It's Official!

A week or two before the anniversary party, Mom and Dad ordered a sign for the house.  My mom has been wanting to name the property ever since they moved in in 2002 but hadn't settled on anything.  In the meantime, I started referring to it as Camp Kreitzer on the blog partly for the alliteration and partly because it is just like a summer camp.  We don't have canoeing or horseback riding but there's a pool, a playground, a trampoline, a creek for wading, fields for softball and soccer tag, tractor rides, cooking classes with Grandma, campfires, cookouts and fireworks.  We've also been known to have family talent shows and field days.  One of my favorite jobs ever was Camp Counselor at CCC in Charlottesville, VA (home of the Dave Matthews Band) and Camp Kreitzer, with all of its opportunities to be a kid again gives me the same feeling.  

When we arrived in Woodstock in July, I told my mom they still had time to change the name if they didn't like it.  Next thing I knew, they had ordered the sign so I guess it's official.  

The day after the party, we had a christening ceremony and Mom and Dad poured champagne all over the sign.  Dad told us he hoped Camp Kreitzer would come to be associated with a lot of fun for us all.  We took a group picture in front of the sign wearing the matching shirts that sport our new family motto "Bring It" and doing the "Bring It" sign.  My hope is that the motto and the big X will inspire the kids to "bring it" in everything they do--most importantly in their faith and their families.  

In my long life, I have observed that things are about as special as we choose to make them and that includes family.  Rather than being the ones we take for granted, they should be the ones we "bring it" with the most--saying what we need to say, forgiving when we need to forgive and celebrating big when one of us has something to celebrate.  God gave us our families first.  We should give them our best.  And that's all I have to say about that.

Alex really knows how to "X it up"

Dave and Jes have been using the sign with their kids for the past few months.

Hopefully all the Kreitzer cousins will become very familiar with it.

The Doyles and the two Kreitzer families made a trip up Woodstock tower 

at dusk Sunday night after the sign christening.  In this photo, you can see 

the back of the shirts we had made for the party.

Here's the front.  Girls got pink, boys got blue.

Last photo till next year :(