AHG Fall Family Camping Trip 2018

 Every spring and all, the American Heritage Girls Troop has a family camping trip and this fall, it was held at Fairy Stone Campgrounds in Virginia. These trips are always a fun time of fellowship for everyone.

 Everyone loves gathering around the campfire for worship and fun.

 and smores, of course!

 The campground was beautiful with lots of rolling hills, woods and water. There were streams and a lake nearby.

 One afternoon, every got together to take a nature hike and explore, looking at and talking about the plants and animals in the area.

 The buddy system is critical in a group like this. Even with all the adults along, it's easy for someone to get overlooked if they step off the path a little way. Fortunately, the girls found friends to pair up with very easily. 

 Ezra took a slip and caught his shorts on a branch. Fortunately, it was just the pants and not him that got hurt. And besides... a little air conditioning never hurt, right?

 On our second day there, we went to a place to look for the "fairy stones" that give the campground its name. They are little basalt crystals that grow in the ground and are washed free by rain and streams. They gave us a sheet that told about the different shapes they come in and how to find them.

 We managed to find bunches of them in the mud beside an area where rainwater runs off the mountain. we found pretty much every shape shown on the sheet. Every had a great time digging through the mud and rocks to find them. 

USS Yorktown Trip

While we were still dealing with the power being out from Hurricane Michael, I took the boys on a field trip with the Trail Life Troop down to Charleston, SC to stay for a couple of nights on the aircraft carrier, USS Yorktown. 

 The Yorktown is a decommissioned aircraft carrier that was built during WWII and saw a lot of action in the Pacific. She was decommissioned after the war, but put back into action right after the Korean conflict and remained active in the Pacific all the way thorough the Vietnam War. She was even used to retrieve the astronauts and capsule from the Apollo 8 space flight! Afterwards, she was decommissioned a second time and donated as a memorial to the city of Charleston and later became a National Historic Monument. She serves now as a museum along with the USS Laffey, a WWII-era destroyer, and the USS Clagamore, a Cold War-era submarine.

 One of my favorite things was that, because we were sleeping on the ship, the adults had free use of the ship after lights-out, so I took a couple of hours after midnight and walked through all the exhibits. No crowds, no kids. It was really cool!

 Because we were there as a group, we gathered each morning for a devotional.

 And then it was off to see the planes and helicopters! The boys couldn't get enough of them.

 There were aircraft from every era that the Yorktown was active, from WWII

 to the 1970s.

 There were a couple of planes inside that they let the boys climb into and play around.

Touring the rest of the ship was fascinating as well. The history of the ship, the other in its class and the US Navy as a whole were really interesting to hear about. 

The boys also got to participate in an environment class where the learned about the ecology of the estuary where the Yorktown is parked. Of course, Ezra loved the turtles. 

They both loved the puffer fish, too. 

It was great when we got done and went outside and spotted a puffer nibbling at the growth on a rope 

and dolphins swimming around the ships! 

Then we visited the Clagamore. 

Talk about tight quarters! Walking down a hallway, my shoulders were rubbing both walls! I have no idea how the submariners didn't go crazy with claustrophobia! There was a story about how one guy was so tall, he didn't fit on any bunk, so he spread two mattresses on a torpedo and slept there!

This was one of the best experiences the boys and I have had together. I'm really hoping we get to do it again next year and get to bring the AHG Troop as well!

Hurricane Michael

We had two hurricanes hit us this year. The first, Florence, wasn't terrible. We got lots and lots of rain that certainly caused problems, but we never lost power and there weren't too many trees down. The second, however, was a surprise. 

Hurricane Michael was a massive Cat5 that came flying up from the Gulf of Mexico and just plowed into us and kept on going. It was "only" a tropical storm by the time it hit us, but the winds were much, much more severe and really caused some wreckage. Lots of trees down, lots of flooding in the area. 

It tore our neighborhood up and we were without power for 4 days. Certainly not an experience I would like to repeat...

Trail Life Fall Camping

This year, I got to take the boys (well, the girls, too) to the Trail Life Father/Son Camping Trip. Fortunately It was held at Hagan Stone Park, which we know very well and also, coincidentally had just spent 2 week camping for Sukkot. No...I don't have any pictures of that. What can I say?

 Anyhoo... We had a good turnout and the weather cooperated with us, mostly anyway.

 Gabe and Ezra set up their own tent. Because I had the girls with us, too, I parked our camper at the nearest RV site I could and stayed with them. 

 The dads cooked breakfast each morning. Lunch and dinner were an "on your own" affair. 

We had a theme of "Hitting the Mark", so one of the leaders brought a bunch of slingshots and paintballs. Another one cut targets in the shape of the patrol mascots: a mountain lion, a hawk, and a fox. He drilled a hole in each target just barely bigger than a paintball where the eye would be and told the kids to put a shot through the eye of their mascot. Of course, none of them could do it, even accidentally. This was done to illustrate that nobody is perfect and we all fall short, so that's why forgiveness is so important. 

 Everyone got in on the shooting fun, even the girls. 

Emma wasn't a half-bad shot. She just didn't have quite enough arm strength to pull the sling back very far.

 In the evenings, there was a campfire each night and the boys sat around telling stories.

They also did devotionals and played a lot of games.

It was too dark to take pictures, but one of the dads brought an amazing telescope and we were able to see things like Saturn's rings!