Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Adventures in Arkansas


Someone brought along a potbellied pig - which of course the girl loved!

We spent Thursday through Sunday at a family Bible camp out in Arkansas.

This was our second year attending the camp and we are already hoping that we'll be able to attend again next year.

The camp meetings are held outdoors under a pavilion - once in the morning and once in the evening...the rest of the time is "free time"...time for the kids to play...time for the adults to fellowship. The daily speakers are not decided ahead of the camp meeting time - but are chosen based on who ends up coming to the camp. Some of the speakers are bi-vocational pastors and included a dentist, a news anchorman, and a military guy. This year my dh was asked to speak at one of the meetings (he is not a bi-voc.).

Last year we stayed in our tent but this year we stayed in the "lodge"...not quite on par with a hotel room...but we had privacy and our own toilet and shower! Our lodge room was just big enough to have a bunkbed (double on bottom and twin on top) and a small bathroom. Enough room on the floor for a small trundle bed to partially pull out and a bit of room for the rest of our stuff. Kind of made me see what it might be like living in a small RV.

It looks more spacious here perhaps b/c this is when we've packed up to leave.

The kids played softball, went swimming and hunting for frogs and skinks, and hung out with some friends. They had a wonderful time!

Saturday night was a talent show (with varying degrees of seriousness and talent)...the girl decided she wanted to perform so she had been practicing a song on the piano at home. Just before the show she was practicing her song on stage and some of her friends were hanging around and started singing along so it was decided that instead of just her playing and singing at the show - she'd play while her friends sang. They did a great job! The girl played the hymn "I Surrender All" (her choice of music). She has just been playing the piano since the fall time and is pretty much teaching herself to play. She started out using some beginner piano books but later decided she wanted to play "real" music - songs that she knew. So she's mostly been using a couple of hymn "fake books".

Saturday afternoon the boy and his dad (who also happens to be my husband) went with a group of others on a cave exploration. The girl preferred to stay back and swim so I stayed with her.

The cave they explored a bit was "Blowing Cave" and after I read some of the hoaxes and stories about it - I wish that I had gone along too. "Caverns west and west-north-west of the town are legendary for stories of deep cavern systems, encounters with hairy humanoids with an attitude, giant serpents and insects, deadly gas pockets, strange electro-magnetic phenomena and unexplained disappearances...The trail is intersected by a crack in the earth [between the entrance and the lake] that, if followed into the breakdown, widens enough to enter. This chasm is reportedly an entrance to the endless networks of the alien underworld." They came home very muddy :)

Another "adventure" I missed out on was seeing a tarantula! Of course I've seen pictures of tarantulas and tarantulas in glass cages at the zoo - but this was a tarantula "in the wild". It was late one evening and I was in the lodge. My dh came in and told me to hurry on outside to see something but when I got there it was gone :( When telling the kids the story the next morning, the girl said something like "well mom probably would have freaked out and not even have let me TOUCH it". Well I don't think I would have "freaked out" about seeing it (unless it was crawling on me or one of my family members) - but she's right I would not have let her TOUCH it. Guess I'm kind of glad that she's brave enough to want to touch it...

The weather was perfect. It rained the last day during our final worship service...and rained a lot of the way home - great timing.

1 comments:

CanadianGrandma said...

I'm glad that you all had a great time together! Tarantulas? I guess Arkansas would be a place that I would not want to live!