Great is Thy Faithfulness: Just the 5 of us

My family left Young State Park on Saturday and Daryl's family didn't come in until Monday night. That means that we had 2 1/2 days camping with just the 5 of us. We seem to always be camping with either my family or Daryl's family so it is rare that we have family time like that . . . and we loved it! We decided that we should do it more often! Saturday was a pretty warm day so we spent the whole afternoon (and into the evening!) at the beach. Samuel played and played and played in the water. He was exhausted by dinner time! We had to keep him going somehow so we walked to the camp store for ice cream after supper. That perked him up a little bit! We were supposed to get some evening thunderstorms, but once again, they parted around Lake Charlevoix and we stayed dry. Like my Aunt Ellen said, "We are living in a bubble at Lake Charlevoix. A bubble of grace and rain can't touch us here!"

Sunday was probably my favorite day of the whole 16 days of camping. Well, except for the Walmart shopping trip . . . but I'll talk about that later. It was a blasted hot day and the kids were at the point where we decided a break from the afternoon sun/beach/sand might not be a bad idea. We took a nice walk in the morning and then Daryl headed to the beach for a little swim before lunch with Samuel and Hope. Aliyah took a nice nap and I got to sit in my chair and read my book!!! After lunch we packed up the kids in the van and headed for Charlevoix. Anna wanted us to pick a shirt up for her and I wanted to find a shirt for each of the girls. On the way there all 3 of the kids fell asleep. Daryl dropped me off at the stores and he drove around and then sat in the van with the kids while they slept. They were still sleeping when I hopped in the van again after about a half hour of shopping. We then took the beautiful drive from Charlevoix to Petoskey to do some grocery shopping. By the time we got to Walmart (with a quick stop before that at Lowe's to pick up a nut to fix our BOB stroller) all 3 kids were awake. We loaded the kids into 2 carts and began our big shopping excursion. It went okay . . . the kids sat in the carts well but they wanted to open and eat everything that we put into the carts. They were all antsy by the end so while we were checking out we let them out of the carts. Bad move. They started running circles around the checkout lanes. And not just running circles, but shrieking at the top of their lungs. Aliyah tried to copy them. I got in trouble from a Walmart employee because she was only wearing one shoe (the other shoe was in the van - I didn't realize she only had 1 on until halfway through our shopping trip). Yup - glad we don't have to go back there anytime soon! From there we headed back to the campground. We ordered BC Pizza (delivered to our campsite!) for supper. It was so crazy hot when we got back that while we were waiting for the pizza to arrive, we all threw on our swimsuits and headed down to the "rock beach" to cool off. This was my absolute favorite part of the day. I love swimming off of the rocks. Pretty much more than the beach. I'm not sure why. There's just something about it that feels so clean, cool and refreshing. Samuel and I went in first and Daryl followed a few minutes later with the girls. We swam in the deep water and just totally enjoyed cooling off before heading back to the campsite for pizza. We all ate pizza in our suits and then headed down to the "sand beach" for more swimming. We swam and played until 8:30! The water was beautiful and calm and the air was hot and sticky. Nowhere better to spend an evening like that than in the water!

Monday was laundry day. We all went into town and Daryl took the kids to the playground while I hung out at the laundromat. Ugh - doing laundry at a laundromat is expensive!! It took me just over 2 hours. Daryl fed the kids a picnic lunch at the park (Yes, he is super dad!) so when we got back to the campground we headed straight for the beach. It was another hot one! We spent all afternoon at the beach until Daryl's family came that evening around 5:30 . . . I'll be posting more about our second week soon. Stay tuned!!