Calm Before the Storm

**This post was written about three weeks ago. I'll get up to speed eventually. I hope**

Forest Home. Our second trip to this retreat in the San Bernardino mountains. So, we’re in the middle of moving, why not plan a family vacation in the midst of it? Makes perfect sense to me. Even though we’d only been here one other time, it was like returning to a spot you’d been hundreds of times before. Everything was familiar. We paid a little extra and upgraded our room this year. Gooood decision. We actually have storage which may not seem like a very big deal for a week long family vacation, but when you’re already living out of suitcases and will be for at least another month, being able to unpack is heavenly. Oh, and then there’s the thing where we don’t have to share a very small bathroom with another family. Yeah, that was actually the deal maker for me. It’s one thing to have to share one bathroom with three other members of your family, but throw in some other group and everything that goes along with it? Awkward!

Our cabin (on the right side)

The view from our front porch

So we brought along our own child care person which the camp will normally provide for you free of charge because every night the parents get a chance to get away from their kids and the kids get a chance to get away from their parents. I thought it would be more fun for my kids to hang out in the evenings with someone they already know. As I dropped our sitter off at her cabin, I told her counselor to be sure to take good care of her. I’d hate to drag her all the way up the mountain and just leave her there to fend for herself, which it felt like I was doing. Apparently, I look enough like her (she’s a strawberry blonde with blue eyes, I’m a chestnut brunette with brown eyes) and old enough (I’m 17 years older) that they thought I was her mom. !!! I’m sort of insulted. Now I know that teenagers are horrible at the age game and I guess I could technically be her mom if I was a high school pregnancy case, but do I really look old enough to have a teenager??!

Ok, back on track. Part of the Forest Home tradition is to have Family Lake Day on the Wednesday of the week you attend camp. It was the perfect day after three days of 90ish clear weather. Finally, we’d had a break and it got down to about 80 with a bit of cloud cover. We got to the lake and set up our spot. We watched some of the relay races and I took pictures of our team as they flew through the obstacles of the race. We only had two more groups to go before lunch which was highly anticipated to the group of us hungry campers. And then it started to sprinkle. And then a bit more. And then the wind started to blow. And then it started to whip and the sprinkles turned into raindrops. Excuse me, but I thought this was July in Southern California. See, we don’t do that here. It got so bad that the food service people could not do their job and had to pack it up and take our picnic back to the main camp and we had to shut down family lake day! It was funny in a can-you-believe-this sort of way. We loaded the SUV back up and took the short trek back to camp while the servers and other kitchen staff set up the same lunch a second time. And the sun came out. My explanation? Leeches. There must’ve been leeches in the water and that’s why God made it rain at a church function at the lake.

After lunch, Bill and I took the kids to the pool since they were jipped out of their chance at the trampoline in the lake and “the blob”. The pool had been temporarily closed due to thunder so we waited until we got the all clear sign. And it started to rain. We sat in lounge chairs in the warm mountain air and were rained on. We listened to the blue jays squawk and the chipmunks chatter behind us until my little fish were able to show off their new talents they learned in swim lessons last week.

Yes, I am still up in the mountains as I write, but there is no internet, cable, or cell available so I sit on my laptop and type out memories in between games of Mahjong and Solitaire while my family naps in the cabin before the next activity. We arrived Sunday evening and have been going at a crazy pace since we’ve arrived. My kids have climbed rock walls, flown down zip lines (twice), gone trout fishing, swimming twice, done arts and crafts, miniature golf for the last three evenings and walked more steps than they’ve probably walked at home in a month. It’s been a great start to this crazy new chapter of life we’re just beginning to write. I hope they look back at this as a wonderful part of their young childhood.

Leah waiting on the platform of the zip line

There she goes! Trey is just ahead of her.

Trey starts up the rock wall

Leah OWNING the rock wall.

Our little family on the second to last day of camp. You can't tell, but there were thunderstorms going on all around us at this time. We were smart and stood under the tallest tree.

Bill and I and our friends who spent the week with us.

This is what happens when you try and take a picture of all the kids.