header: Family Camp

One of the things we have done this summer was go to Family Camp. This was our first opportunity to get to go and we were pretty excited about it. The church asked Josh to go as the worship leader for the week so we got to go for free! The whole idea is something that we had never done before and probably never would have just gone on our own but we had a blast. Basically, there is this camp in northern Arkansas called The Shepherd of the Ozarks or SOTO. It takes about 10 hours to get there from our house. It is really beautiful and isolated. And there are some things to do there but then again there's really nothing to do, which of course is the whole point. Everybody just kinda hangs out by the river all day and plays. We got there mid afternoon saturday and everyone headed straight to the river before dinner. Gavin got in even though it was pretty chilly. The next day was Sunday and it was really weird not having church to get up and go to. After breakfast we went up to the petting zoo part. They found a brand new baby dear that had been abandoned by his mom and they were taking care of it. It was so little and so sweet. If you got down really close to him, he would try to suckle on your ear and make this little crying noise. It was so sweet.

I think I liked going to see him more than lovebug did. We spent basically the rest of the morning at the river trying to catch minnows. We brought a little net and they were everywhere. So I would get a whole net full and put them in our bucket and then lovebug would chase them around and pull them out one by one in his fingers and throw them back into the river. Sad to say, a few of them didn't make it all the way through that process.

Then every night before dinner they had firetruck rides and a little pony named milkshake you can ride. Lovebug went on the firetruck with his daddy but did not like that very much considering how loud the siren was. He never got back on that thing the rest of the week. He then went with me to ride milkshake which he was really excited about. He got about half way around the "track" and started to get scared. I mean, if you've never been on a horse, it feels like you might fall off the way they walk. But he made it.

The next day we went on a canoe trip with all the other families down the river. It was really fun but unfortunately I didn't take my camera in case we tipped over and it fell into the river. It was really relaxing though and Joshua did a great job of steering us through all the currents and around rocks. That night they had another little pony named casper that the kids could ride. He had a buggy hooked to him and lovebug enjoyed that much better! The next morning we went down to the river and tried to actually use a fishing pole to catch "real" fish. I have always enjoyed fishing like that and got really good at catching them, pulling them off the hook and throwing them back.

Then we went over to the swimming hole and lovebug jumped off the rock that all the big kids jump off of.

That afternoon we went on a family horse back riding "adventure." It was really long and pretty slow but lovebug really enjoyed it. He rode on the horse with me and really had a lot of fun and talked to the horse the whole time. We had a really stubborn horse so every time I would encourage him to pick up the pace and pat him on the neck and say "good boy blue" lovebug would repeat everything I did and said. It was pretty sweet.

That night was western night and we had fun getting dressed up. The boys looked really cute.

Wednesday we just hung out down by the river. Lovebug and Joshua caught some more fish together.

Time just seemed to crawl and everything was so slow and peaceful. That night he had a chance to ride Milkshake again and after spending the two hours on Blue, he was comfortable with the way it feels when a horse walks and he really loved it that night.