Vacation!!!

Ok, so for the past 3 years now, Tim has had to work for "Moody Week" at Maranatha Bible and Missionary Conference in Muskegon, Michigan, and Moody pays for our whole family to go with. For 6 days, we have a 2 bedroom apartment with a huge soccer field in the front yard, breakfast and dinner, the beach, the pool, craft room, bike riding, hiking, zip line, climbing tower, a gym and more, and the best part...the kids are in class (and nursery) from 9:30am-noon and 6:30pm-8pm. These are the session times and this year I didn't attend the sessions. I relaxed. I know some of you think that going to camp is no vacation (much less "church" camp), but for our family, it's the only real vacation we get every year, and we love it. The conference slogan is "Vacation with a Purpose" (maranatha.gospelcom.net) and is really time well spent...the kids love it and look forward to going "where we ride our bikes everywhere." Tim basically worked during session times and the rest of the time was spent with us, so what more could we ask for?

Moody week always covers the Fourth of July and there is a parade through the grounds that all the kids and leaders dress up for and walk in for the adults to watch, and at night there are fireworks over the lake, which we have yet to see as they start at dusk, and dusk in Muskegon is between 9:30 and 10pm. Weird, huh?!? We are too young to be out that late and not feel it the next day!

I usually do some scrapbooking with free time like this, but I didn't have time to get all my stuff together from mom's house in time for the trip, so I finished a project that had been sitting in the house for a couple months, I read, and I did some very minor shopping...groceries and whatnot...all without kids.

In the mornings, the kids would get up however early, get dressed and ready to go and then meet the kids in the apartment next to us out in the field to play baseball, or to ride bikes until the rest of us got ready for breakfast. During breakfast they would constantly ask, "Is it time???" and they would not-so-patiently wait for their classes to start. We would have lunch at the apartment, do activities/nap time during the afternoon, dinner and then classes again. The week always goes by too fast, but we have a lot of memories (good and bad...we had a bad pool experience again this year with Eden, this time) and we can't wait until next year.