Houseboats and Halloween

So, this weekend, I (Janna) took the girls and Carmen on the girls' retreat. All the girl students who are involved in Lifelines were invited out to a houseboat for the weekend. A generous donor had made it available and so 23 of us loaded onto a 3 bedroom boat. It was a bit cramped but so much fun. Curt was part of the guy weekend where a bunch of students were taken to Utah for a men's time. They also had a great time.
The girls and I shared a "room" in which there was just a double bed. When I say just a bed, I mean just a bed. No floor space. So, sleeping sideways, we managed to fit all five of us on the bed. That first night was rough since I was getting pushed around by Turi on one side and trying not to smother Carmen on the other.
We invited a lady to come in a give a series of talks and the rest of the time we just hung out. I got to know some of the students a lot better and it was a really sweet time. We had two girls come who haven't come to anything else before. They have a bit of church background but not much. I got to drive them home and it was good getting to know them and hear how the Lord had moved in their lives over the weekend.
Our girls had a blast. They love hanging out with people and are not at all shy. They experienced their first boat, first sand, first jet ski ride and first open water swimming all in one weekend. I can't tell you how much fun they had. They loved playing with sand and Bitsu (of course) spent hours creating things. They loved swimming and Turi (of course) did some laps and raced college students around. And they absolutely loved the jet ski. Tihi got up to 20 miles an hour (for those of you who don't know, that's pretty slow), Bitsu to about 30 and Turi had me go up to full blast. It was fun just getting to have fun with them outside of our usual school and home routine.
Carmen did great. Both nights he slept pretty well and I didn't really have to worry about him waking up everyone else on the boat. He was his usual cute self. Speaking of sleeping, he slept "through the night" last night! Yesterday, he was six weeks. I put him down after nursing at 11:30 and he didn't wake up until 4:30 and it was only because he was struggling with reflux. He ate and went right back down until I woke him at 7. Awesome.