Adventurers Pine Lake Retreat

It's that time of year again when we head out to Pine Lake Retreat for food, fun and fellowship with our Adventurers group. I was feeling a bit under the weather on Thursday, but after some rest and lots of fluids, I perked up enough to head out with Keith and the kids on Friday afternoon. We brought two vehicles because of all of our gear, so I had an easy way of getting back home if I needed to.

First stop was the Deininger's house, so that we could caravan with them to the camp. We went to the Cracker Barrel for dinner and met up with the rest of our camping crew: Allen and Braelyn, all five Grodacks, all 4 Deiningers, Jennifer and Blake (minus any super yummy treats!); and then Allen's parents, beautiful wife and adorable twins also joined us for dinner.

The ladies rocked and discussed the upcoming weekend festivities...

while the boys played checkers.

Joshua and Luke clowning around before dinner. We had a great meal - who doesn't like BFD (breakfast for dinner)? Then we set off again to caravan to the camp. It was dark by now, and I don't have a Sunpass, so I had to actually stop to pay tolls while everyone else just zipped along. Then I'd have to merge back into fast lane and punch it to catch up with everyone else. And every time, Megan would say, "are we lost?".

After some confusion at the retreat sight, we finally found our cabin and got all 7 vehicles parked, only to go inside for more chaos about which kid is sleeping where. Fortunately, we had mapped this all out a couple of weeks ago at Canadian Thanksgiving, so we had a great starting point for stowing gear and settling down the kids.

We didn't make it in time for camp worship. Lisa had brought along her Bible Story books and read to us for worship in the cabin.

Sleepy Megan looking ready for bed during the story. We all slept pretty good and were awake early enough to chit chat before breakfast was served.

Keith slept out in a tent, and the weather was just gorgeous for that. If I wasn't such a chicken about bugs, I would have joined him.

Megan put her shoes on and went out for Daddy's wake-up call. He was awake and had brewed coffee already.

Our house number.

My little posse dressed and ready for Sabbath morning breakfast and worship.

After breakfast there was some down-time before worship was ready to begin, so the kids were all free to run around and do whatever. Megan had just learned how to ride her bike without training wheels the day before so she was stoked to have some opportunities to get out her wheels and feel the wind in her hair.

Our house, with the cars, bikes and tent. We had quite the set-up.
We gathered again back in the meeting area for family worship.

Me and my sweet little Eager Beaver. I'm co-leading the Eager Beaver group this year.

For family worship, we discussed the Armor of God and then created our own family shield.

Even though Joshua doesn't look pleased, we were all rather impressed with the final product. I think maybe it was too bright for him.

The Builders (Joshua's group) were responsible for serving lunch.

Joshua and Adam teamed up to serve side by side.

After lunch, there was plenty of time to rest. Daddy set up his awesome hammock that he got on a trip to Ecuador when he was active duty.

A quick group kid picture before Luke had to leave. We were only missing the 2 littlest Grodacks.

As Luke was leaving the camp, Megan yelled out, "hey Luke, you wanna ring my bell one more time?". So sweet!

The parts of our group that signed up to go canoeing left to make that drive, which left me, Megan and Daniel behind.

My and the little ones went on an Alphabet walk. I gave Megan a notebook with A-Z written out and she and Daniel had to observe things on the walk and write them down...
C is for cow.

It was then time for dinner, which the Eager Beavers and Little Lambs were helping to serve haystacks.

There seemed to be quite a few families for dinner and so midway through serving, Lisa and Keith took over to allow me and some of the little kids a chance to eat.

Sabbath sunset made for a spectacular sky!

Worship that night was about acts of kindness. Groups took turns acting out stories depicting kindness and the congregation had to guess which story it was. Megan, Braelyn and Blake acted out the story of the inn-keeper giving Mary and Joseph a place to stay. Notice Blake holding Megan's hand. So cute!

Megan and Daddy. I just love that smile!

Moving on to a hayride around the grounds. So fun!

After the hayride, it was time to go jump in the bouncy house! In order to keep our family together, we kept Joshua back to ride the hayride with us which then meant he was to bounce with the little kids. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best idea, since it was tough for the bigger kids to really enjoy themselves when they were trying to be mindful of the younger kids.

Keith helped some spot some of the younger kids while they were making their way up the rope.

She promptly came down the slide and handed me her glasses - she was afraid of breaking them.

Then it was time to make smores by the fire. Yum!

That night, after the kids were put down for bed, the adults stayed up and played some card games. It was so fun! I'm going to need to work on my Dutch Blitz skillz.

The following morning (today) I had to get up early again to help serve breakfast with the Sunbeams. Megan was tired as were many of the other Sunbeams, because not too many of them showed up.

Megan was on cereal duty helping to hand out cereal for all the hungry campers.

After a victory lap around the camp sight, it was time to pack it up and head home. We needed to be back to pick up the dog so Keith's parents could go out of town.

After one last walk through of the house, it looks like all belongings have been packed.

We had two of these bunk rooms. One room had the 2 oldest boys (Adam and Joshua) and their brothers (Luke and Daniel). The other bunk room had Blake, Megan, Jennifer and Me, and we snuggled Braelyn in there, too. There were also to rooms with full size beds - we put Allen in one room and the Grodack family in the other room.

Our kitchen and card game playing area.

