, and he’s pretty happy about that.
And the maintenance boys are the new entertainment around our house. Anika and I watch them out the windows, and are anticipating a great spring. (I can’t count how many times Anika has asked, “What are they laughing about?”) So far, they’ve accomplished a lot. They have a maintenance handshake (must be done with gloves on), have constructed a stage out of railway ties in the ball field for whenever the urge for a dance party hits, and have decided that this weekend’s homework is to find overalls at Value Village so that they can have maintenance uniforms. I think they’ve also done real work as well, but it’s hard to tell, because they have so much fun doing it that it doesn’t really look like work.
So, it’s been a great start to this spring, and our prayer is that this group of staff will continue to grow together as a team, and will be challenged in many different ways over the next 2 months.