No Time Like the Present!

Yikes! I can hardly find time to blog these days!! I figured that I better get on here, even if I don't have anything witty to say....

The weekend before last, Dave, the Girls and I went camping with our Sunday School class. The retreat was a lot of fun and extremely exhausting. I think I'm still recovering....
Some of the highlights of the trip:
--Laughing at Lydia for calling our friend Terrance "My Terrance". The thing is that with her little toddler pronunciation, it came out as "My Parents". She kept saying "Dere's My Parents!" while pointing at Terrance. People kept pointing to Dave and I and saying "You're parents are right back there, Lydia." It was not us Lydia was looking for!
--Enjoying the most adventurous hay ride I've ever been on.
--Observing the most beautiful, magnificent, glorious layers of glittering stars.
--Not wearing make-up the whole weekend!
--Visiting with some wonderful people.
--Watching my kids play with tons of kids at any given time.
--Camping out where there are real bathrooms with running water and showers.
--Playing in the bouncy house with the kids.
--Having church with my kiddos just a few steps away.
--Eating some bites of Dave's peanut butter cup smore. (I hardly make my own desserts anymore. This time, I just ate off of Dave's smore, and ate the rest of the girls smores. I guess I sub-consciously believe the calories don't count if I don't "own" the dessert.)
--Trying deep fried oreos for the first time. --Thinking about it both delights and disgusts me.
--Not doing a bit of cooking the whole weekend.

Some things that were a little less than fantastic about the retreat:
--Picking the delicious meat out of a wonderfully made breakfast casserole. (Lent is over in less than 2 weeks!)
--Eating veggie burgers while everyone else ate pulled pork that had been smoking for 24 hours.
--Trying to get the girls to sleep.
--Hitting my arm on the bouncy house ladder, and getting a huge, ugly bruise. I thought everything was soft in a bouncy house. I wouldn't have dove through the opening had I known that the ladder was filled with metal rods instead of air.
--Realizing the enormous amount of laundry we created while on the trip.
--Wishing I would have packed cowboy/girl boots and/or hiking boots for me, Dave and the girls. Duh! we were camping in TEXAS! It should have been a given. Perhaps if I had been packing in a less than hurried state....
--Cleaning up the filth that accumulated on the outside of our van. Dirt roads will that for ya'.
--Recovering, recovering, recovering.

All in all, we had a fabulous time on the retreat, and I am thankful that we went. On the way home, Julia asked something similar to this: "When do we get to go camping again? Can I have some gum? I would really like to sleep in a tent again sometime. When can we go fishing again? Can I PLEASE have some gum?" We'd been in the car less than 5 minutes when all of that started.

This last weekend, Dave and I had the blessed opportunity to hang out with some fantastic new friends at their house. (Praise Jesus!) We watered our garden and played around the house. We went to church and enjoyed a wonderful and convicting sermon. We also painted our hallway. Dave turned up the excitement by allowing Julia to paint too. Fun times!! It was a wonderful weekend just like the one before it! Now we are on to enduring and enjoying our busy, exciting, spirit-filled week!! Blessings to you all!! -Amber