We headed back to Honeyman again even though last year was so windy and our campsites were divided and it's a long drive... because THIS year we reserved the best group site ever! It was near the lake, has a lot of room for a lot of tents, was very open, yet a ton of bushes and such for the kids to play in and around, and it was closest to the car turn around so they could ride endlessly. Tjaden declared, "This is my dream! Just riding my bike all day long!" Jillian even learned to ride here! It was so relaxing. Really wonderful.
The beach of a lake just a short walk away was perfect with a slight sloping sandy bottom. The kids played on trees in the water, scooped sand, and couple of brave souls (Brett and Andrew) swam to a wonderful little island right in the middle of the lake.
And some just acted silly...
The kids captured salamanders and made pools on the beach for them to "enjoy." One of them looked a little, well, dead after being handled so much, but he revived after he was left alone for a few minutes.
Another fun activity that literally took hours of the kids time was hunting for beebees (you know those air soft pellets in various colors) hidden in the dirt. Some of them were worth more than others (in our kids economy), which made for some interesting beebee trading. If you found a silver, gold, or dark blue one, you could trade for several of the more common ones. They really loved this. It was fun to see their personalities come out with the hunting, trading, sharing, etc...
Once we got the kids in the tents every night, the adults had a great time just visiting and belly laughing. Oh it's so much fun (especially with Jenn who has the best out of control laughing fits ever!) We feel like we know each other pretty well, but we never run out of things to talk about. I think we would all agree that the funniest moment around the campfire came the last night we were there...
Let me give just a little moment of background: We had so many bikes and scooters and big wheels, that we designated one whole area of the site for a bike parking lot. It was pretty impressive. (I should have gotten a picture of that!) Anyway, every night, we would have the kids put them away, so no one tripped over them in the dark.
Back to our story. It was about 10 or 11 pm when we heard some motorcycles rumble over to our campsite and then they stopped. Usually, a vehicle goes around the turn around and heads back to one of the earlier sites further down. We started to get a little nervous, because we couldn't see them and they really had no business parking where they did.
After about a minute, we saw the bushes start to move and these 2 guys came into our site down by the bike parking lot looking very confused. I wondered if they were drunk. They had to really duck down and bend several small trees and bushes aside in order to enter the way they did.
Then, they spoke.
"Would you mind moving some of these bikes out of the way so we can set up a tent?"
WHAT?!
We thought it was a joke. A couple of our group went over to help them. It turns out they couldn't see the A on their group site. It was the only one on the right side... We laughed so hard that they would come into our site in the way that they did and not even ask if they were in the right place, but went right to the (get your stuff out my way) angle. Haha! Good times.
We went over to lake Cleowax (big sand dunes) for another day and had a great time there too.
We are so blessed to have such a great bunch of friends. They and so many others are just a great gift straight from a God who gives us much more than we deserve. This group in particular (including the Chupps who couldn't make it 'cause they were still getting up at night with newborn Lydi) is so fun to spend time with because of our similar parenting styles. The kids are so respectful and thoughtful. Of course, there are occasional issues, but on the whole, there is very little intervention needed which makes for a very relaxing, fun and rewarding experience.
Here are our group shots just before leaving camp:
Praising God for another fun trip with friends!
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