The house had a total of 4 pull out couches in the 2 connecting living rooms. Lisa and Rob slept on one of the couches.

Overall, the accommodations worked out really well. It was quite fun. But sadly, it was time to pack it up.

Heading off the property, Megan, Daniel and I made a prayer stop (and then I promptly cleaned my front windshield).

We had a great time and look forward to coming back again next year.

In Celebration of Columbus Day...a Lesson on Immigration by Megan - Grade 2

In Megan's Friday folder this past week, I found this wonderful breakdown of how people from other countries came to America through Ellis Island.

Save money to come to America.

Pack small bag to carry with them.

Take a long ship to North America.

Go to Ellis Island.

Put their heavy bags on the first floor.

Doctors check on them to see if they were healthy.

Exchange their money for American money.

They left Ellis Island to America to get jobs.

In other news, the kids, Keith and Grandma and Grandpa Holloway all went to Family Night at school last night for the Scholastic Book Fair. Everyone came home with good books to read. Joshua got a Percy Jackson series, Megan picked out some pink princessy books (likely because they came with a matching necklace) and Daniel got 2 Star Wars books and a Phineas and Ferb book. I came home from work to find them all on the couch reading.

Party Animals!

I'm pretty sure Daniel's birthday celebration has been going on for about 2 weeks now! When Grandma and Grandpa Ketchum were in town, we had them over for a pre-birthday dinner complete with presents!

The happy little fellow loves legos and enjoys legos that have people/story lines. With two new sets of Harry Potter legos, Daniel was in heaven!

Later on that week, taking advantage of the decreasing humidity, we met some friends at the park for bike rides and a picnic dinner.

Notice that we are a family of 5, but we travel with only 2 bikes. Megan has been afraid to ride her bike, and Daniel has a strong dislike for his bike. He just doesn't like to get on it at all. It's hilarious - he'll just stand beside it and have a stare-down with whoever it is that suggested riding bikes.
Seriously, how can you get frustrated at this sweet face? He'll ride his bike someday, right?

Joshua was pretty excited to get out on the trail to ride with his friend Adam and the dads.

And they're off! Joshua tells me he had a blast. While the rest of us played at the playground.

Megan and Daniel climbing on the playground.

Each family packed their own picnic dinners. I had help from my little minions picking out what they wanted to pack. They did great, even remembering to pack plates and napkins.

We left the park right around sundown and went to the Isidro's house with the Bergherms and Deiningers for some yummy smores.

Catching up to this week....I helped in Daniel's Sabbath School class, and had the wonderful privilege of being present while Mrs. Deanna sang happy birthday to Daniel. It was raining cats and dogs (Joshua is studying idioms in school and so we are now inserting them into conversations as frequently as possible - makes for some great silly conversations!). After church this weekend, we napped then went over to the Deiningers house for a celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving. The food was the same as "our" Thanksgiving, but there was a lot of red-wearing. :) The food was amazing and the kids were all well-behaved and our hostess really outdid herself with crafts and awesome organization. I was so stuffed, I couldn't even think about eating breakfast at 5am on Sunday morning when I got up for work. I had to split this past weekend, to be off all of next weekend for our Adventurers camp-out.

I worked all day Sunday while Keith, the kids and Grandma and Grandpa Holloway went in search of something fun to do indoors, since it was still raining outside. (Pictures to come soon, I think they are on Keith's phone.)

That brings us to the big day today...Daniel officially uses two hands to count his years. Our baby has turned 6 years old.

The boys playing their DS games, while Megan played on Spelling City on the computer. This bought me about 30 minutes to get things organized for dinner tonight.

Well, I thought I had everyone occupied and out of the kitchen, until the biggest kid of all came in to try to eat some of the homemade cream cheese buttercream frosting for the pumpkin chocolate muffins I made today.

Those sweet, sweet dimples. Daniel's teacher gave him this hat to wear today and made a huge deal of it being his birthday.

I still can't believe he's SIX years old! Wow. He's growing into such an amazing young man.

As the night wound down and Grandma and Grandpa Holloway got ready to go home, Joshua and I zipped up to the bookstore to get a Biography for his October book report for school. He is now reading a book about Einstein.

Adventurers Induction

Fortunately, the kids get out of school one hour earlier on Wednesdays. We try to use this time to catch up on any school projects and spent extra time on the weekly spelling lists. Today, we worked on Megan's science project. She had to follow a recipe to make clay and then sculpt an animal. She will bring it to class on Friday and discuss the animal with the class.

Megan and Daddy worked on the clay recipe, which ended up becoming clay - but a super messy version of it. In the end I grabbed some crayola clay that we had sitting around the house and had her use that for her sculpture.

Joshua worked on his multiplication and his spelling words.

Today was Adventurers Induction. The goal was to be there at 5:45 to do a rehearsal before the ceremony at 6:30. Unfortunately, we didn't even make it out of the house until just before 6pm. It was a tough decision, but really homework has to come first. We made it on time for the ceremony, and it was very nice.

Daniel is an Eager Beaver this year, and I help lead in his division. It's like trying to herd wild cats - these kids have so much energy and so little impulse control! They are fun and sweet.

Megan was ready to get things moving.

Joshua and his friends.

Joshua passing along the candle during the ceremony.

It was a great night.

Megan's science project - she made a dog.