God's amazing creation...

alright....so we were out on a snorkel adventure yesterday morning. it was a beautiful day, by the way. california has this awful thing called "june gloom" where it's terribly cloudy until late morning or early afternoon...but yesterday morning, the sun woke me up. hardly a cloud in the sky. it was beautiful! so anyway, we had to test out a couple different snorkel locations that we are going to be taking kids to this summer...places i've never been to yet. as we were cruising along in the boat, i saw something that just amazed me. i had heard about them before, but quite honestly thought it was kinda silly. so have ya'll ever heard of a flying fish?! yeah, they're awesome! all of the sudden, someone pointed one out to me....it looked like a bird, but then at a closer look i could definitely see that it was a fish...but it had wings!! and it was flying. not just a big long jump....but actually flying and then diving back into the water. it fascinated me!! really....it was awesome!


and the snorkels were awesome too. one of the places we went was called ship rock. i jumped out of the boat, and was immediately amazed. the water was so deep...i've never been in such endless water. fran told me that it was at least 300 feet deep at places, if not more. it was kind of surreal...i was starring into this deep blue nothingness....and would suddenly see huge schools of fish, or gigantic kelp that i couldn't see the end of. it was so fun! as we jumped out of the boat and started swimming around the gigantic rock, we noticed that there were a couple sea lions sprawled out in the sun. they started barking at us. and it's possible that we got a little too close..maybe. pretty soon, they were jumping in the water and swimming towards us. now...i didn't know much about sea lions before moving to cali. i just thought they were some cute ocean mammals. well, they don't have the word "lion" in their name for no reason. so....we started swimming as fast as we could, but there was really no where to go because we were out in the middle of the ocean. it's funny now, looking back on it...but i'm not gonna lie, my heart was beating pretty quick! after a bit, we thought we lost them. so we started just enjoying the amazing stuff underneath the surface of the water. a few moments later, we saw the sea lions in in the water, swimming down below us. it was really neat at first to see them swimming...but then i remembered that they can be dangerous. so once again, we just started swimming really fast. they ended up swimming right under us and all was well.

our other snorkeling location was through a small cave. it was so great....it got to the point where the water seemed pitch black and i couldn't see a thing. kind of a strange feeling, but fun. as we slowly made our way around, things started came back into light again, and it was so sweet. it's unbelievable just how much goes on under the surface. it is truly amazing!

we're heading back to the mainland this afternoon. we'll be back on sunday with a group of kids for our first week of summer camp. it'll be interesting to see how it all goes. i have a feeling it might be a little choatic, just because it's a lot different than the program we ran at emerald bay and most of us have never done a summer camp. but...we'll get through it :)

much love to you all...

brooke.