camping with the home schoolers

my friend Jessi and i went camping (at Andrew Jackson State Park) this weekend with New Life Church. it was a fun experience. i'm getting to know everyone a little bit better, and remembering more names now... it's nice to be at a place small enough where i can remember at least a few names. i'm not sure if i fit there, i kind of feel out of place, and i don't know if that's my normal "i feel out of place-ness" or if it's the fact that i'm almost 30 (yikes) and i feel like a bit of an abnormality (and i wonder what they think of me) as i'm still single (and went through the public school system), and all the adults there are married and have several children (that they home school). yet i like being around people that have such close-nit families. it's kind of a marvel to me.. normal families to me seem to have become broken/split-up/multiple sets of parents/step-relatives. so really, i look at them in wonder. and it gives me hope.
the weather on friday was cold and rainy. Jessi and i set up the tent before the rain started.. and the church ordered pizza that night, so we all stood huddled in the pavilion eating pizza. when we got back to our site the rain had let up, and we started a fire and made s'mores. it started raining again, so we decided to call it a night, but when we got to our tent, we found a very large puddle had formed inside, and my sleeping bag had gotten wet. so we grabbed our stuff and headed to the car, and slept in our nice dry beds that night (yeah, i'm just not that hard core).

saturday morning i picked Jessi up, and after finding a very LARGE bug in the toe of my boot, (YUCK!!) we headed back to the camp. made coffee once we got there and ate cereal, chatted with a few people and hung up our (pointless) rain fly to dry it off. the sun was out but it had gotten a lot colder, so we stayed mostly by the fire and drank hot chocolate. a couple of the girls (rebecca and tessa?) came over and asked if we wanted to walk around the lake, so we went with them. it was a nice little trail through the woods... and it reminded me a bit of michigan. later some of the girls came back over to see if we wanted to go to the museum, so we headed up there with them, and a couple more met up with us. we walked around in the museum, and a little school house and headed back. some of the parents thanked us for taking them up there, but we told them it was really the kids that took us, haha. the kids were so fun to be around, we really had a good time.
saturday night we decided to stay there, and we bundled up and got into the tent. it took me a while to fall asleep, my legs were pretty chilly, kids were still yelling and the geese were honking, but eventually i was able to sleep. i woke up to the sound of kids talking, and figured it was time to get up and start the coffee. Jessi and i were in charge of breakfast that morning, so i grabbed what we had brought and took it to the Elliot's campsite.
we had a church service at 10, it was a good one... the sermon was about God's provision, something i needed to be reminded about, it blessed me.
later they had "the Great Race" which most of the kids participated in. they split up in teams, and there were different events each team had to complete in order to go to the next one. it was fun to watch. afterwards, Jessi and I felt it was time to go, so we said our goodbyes, and headed home.
overall, it was a great weekend. and i think i'll be sleeping well tonight.