'Tis the Season... for Camping!

This post will have no pictures in it- but I have many great excuses. Our camera broke and it looked as though it was dropped. Mysteriously, no one knew anything about it. Hmmm.....

We also got a disposable camera for Rebecca's camp, but scanner is also broken- so no camp pictures... yet.

So, Rebecca was waiting for her big Pine Cove 5th grade Camping trip in December. I know- camping in December? Apparently, camping weather is better in the winter and the spring in Texas. The summer is just too darn hot!

We squeezed Becca's camp fee into our budget (we're just getting over the "deposit" hump from the move) about a month ago. I started to think I was crazy to send Rebecca on a campout with a bunch of people that I do not know for 3 days and 2 nights. I was really regretting not signing up as a chaperone. (The district pays for most of the parents food, etc. for the trip.)

So I asked Rebecca if I could still sign up for the trip and she said that there were so many moms that wanted to attend that they had to have a drawing for chaperones. Hmmmm.... oh well.

About a week before the campout, Becca came home super excited and said there was an opening for a mom chaperone! It took a little bit of juggling with the kids' schedules & piano lessons, but I was able to go with her!

Wow, this camp was AMAZING! It seriously was like a vacation for me. (3 days with no cooking or cleaning? Nice!) They have a Pine Cove Camp website if you'd like to check it out.

To sum it up: pine trees, lake, zip line, bird show, lemur jumping in Becca's lap (she was in heaven!), petting snakes, a hawk, and a sloth, riding horses, archery, geocaching, building mud structures, smores by the fire, heated cabins and showers. Was this really camping? I'm thinking maybe not. Oh, and if you ver are in charge of feeding hundreds of people at a time, we learned a very efficient way to set it up. No standing in line with a tray!

I was very impressed with the counselors at the camp- they were great! They are all college students, or just graduated from college. The camp is normally a "Christian Camp" in the summers. I gave one of the counselors Becca's pocket size Book Of Mormon when we were getting ready to leave. I had it in my purse to read on the way home. I don't know what she thought of it, but I saw her showing it to another counselor on our drive out and they were smiling and looking through it. Maybe they thought it was totally strange, but you never know...

Stay tuned for more camping adventures from the Ryan family coming up... soon! Allison's YW camp is scheduled in March- during Spring Break. And John was just called as the assistant Scoutmaster! Wow, you know he can't get enough of camping. (Yeah, right.)

Anyhow, we now have another camera and we look forward to posting pictures of Christmas! We love you all and hope you're having a wonderful holiday!