Laboring on Labor Day…

Labor Day weekend for me means a trip to a local state park with 10 other families from church.  It also means laboring.  Which always strikes me as odd.  It’s supposed to be a break.  And while I have two children that are more than capable of helping, they don’t.  I can’t wait until they take their children camping and realize just how much work goes into camping.

I seriously think they think we hop in the car and go.  I know they don’t know the amount of planning and coordination that goes into a little trip to the woods.

This trip started out really bad.

To the point that less than 30 minutes after we left, I was ready to come home.

Know why?

I wrecked my car.  My new to me SUV that I was so excited about taking camping for the first time because we wouldn’t have to have kids sitting on pillows or blankets.

It was packed perfectly.  Everything had a spot.  Of course it did… since I bought it I’ve been arranging the camping gear in the back so that when the time came, it was just a matter of loading it up.  And it worked just the way that I planned it.

But because I had 5 gazillion things going on in my head I failed to realize that just because the lane next to me was moving doesn’t meant that mine was.  I got up close and personal with the van in front of me.

And of course, there’s a very small dent in his bumper and my car is sitting in the shop.

I was less than 5 miles from my house, on a major road, thereby proving the statistic.

And feeling REALLY stupid.

Fortunately, we’re all okay.  And the car can be fixed.

My pride was the only thing that was bruised.  Three days with no internet and no cell helped fix that.  Not totally, but alot.

And I’m glad that I went, although I don’t think that I had much of a choice.  I called Pastor Man to let him know that I wasn’t coming (because coming would require me to ask for help) and he said that I needed to call another family that hadn’t left yet and see if I could hitch a ride with them.

As I called, I prayed that they would say they couldn’t… after all, they are a family of 5.  But, they were hauling their camper and could fit us and our crap in the car.

So off we went.

And we had a blast…

I didn’t miss the phone.

I didn’t miss the internet.

I kinda missed Twitter, but not much.

And I was reminded that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be because my church family took care of me, from offing me a car to drive, advice about a body shop, feeding me, cooking for me, hugging me and reminding me that I’m not stupid.

I can deal with almost any feeling except feeling stupid.

So, I’m going to end this here… because I have lots of pictures to share with you… and then I have mountains of laundry to do and fold while I watch the taped segments of NKOTB on my DVR.

We went Fairy Stone hunting (there are these stones that look like crosses… and we found many.. and now they are all over my desk…) but Samara didn’t find any at first.. she was a little bummed…

Matthew and I being silly….

You might wonder why my family of 3 has two tents… well, my site contained 7 people… me, my kids, and lots of other kids.  I had two of the youth group members bunking with me.  The little red tent in the back housed the boys and the bigger one housed the girls.  I have my dining tent so the youth group and I could sit up there and play cards until their parents made them go to bed.

And the flamingo?  It’s an “in” thing… I had to be invited into the group to proudly display the flamingo at my site this year and I can’t believe I even knew where it was, let alone remembered to bring it.

We canoed.  Not my thing, but I’m glad I tried it.  At one point in time Dr. M told me to just sit still and not row at all.  I was scared that I would get distracted and flip us over.  And Samara had no faith in me, whatsoever.

The beauty of going with a group of people is that I can’t give this to Matthew. But other men at my church can.  He canoed… and loved it.

He also kayaked and loved it….

Miss M and I stuck with the little ones and took them on a nature hike.  Miss M is a wealth of knowledge and the kids (and I) learned alot!

We even found horse shoes, which we compared to our shoes…

And… when I took six kids to the lake (yes, I did), our fairy stone sandcastle won third place.

Not that I’m competitive… but I really think we should’ve taken second….

Today, after everyone else left, there were three families that stuck around to spend some more time at the lake, none of us ready to come home.

It was then that I truly came to realize just how blessed I am, and no matter how much I labored this weekend, no matter what happened to deter my time of fellowship, it was worth everything.

We’ve added more memories to the book that we will carry with us for a lifetime…

Until next time…