Memorial Day Weekend

We returned home last night from a marathon weekend at our friends' lake cabin in Loon Lake. We brought our tent and our buddies brought their new wall tent and portable wood stove which were set up in the yard. We enjoyed a wonderful ambience in a tent that was bigger than all of our living rooms! Now we are all wishing we had such cool digs! But knight no. 2 was really nervous he wasn't going to get to sleep in his own tent. He woke up at about 2:30am crying - we were thankfully in bed by then - and when we tried to soothe him, we found out he just wanted to know if he was in his own tent, and then he settled down and promptly went back to sleep!

The adults pretty much commandeered the wall tent while the kids used the cabin, and we realized that three days of running, hide-and-seeking in the bushes, swimming, eating indiscriminately, noodle fighting, wrestling, texting, movie-making (kids these days with their phones and cameras are much more hip and high-tech than we ever were as kids), fishing, sand castling, etc. made them pretty much stink - there just was a really unusual smell wafting through the cabin when they were all hanging out in it in the evenings, and so, the minions were renamed gerbils for the weekend!

The schedule of events pretty much went as follows - eat, count kids - we had up to 14 at one point - watch them swim and shiver, eat, play Tichu, drink coffee, eat, count kids, group yardwork, count kids, play Tichu, drink coffee, eat, more swimming, more shivering, more counting, more eating, more Tichu, paint, eat, Tichu, coffee, count.... We did get some sleep in, but very little. Fun times had by all. There was very little yelling, except to remind the gerbils to keep their life jackets on. Even the littlest of the group, The princess and her retinue, got along famously with little in the way of spats and lots in the way of looking out for each other!

Sunday morning was a challenge met with smiles as we scrambled to get 8 kids and 5 adults ready for Sunday meeting with only one bathroom, but it worked and we were only 5 minutes late! Then we all meandered into the hills for a potluck with some friends and several others from church, at their log cabin. The gerbils claimed ownership of the yard while the adults enjoyed wonderful visiting. As we were getting ready to leave, the gerbils went to say goodbye to the cows. One of the calves wanted to just get a little closer, and then found herself stuck between the gate and a post, so two of our guys helped the farming folk unstick the calf. The gerbils were just so impressed...

We had such a great time... Can't wait for the next camp-a-thon! thanks to our friends for their hospitality! I am still working on getting the right technology for downloading my phone, but one of these days you are going to be pleasantly surprised by the plethora of photos added to this here blog! don't hold your breath though - it won't be happening for at least two weeks! Ciao