A camping we will go!

My two cuties!













S'mores are yummy!














A dog my size!













Water baseball, but maggie just sat at third.














totally focused




















I bought them each a little chair














We couldn't use wood because of a ban















The ants loved Maggies chair!














Bren was sooo excited!




























yum yum!

















Okay so this is way overdue, but life is insane and I am still not in my house. I seriously considered going over to the neighborhood, plopping myself in the the middle of the cul-de-sac(does anybody know where this word comes from? I mean what is with the sac?) with a chair and a bullhorn, but mom vetoed that quickly.
We did go camping. On the way to Possum Kingdom, the mapquest directions took us to a bridge...that was out. There were signs everywhere that said road closed and there were little men working, but usually isn't there a detour? No such thing here! Mom and I were kind of like, what's next? So we turned around and went down the next road that said "Cemetery" on a green sign. It led straight to an old run down residence. No cemetery, but I helpfully mentioned that there might be people buried inside? We turned and went down the next road where a helpful surveyor pointed us a way that would have saved us 45 min. in the first place.
Mom and I were going first, to set up camp and tents and Jon and dad came later. We found a beautiful campsite right on the lake, and set up tents and made dinner. The first night was a bit cramped in the tent with Maggie in between Jon and I and Brennah above my head-we pretty much looked like a winning game of tetris.
The next day dawned bright and beautiful...and 500 degrees (actually the day we got back we went to look for pop-ups, and the people next to us had an air conditioning unit aimed in a hole in their tent haha) we were having a wonderful time, but it definitely got even better when dad announced "I think that we should just drive around in the air conditioned truck for two hours," so we did!
Our meals were awesome, we played in the lake with the dogs, Charlie kept swimming around trying to bite Brennah's toes-I think she thought they were fish? After s'mores that night, it started to lightning a little bit, so I calmly suggested that we go ahead and prepare in case the weather turned sour (it wasn't supposed to, I checked weather.com six million times before leaving). I was concerned because although it LOOKED like heat lightning dad and Jon were planning to kayak the next day. That alone could cause something untoward. We also had dad, the kayaks and the lake all in close proximity, so you all can understand my concern.
Well everyone kind of downplayed my incredibly in tuned female instinct and we all got in the tent. By this time the weather had very much worsened and the wind was picking up by the minute. The side of the tent kept blowing and whacking me in the side and I startd to glance warily at the fan that Jon had managed to affix above us to blow gently at night. What had started out as a great idea, in my mind was becoming dangerous.
After I had scooted as close to Maggie as possible, a huge gust of wind caused the tent to slam into me. I jumped and grabbed Jon's arm who sat straight up and woke dad up on his other side. I very calmly said with a gentle smile on my face and finality in my voice said "I cannot sleep like this tonight." I told dad I just did not have a good feeling about this one. Normally I LOVE the rain and camping in it, but this was feeling weird. So we decided to wait out the storm in the car. By that time it was pouring rain, huge gusts of wind were blowing off of the lake and lightning and thunder were both continual. The girls were transported and never woke up which was a blessing, so we got into our car, mom and dad got in theirs and we tried to settle down.
One problem. Both Jon and I thought about getting more gas earlier that day (turns out we ignored God's little reminders and paid for it) but we didn't and so we were nervous about using the little gas we had and possibly running out on the way if we had to leave. So it became hot almost immediately, but if you rolled the windows down we got wet. I thought a minute about who to call to check the weather, but by this time it was1:00 A.M. in GA and I didn't have anybodys number from the church. So being the brilliant woman that I am, I called Jeny in California to check. After she confirmed that there would be a small lull and it would get REALLY bad after that, we decided to leave. It was either leave now, or leave in the rain in the morning IF we made it through the night.
We ended up breaking camp in the lightning, holding up little metallic lightning rods, I mean tent poles as fast as we could. The lightning was helpful as we could see everything continually in almost what looked like broad daylight at the same time realizing we could be struck at any second. There was actually alot of praying and adrenaline. We finally got all the bikes, clothes, sleeping stuff and both tents down and drove away. The only problem was that we had 46 miles of gas left and it was 50 to Hwy 20 and no telling when we would come to a gas station after that. God is good and we actually went 9 miles past what we should have been able to. Poor Jon had to drive all the way home, because I had taken out my contacts, and they were buried in the huge pile of random stuff in the back of my car. We made it safely and it really was alot of fun, but again, the dad and boat saga continues...