Our first stops were to pick up Destiny. She was at Frank and Lauren's place at the north end of Reading and her stuff was at her mom's house at the south end of Reading. By the time we had her and her stuff we needed some McDonalds, so that was our next stop. Then we headed toward Lebanon for Sammy. But that took longer than planned, since Destiny and I were discussing who all would be at the retreat and I missed an exit! Thankfully Austin was busy with games on an iPad, so he didn't even notice!
It was after 6 when we got to Sam and Jenn's for Sammy. Finding a place to put his car seat was a problem, since Dick had forgotten to load his guitar into his truck that morning, so I was bringing it. The case is so huge! Sam helped me to put it in - the big end was between the two car seats in the back, and the small end was between me and Destiny in the front. And we were off! Refreshing Mountain Camp, between Lebanon and Ephrata, was just 25 minutes from their place.
This lovely lodge was our home for the weekend'
The first order of business was the playground, of course!
We had our own big "hang-out" room on the ground level of the lodge that easily had enough room for all 41 of us! We came from Sweden, New Hampshire, Georgia, Idaho, Arizona, DC, New York, and of course, PA.
Throughout the evening I was on the phone occasionally with Dick, with Ray, with Jeremy, and with Lori, discussing arrival times, pizza pick-ups, directions, etc. Lori was last to arrive, having gotten to the Lancaster train station after 9 from her conference in New York.
Grandpa had some story time with the boys while I got beds ready.
On Saturday morning we had our first of five meals in the dining hall.
It was great to have someone else do all that work for us! But they pack a lot of groups into that place, and we were confined to two long tables, and it was TIGHT quarters!
There was a lovely deck and fish pond outside the dining hall.
On the porches were many chairs for relaxing and chatting. But we ended up having somewhat of a love/hate relationship with them! They had such extremely deep seats that we couldn't quite figure out how to sit comfortably in them for any length of time. But we suffered through, haha!
The camp has an AMAZING pool.
Destiny practiced diving instead of jumping.
Ray entertained, as always!
Dick still loves making a big splash!
I need to go to work now, so that's all for this post. Come back for fun pictures of the high ropes course and much, much more.
2 comments:
This looks like so much fun! I would love to do this with my family. I better start looking for a lodge like that.
Glad you had such fun.
What a fun time for everyone! It looks like you had really good weather for your weekend.
It was cool here but the neighbor children still took a swim in their pool anyway. I guess they thought if they didn't, they would not get a swim in this July.
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