A Busy Weekend

This past weekend, we went on our first non-family (related) trip in at least 2 years.  Usually our vacations consist of going to see the in-laws, either Daddy's or mine, but this one was with our church family instead.  Every year except for the past couple, our church has held retreats in the middle of winter, but it's always been further away and more costly than we're willing to deal with.  This year, the retreat location was only about an hour and a half drive south of the city...MUCH more do-able, despite the inevitable rush-hour traffic that a drive past downtown entails.  We still hemmed and hawed a bit about what it would take for us to be able to go, but in the end, we made it. 

I'm so very glad we did.  There was an issue or two while we were there--there always is, right?  The heat was insconsistent in many of the rooms, ours included, leaving us with ice cubes for hands one night, and all blankets thrown off the next.  But, as this blog proves, we survived it, and Daddy says he would gladly do it again next year, so I think we've got ourselves a winner. :)  The overall experience of the weekend was truly a blessing.  Many of our closer friends and/or acquaintances from church attended, including quite a few of the families that have children Munch's age, so none of us were lacking for peers or entertainment.  There were solid worship sessions, constructive application times, many stories shared (telling our story was the big theme), and many games played...and a lovely 1,000 piece puzzle of a garden and water wheel attempted as well, but we started it too late on the last evening to have time to finish... :(

On the subject of games:  There were about 2 hours of scheduled team-game time on Saturday.  We were the Termite team (other teams included Killer Bees, Army Ants, Locusts, Cicadas, Mosquitoes...and maybe one or two more whose names escape me).  A minor issue with these games was that childcare, available during the worship sessions, had not been scheduled, and the games happened right during babies' naps in a separate building from our lodgings.  So a few parents, Daddy included, opted not to play the scheduled games so that the children could be watched over.  Oh well.  Daddy played cribbage and talked swing dance with our associate pastor, an awesome guy close to our age who's learning to swing, and he probably had more fun doing that than he would have doing the games, so it worked out perfectly for us. :)

I had my camera the entire weekend, but only thought to bring it out during the one spot in the games that I know my team won:  The free-standing balloon tower. 

 84 inches of balloon and tape glory.

The friend standing to my right built that top 'antenna', while the fellow at the far right was instrumental in stabalizing the base.  The kids... Well...

They just wanted to wreak havoc, and the temptation got worse for them as time went on and the leader of the games STILL hadn't acquired a measuring tape to make our fairly obvious win official.  Fortunately, we were able to hold them off until the measuring was done, but the thing was gone in less than a minute once we let them at it. :)

We got home after a relatively quick Sunday afternoon drive, and Munch went down for the second half of her nap (she'd slept most of the way up) without a fuss.  I watched the Oscars in the evening and didn't know more than a couple of the films and didn't really catch most of the jokes...but I was touched by one thing in the show, and I think the focus of my weekend really drew it out to me:  They had several montages of actors telling their stories as they related to film, much as we'd had our friends in our church body telling their stories as related to God.  Perhaps the movie ones aren't as deep or private or moving as some I heard over the weekend, but like any person's story, they allow us that little window in to know someone that much better.  Gotta love the power of story. :)