Cookies, cookies, cookies! We are full swing into the winter retreats season. So, part of my job here at camp is to bake cookies. Every Wednesday about ten of us staff women all head to the East Side Dining Hall, don our aprons and hair nets, and go to baking.

Grocery list is: 56 sticks of butter, 7 doz. eggs, 9 lbs. shortening, 25 lbs. brown sugar, 9 lbs. chocolate cake mix, 110 cups flour, 30 cups white sugar, and 26 cups of chocolate chips. Plus a few other things like raisins and oatmeal. We start the day at 9:00 and by 11:00 we will have scooped, baked, cooled and trayed up over 2,000 cookies in 7 different kinds. We even get the dishes done!! It is quite the well “buttered” machine. It is amazing that all the cookies get eaten every week. Camp has a maximum week-end capacity of 340 campers, so if you do the math it’s about 6 cookies per person. Everyone likes cookies! I love cookie bake not only because we get to eat as many cookies as we want, but us staff ladies have tons of fun talking, laughing, and catching up. It is strange that you can live on the same property with people, but get so busy with work that you lose contact with each other. Wednesday bake day and Friday food prep is a lot of work, but a lot of fun to be together. Friday food prep is a whole different story.

Winter is a wonderful season here at camp. We have tons of snow for tubing and ice for skating. Our kids love winter. We live right up the hill from the skating rink so our kids skate all the time. The weekend at our house mainly consists of breakfast, skating, lunch, skating, dinner, and more skating, until bedtime. Even Emma loves to “skape.” She is two and always wants to be right out there with the other kids. What a fun age they all are. Matt is 10, Ally 8, and Hudson 5. They are old enough to get to do things a bit independent, but still young enough that I can fix most of their problems with ice packs, hugs and kisses. We thank you again for making it possible for us to serve and work at Camp Barakel!