glad to turn again...

This past weekend Mike and I traveled to Camp Barakel. A place that is very near and dear to my heart, and that is becoming that to my husbands. :)

Barakel is mainly a summer kids camp, but in the fall and spring they hold weekend retreats for men and women. They have ladies retreats, mens retreats, father\daughter retreats, and couples retreats. We have gone for several years now to the couples retreat in the fall. Because Barakel is designed as a summer camp, men and women have to lodge separately at camp. However, if you go in the fall, you can stay in their RV Park which means you can stay together. We always choose this option. :) It's just a bit more married that way.

After much debate, we decided to go and that this would also be our last "hurrah" before little miss arrives. We shipped Levi to the grandparentals and made the 4 hour drive north friday night.

We arrived in the rain.

This news is less than exciting when putting up a tent. Determined to have a good attitude we pulled in, and we're going to go gangbusters in setting up, just get it done, and hopefully not get too wet. As we began to unpack we realized we were missing a CRUCIAL piece to our tent. We searched for quite some time with our trusty flashlights and headlights on the car. After a valiant search, we determined we had to find another course of action.

We called our friends who live there on the resident staff to see if they could help us out at all. We knew we could stay in the lodges if need be, but we were really wanting to stay together in the RV Park. Dan told us he had a tent we could borrow, but couldn't get it to us until after chapel. No worries, we said, well take it.

Chapel came and went. As we came out of the building, we were met with TORRENTIAL downpour. I pretty much just wanted to give up at that moment. We walked back, and there was our vision of a friend, Dan, standing in the pouring rain, trying to put up the tent by himself. Mike jumped into action, and I proceeded with the wifely duty of sitting in the car, where I tried to turn on the headlights, only to realize we had killed our car battery. A.W.E.S.O.M.E. I watched as they struggled to get it up, in the dark, in the rain, and felt so badly for both of them getting SOAKED.

By the time the tent was up, there was literally a POOL of water inside of it. Dan got us some towels, and we sopped up what we could, and finally crashed into bed. It poured all night long. We stayed fairly dry, but we were misted on most of the night. Because the tent was wet on the underside of the rainfly, as the rain hit the fly, it just kind of tapped the excess water down into the tent.

I had to go to the bathroom around 4, so we braved it and headed to the bathhouse to discover 2 things.

1) the hub to our tent that we had been missing... shining like a beacon of light in our flashlight... really??

2) that our tent had a pool o' water in it, and clothes (namely the only bra i brought with me) was now floating in this pool of water.

So now, I trucked out again.. this time to the dryer in the RV park, throwing in a load of laundry to dry. yup.

May I just remind you this was our last nice weekend getaway before the baby comes??

Yea.

I was more than done at this point.

We survived until morning, took steaming hot showers, trekked ourselves to the dining hall for some hot coffee and hot breakfast, and things seemed a little better with the world.


All in all, by Saturday at lunch time, the skies cleared, the tent dried out, and truly.. we had a lovely time. We spent a ton of time on the lake, paddleboating, went for some walks, went down Thunder Express, curled up by a fire playing games, a beautiful night walk through the wood listening to owls hoot back and forth to each other, and enjoyed those conversations that remind you why you fell in love, and also, how lovely it is to have a conversation start to finish without the interruption of "mama, papa" over and over again. :)

I'm still feeling like we deserve one night at a hotel before the baby comes though ;) Overall it was good times, and good memories to be had.