Fall break...............or the lack thereof.......

Well it has come and gone, fall break that is! And let me tell you with what a vengeance it left and what a mess it left behind. We had the priviledge of spending our fall break this year camping with 3 other families from our church at a place called Marval Trout Camp in eastern OK. It is a beautiful campground located on a river close to Lake Tenkiller that just happens to have a great fall/Halloween lineup of activities and is very family friendly. We packed up the camper last week and headed out Thursday morning to spend 3 nights and arrived home around 6 pm tonight. Between that time and the few minutes ago when I sat down here at the computer, I was a whirlwind of cleanup activity.

For those of you not on the trip and those who have never had the luxury, or those of you who have forgotten what it's like to camp/clean up after a family of five, let me just set the stage a little for you. First of all I should tell you that of the 4 families on the trip, the breakdown included 4 moms, 4 dads, 8 boys, and 3 girls, and a dog! As I said the campground was beautiful but was the great outdoors, fully equipped with dirt, rocks, water, leaves, and misc nature for the children to bathe themselves in from the moment they stepped outside in the morning until we laid them to slumber each night. Add to that an amazing buffett of continuous food, snacks, Halloween candy, caramel apples, smores, pop, etc and you can imagine what their clothing looked like by the end of the day, not to mention the wonderful smell of campfire smoke which has now penetrated not only our clothing but anything that accompanied us on this journey. In fact the smell was so potent that while unloading in our driveway this evening my hubby thought someone was grilling out until I told him it was just the smell coming from our camper!! In addition to the setting and the menu, we packed in a slew of activities also geared to the tune of the messier you were the more fun you were having, ie: pumpkin carving, did I mention caramel apple making, smore making, mini golf, endless bike/scooter riding/ramping, trick or treating, crafts, and on and on. It was a children's paradise and the adults had fun too :)

So as you get a mental picture you might also imagine what the cleanup looked like in our driveway this evening. We pulled in and after a quick bathroom break and a drink we proceeded with the cleanup attack! I went into the camper and proceeded to toss out until it was clean as a whistle. The boys proceeded to transport all the stuff from the driveway into our back hallway, completely blocking any traffic flow through that area and then they were off to tell all their neighbor friends of their recent adventures. This left good ol' mom to sort through the rubble which has consumed my last few hrs. To top it all off, I came home with a severe sinus/allergy attack which has left me miserable. But all in all, what a tremendous success and oh how I wish we were still there. The weather was absolutely amazing and perfect for fall camping. The setting was beautiful and the friendship bountiful. The children played together delightfully with very little disagreement. A good time was had by all, at least I think:)

The rest of our October has been busy, busy just keeping up with the fall semester now well underway. I believe the 1st 9 wks are complete and we have parent-teacher conferences coming up soon. I will finish with my 1st group of OBU nursing students this week and start another next week. Tomorrow starts another full week of activities that promises to consume my every free minute. We had so much fun camping that Mark and I were hoping to get in another fall camping trip before winterizing our camper but as I look at our upcoming schedule I wonder where we can make it happen. Before we know it the holidays will be upon us along with lots of birthdays in our family. We will celebrate 4 birthdays in the next 2 mo in addition to everything on the calendar.

I hope this finds you well and having a blessed fall yourselves!

Love you,
Traci