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Carrie mentioned to me some time ago that she knew, through their church, of a grandparent camp in October in Alexandria, MN and wondered if I would want to go with her girls - Madison would have been too old for the age requirements and sometimes when Emmy is with, Kasey and Emmy have a lovefest that results in Kylie being left out - For that reason, I just took Kylie and Kasey for a trial run.
We started out mid afternoon on Friday and made it to camp just in time for the get acquainted hot dog roast with 14 other kids and around 9 other grandparents. The girls each had a hot dog and at last count I believe 3 s'mores - After dinner, the kids all got acquainted by jumping in and throwing leaves at one another. The evening ended with a short devotion period and a family movie named "FireHouse Dog", complete with popcorn.
We had a nice room and after the movie, the girls and I headed back to our room for a little drawing period in their notebooks and lights out at 10 p.m. as we had had a busy night and were tired.
Saturday resulted in early morning playground time (which all the kids loved more than anything) and craft activity. We painted birdhouses for us to keep and made a fish project. After crafts, we had a nice lunch in the cafeteria and stole another few precious moments on the playground. After that we went on a scavenger hunt, one of three teams, and found everything we were suppose to find except for a kernel of corn. We had alot of fun traipsing all over looking for our items and the kids chanted "Dixie, Dixie" repeatedly when one of the adults named Dixie found a bird feather that was on our list and we desperately needed. After our hunt, the kids went and played games together in the beautiful weather while we grandparents spent an hour away from them spent talking about family traditions and how special ALL our grandchildren were to us.
We, once again, had a nice dinner with our little group and then proceeded to watch a new Veggie Tales movie called "The Wizard of Ha's" which is basically the story of the Prodigal son from the bible - There was a short devotion and prayer period after the movie where the pastor talked about the movie, in kid terms, so they could understand. After that we did some coloring of some Veggie Tale pictures and then.....at 8:30, the hayride wagon arrived - Oh, the frenzy of it all - We all loaded onto the haywagon and went for a ride singing all our favorite songs - Mary had a little lamb, He's got the whole world in his hands, Jesus loves me and on and on. We brought our flashlights with in case we saw any mountain lions or cougars as Kylie confessed she was a little concerned about meeting up with. All went well and after a successful hayride and an absolutely beautiful day, we topped it all off with hot cocoa and M & M cookies - What could be better? We got back to our room around 9:30 and the girls still had enough energy to want to finish coloring their Veggie Tales pictures so that we did. We finished at 10:00 and literally seconds after Kasey got into bed, she was out cold. Kylie and I didn't take too long either.
We had a nice breakfast with the group again Sunday morning and then spent an hour in a casual setting talking about God's blueprint for our lives - We learned that the bible is God's blueprint for us and that the instructions on the blueprint are the 10 commandments - It was well done and presented in such a way that the kids seemed to understand...all with the guarantee that no matter what we've done or will do in the future, that God will always forgive and love us...... NO MATTER WHAT! It was a great weekend with the kids but I will admit I don't know whose more pooped, me or them?
