a GRRReat Weekend!

Elasta Woman and her girls played all day in the clay. Me? I'm just posing next to her lake pottery ;-)

Here she is baking it next to the fire.......

Looking for a good camping spot, Matthew guns it through a creek bed road.....

My husband did "pictograph" art with the little ones, using rocks to draw on rocks while the rest of us swam to and played on a nearby island......

As you can see, they LOVED it!

Moonbeam and her Daddy

Then the Daddies nap........

Us girls :-)

Can you see that pup is stalking Moonbeams string cheese?!

My kids - NONE of them wanted to leave!

What a wonderful weekend we had. I NEVER wanted it to end! Neither did the kids.....

After YEARS and YEARS of BEGGING to go to a Family Bible Camp near Glacier, it finally happened (well kind of). Our girls group had been praying for a while that God would move on our husbands in a special way fresh and new. Amazingly, some of our husbands agreed to make the trek over. Some of my kids weren't sure about it. As the day approached I kept earnestly praying it would be a good experience for everybody. So did Elasta Woman. Nobody made any plans till the last minute. I kept wondering if it would even happen.......

On that Saturday Morning we headed out. Goat Girl and her husband left the night before. Could we really be doing it?!? Yes we were! I was so excited. We got there at a decent time, but it took HOURS to find a camping place. The whole first side of the reservoir was completely blocked off except for camp grounds. None of us like to camp at camp grounds. It doesn't really seem like camping. To us, camping isn't sleeping 20 feet from a strangers tent. We just have to have more space. The family camp, itself, was out because there was no cooking on the premises and we didn't want to have to buy our meals. No swimming there either. After all kinds of detours searching, I was beginning to lose it. Only 2 hours to go before we'd have to leave again to make it to the evening meeting on time. I pulled out my Bible trying not to lament. Amazingly at just the right moment, my husband pulled into a boat landing on the back side of the lake and found an amazing private spot in the woods along the lake. It was beautiful and heavenly. There the lake was right in front of us along with nearby islands to swim to. It was private and nobody was close by. PERFECT.

We put up our tents in a hurry and warmed up some food. Elasta Woman told me we should plan a lot of fast and easy meals so we had spent hours preparing them the day before. After dunking in the cool waters, we felt like new people and the weariness of the day had past.

When we got to the meetings, we found our friends and The Sock Fashion Expert was thrilled to be with her BFF. The worship was great. I love taking the little ones up front to dance. I love good worship. The meeting was a bit different, so I hoped it would go over okay. One never knows how these kinds of meetings will go. Being in a rather free group has a lot of benefits - for one allowing God to move and freedom in the Spirit. I am and will always be a pentecostal girl. The draw back to them can be that the same freedom we have to worship God gives the freedom for people to do and say an assortment of allot of strange things that do not necessarily glorify God. I've spent most of my life loving The Liberty of the Spirit, but with the reservations to always sort out things that are said or done. I felt responsible for our friends and I wanted to make sure that they had a good experience. What would the outcome be?

That night our friends sent us home with a pile of food, so it was nice everybody could eat on the way back. Little tummies filled, fresh air played out, the little ones were all asleep in a hurry. We all slept like rocks. The Sock Fashion Expert was thrilled to stay with her BFF and planned to take in the day meetings......

The next morning was beautiful. I couldn't imagine any place I'd rather be waking up. I love camping like this. Elasta Woman wanted to play ALL DAY in the lake clay with extreme contentment. She formed all kinds of beautiful pieces and baked them on a rock near the fire. With much coaxing, she got me to make a piece. Rabbit, her daughter, even harvested me my very own clump. First I formed a very large piece of excrement, which I entitled "dung". Elasta Woman laughed. Next I crafted a smiling snake. When I brought it to cook on the rock, my husband mistook it for the first sampling which I had constructed. That was the extent of my potters hand...... Archer, Matthew and most of the other kids swam to the nearby island. Soon after my husband played with the little ones so us girls could too........

It was icy cold but we managed. The islanders immediately began chanting and yelling. At first I thought they were greeting us and cheering us on. Then I discovered they were trying to chase off their island - lol!! They had built a giant sand castle and were doing flips over it. Super Catman said "This is the best camping trip of my life!" Bravely, after minimal island explorations, Elasta Woman and I plunged back into the icy cold waters.........

Back at the meetings that night, I earnestly hoped that God would touch us all. We had come a long way and this would be our last one. The worship was wonderful...again. I loved the freedom of being up there with the little ones. The whole place seemed charged with Gods presence. Then the speaker, came up and started sharing. It was one of the best messages any of us had ever heard. He'd been brutally abused as a child and God was asking him to forgive. Scene by scene he took us through an amazing story of Gods love and restoring power. He held us speechless and there was not likely a dry eye in the building. Some how God had moved all of us in an amazing way. Driving back that night, I felt so so grateful. The little girls had been up front with hands lifted in the air worshipping God with me, and we weren't the only ones. All of us were deep in worship. The Sock Fashion Expert spent a lot of that worship time on her face. The men talked of depth all the way back while the rest of us either slept or were just speechless. Some how God had showed up there and touched us all in a unique way.....

The next morning nobody wanted to leave. The lake was so beautiful and serene. I wished somehow we could have made it to more of the meetings. Every reservation about coming was gone and replaced with a hunger for more. I'm so glad we got to share the weekend and the experience.......