Camping

We enjoyed an end of summer camp out before Daddy needed to get back to teaching.  We had a great time hiking, fishing, just hanging out at the site, cooking over the open flame, s'mores, reading around the camp fire, paddle boats, playing....

Just a few s'mores

Notice the fish?  Mr. M provided his own food on this trip.

We did end up having a couple of bumps along the way.  Miss E was stung by a bee (on the bottom of her foot) the day before we left.  While not a major reaction her foot was a bit swollen and sore.  We spent quite a bit of time together hanging out at the camp site talking and reading.  It could have been worse....Oh wait, it was...Miss J got sick and we ended up leaving 18 hours earlier than expected.  She wanted to be in her own bed and I wanted her to be there too.  She did well and recovered very nicely once we got home. :)

Stay-cation continued...with a visit from dear friends!

The week before beginning our stay-cation I was shopping for all of our food at Costco.  I received a text early in the trip....what were our plans for next week?  Were we up for some visitors?  Oh I'd been waiting for this day/text!  We'd been hoping to see this dear family and were so glad God had changed our plans around so those days were totally free for hospitality and fellowship.  Yippee!!!!

We enjoyed sweet times of family worship.

A trip to The Garden of the gods got lots of wiggles out of the 16 children.

We played and played and played.  Inside and outside.  We enjoyed sweet times of catching up and hearing what the Lord has been doing in each other's lives.  We were so thankful that the "F" family thought to come visit us with their vacation time.  We were so blessed to have them here!

Did I mention there were 16 kids in our house?  20 people total?  You never would have guessed it.  Everything went fairly smoothly.  I'm always amazed how well some large families can function together.  We just love filling our home with the love and laughter of dear ones.

16 children all ready for church and sitting still.  Yes, it can be done. :)

Stay-cation!

We had set aside another week for camping, but things were not coming together for that.  We decided to just stay home and enjoy several things around here we'd been wanting to do.  All of the kids were super excited about that plan too.  We started out with another trip to the zoo.

The next day we headed to the mining museum.

We'd been wanting to head up to the top of Pike's Peak.  So we headed on up.  We stopped part way up for fishing and lunch.  The drive was great, until we were getting closer to the top.  Whew!  It made me a bit nervous, I was glad we had a GREAT driver taking us up. 

It was a bit windy up top.  The kids were happy to get inside for doughnuts and hot chocolate.

Camping!

After a busy week-end at the Homeschool Conference we were so excited to spend a week camping.  It was extra relaxing because we had not only prepared the trailer well ahead of time, but we were only going up to the FamCamp on base.  The plan was to just enjoy some down time; the kids could play in the woods or at the playground while I enjoyed a bit of extra reading time.

Meals were super simple and we used our "camping manners" meaning that burping is allowed.  It turns out that little Miss F thinks that burping contests are hilarious.  Oh My!

Trips to the playground and afternoon ice creams at the office were a hit.

We threw in a couple of fishing trips with daddy.

Her brothers thought they should teach her some bad habits early.  She seemed eager to learn.  Poor girl! No, she didn't have any.  It was empty.  She sure was excited to see it though.  ;) 

Road Trip!

We have not been doing as many road trips these last 2 years or so.  It's hard now that daddy is on a school schedule that is very restrictive.  The National Religious Liberties Conference came up on a week-end that Rob could actually get Friday off.  We decided to go for it.  Our older kids were very interested in this conference and so were we.  An extra bonus was knowing many of the people organizing it.

The kids always enjoy hotel breakfast.  The variety of choices in foods and fun drinks are always exciting.

The little ones did very well at the conference.  I had packed plenty of little activity sets for them.  Because Miss C's birthday was that week-end I let her pick out some special snacks and filled a thermal with them (and some extra treats) that she could pass around to siblings and even friends there.  She loved getting to haul that thermal around all day and being able to bless everyone when they were in need of a snack.  The rest of us really enjoyed the encouraging talks, history lessons and even speeches by Presidential candidates.

We took (what we thought would be) a short break from the conference in the evening to go out for dinner.  We had some tired kids, so after dinner I dropped off almost everyone at the hotel and took Miss E and Mr M back.  They were really wanting to get back to the conference and I was glad to take them.  By the time I got back Miss J's mild cold/cough she seemed to be recovering from had suddenly taken a turn.  By morning it was obvious she needed to see a doctor right away.  While the doctor agreed that whatever it was was acting like pneumonia; x-rays showed that it was not.  Breathing treatments helped quite a bit.  Rob and I agreed that we needed to skip the last day of the conference and get Miss J home to rest and recover.  We are thankful we already had a nebulizer as more breathing treatments have been very helpful since arriving back at home.  She is recovering nicely and feeling much better now.