"Camping" the Easy Way.

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I know, I know. . . It’s been over 48 hours since my last post. What’s that noise? Gasps and Shrieks? Don’t worry – we’re fine! No sleepwalking injuries or (no-longer-in-existence) gallbladder attacks.

We were at an annual camping trip – one on which I’ve been going since I was about 6 or 7 years old. It has changed participators quite a bit over the years, but basically consists of a bunch of homeschool families (and alumni, in my case) who get together and have an awesome time with gobs of events planned for the kids; such as treasure hunts, obstacle courses, and midnight teen games.

For the record, Chris, Ali and I didn’t actually “camp” this year – we roughed it at the conference center, while enjoying all of the ambiance of camping. I think it’s going to be a hard sell to ever pack and set up the tent again. At any rate, here are pictures (and stories) from our “camping” trip.

Mom and Ali watching what Ali thought were bubbles, and so they became known as “fire bubbles”:
However, in the long run, Ali was much more entertained by picking up rocks than watching the campfire and its bubbles.Chris and I were responsible for writing the clues for the treasure hunt for the 10-12 year olds. Our first clue? “The Secret Lies with Hobie”:
The campground was on Lake Guntersville. The water was quite beautiful, and I am always intrigued at looking at the lake bed. . .
I’ve never seen another lake in which the bottom looks like this: In Ali’s treasure pack, she got an airplane. She had MUCH fun with it:A few evil masterminds came up with a spin on dodgeball. . .
Using water balloons and flour balloons. Don’t forget – it WAS cold outside.
Although the kids used every kind of shield imaginable, including baseball gloves, trash can lids, and even a 12 foot table. . .
When you have people slam dunking like this:
There are bound to be quite a few casualties.
I think the quote of the game came from Ruth (above) who said, “I’m going to take a shower. I feel like sticky raw cookie dough.”

Chris and I, of course, managed to keep Ali far, far away from the crossfire.
Becky found a butterfly to show Ali:And after much inspection by Ali and Nathaniel,
I am pretty sure that the butterfly was “inspected” to death.

At dinner, Ali very much wanted to be like Eli and put her hood on.
Paul was back from the Air Force Academy and took some time out to teach his Mom all of the “moves” he’s been learning in Colorado Springs:
Ali spent a lot of time riding in “Pop’s Old Car” this weekend. At first, any time he would ask if she wanted to ride, she would come get me and say “Mommy come with you” (yes, she has a bit of trouble with pronouns)
But she finally conquered her fear enough to ride by herself!
Pop and Ali riding into the sunset:Chris, Ali and I decided to take a hike. Although we had second thoughts when we saw the bible verse associated with the trail:
But we went ahead anyway.
Then, 10 feet later we were greeted with another warning:
But we didn’t let that stop us from hiking.
We got to see beautiful views of the lake:
And the surrounding mountains:
And it must be an innate thing that kids like walking sticks on a hike, because we certainly have never had one on a walk with Ali, but she sure was excited when she found this:
A long way into our hike when we were trying to find the loop back to the campground, we came upon this trail, and it sounded much more promising than our last trail:
But then 20 feet later, we were greeted with this sad state of affairs:
Once you go to the New Earth, there’s no going back. So we decided against it, and stayed on our perilous trail.

While Daddy was getting our gear packed up, Ali had a last bit of fun with Becky:
Their dodgeball game was much safer than the flour/water dodgeball.
So that was our trip in a blogshell! It was a very fun trip, and it was exciting that Ali was old enough to really interact with the other kids.

Now I’m going to kick my feet up and relax! I’m not sure how it always works that I’m exhausted after a relaxing weekend, but I am!