It was a great weekend!

On Friday, I packed my bag and headed north to Camp Sumatanga for our annual Women's Retreat. It is about an hour drive from my house to camp. While I was driving, I had a phone appointment with a nice person from the Samford Online program. I'm trying to decide if I'll pursue my Bachelor's after I graduate in May.

It was raining when I arrived at camp . . .but it was not hot. When we booked the camp a year ago, we felt like it would be sweltering on the first full weekend in September BUT IT WASN'T.

One of my jobs was putting together the gift bags for every bed. We had "S'mores and Snores Bags." I made a cute kit for S'mores and we had a small bottle of water, a sleep mask, and some earplugs! Have y'all seen the giant square marshmallows? They are so cool!

When Mark was at the farm a couple of weeks ago, I texted him and told him that we needed a tree's worth of small circles. A tree had fallen and he cut it up for us to use as part of the centerpieces. Our theme was "Camp Wilderness" and we used the stories from the Bible of those who were in the wilderness. Our mason jars have twinkle lights in them . . .lightning bugs/fireflies!

Our backdrop was this cute camper.

This is the first year that I haven't been in the skit. I was on the team and helped plan, but I guess I'm getting too old for the skit :-).

Our friend, Lynne, was one of the speakers and she shared her story and told us of the times in her life when she was in the wilderness.

They moved the backdrop and balloon arch to the lobby to use as a photo backdrop. I'm on the left (camp hair - don't care! no make-up!) and my friend, one of the Laura's, was in the middle, along with Anna Leigh. They were both on the team, too.

Here I am with the other Laura. She was on the team, too -- two Laura's and a Lisa and an Anna Leigh and an Amy! I didn't get a photo with Amy. Laura (below) was also my roommate this year plus the last two years.

Here I am with my friend, Debbie. She was also one of the speakers!!

She presented her story on Sunday morning. I have written about her before. While Mark and I were in Ireland in October 2021, her husband fell . . .and died. Our first Women's Retreat had been just days before he fell and he had really pushed her to attend. She made lots of friends that weekend and is glad she attended. Her husband, Don, was in Mark's weekly small group. Her story is so very powerful.

We ate. We laughed. We cried. We clapped and cheered. We crafted. We studied the Bible together -- all of those wilderness stories. We prayed about our own wilderness. We had all ages of women -- from 22 to 90. Isn't that amazing? I love multi-generational women's events. I even had a bug in my bed. I sound happy about that bug -- but I wasn't!! That is pretty campy, isn't it?

We cleaned up camp and everyone headed home and I got back in time to meet our son and his family for lunch at Culinary Dropout. I had a wonderful salad. Mark had the breakfast sandwich which had just about all of the breakfast ingredients on it. Glenn had Smokehouse Hash, which was also on the brunch menu. Our granddaughter #1 ordered French Toast made with banana bread. She said it was too sweet and swapped with our friend, Wynn. He had ordered Shaved Prime Rib dip -- a fancy roast beef sandwich and fries. She ate some of his and he finished hers. Our daughter-in-law had the same salad I ordered. I think I liked it better than she did.

We headed back to our house and I started a load of laundry and emptied my suitcase and we took a 30 minute nap. I was just about to go into a deep sleep when my alarm went off. We struggled awake and brushed our teeth and headed back to our church

because

At four, we had a trip meeting about our October trip. I'm getting so excited!! Our church chef prepared Greek snacks for everyone -- Spanakopita (which was amazing!), Baklava (Mark said it was good), hummus and other dips with pita bread, olives and maybe peppers . . .

Just FYI - I am tired. :-) zzzzzzzzz!!