Vacation...

Our family has been in 'need' of a vacation. It was showing up in all of us last week. It was a tough week. The kids weren't on their 'best' behavior and mommy felt like she was spending much of the day or week rather being a referee and was feeling the need for a break too. I think our busy schedule caught up with us. We've had two weeks of swimming lessons,Tball and Coach pitch games almost every night for a couple months and a few VBS' etc. Just been busy running from here to there. Plus Tom's had his 2nd job since February and has been working ALOT more than we first planned. It started out being Tuesday and Thursday nights and then went into several weekends etc. Tom's 2nd job even called to see if he'd work this weekend and he didn't take the weekend work this time. We knew we needed a break. After a tough week we decided to take a day vacation.

Our plan was to surprise the kids and take them somewhere to fish. We'll to 'pretend fish' really. The kids and I spent time with a dear friend of mine this summer who lives in Kansas. She was here visiting her family and the kids and I went to her parents house one day to spend time together and they have a great pond and had some kids fishing poles and my friend taught the kids how to cast. Thanks Rach!! They LOVED it! From that moment on they kept asking us to take them fishing. So, the kiddos put their money together and each contributed and bought one kids' fishing pole to share. We've had it at the house for a couple weeks unopened and thought it was time to go use it. =)

Tom and I got to have a date last night since the kids were at their last night of VBS and we went to dinner and then went to Walmart to look and see what we might need for the fishing trip. We knew the fishing pole didn't come with a hook etc. After looking up and down the isles I looked at Tom and told him I sure wished his dad was here to help us. He said he was just thinking the same thing. His dad LOVED fishing. The kids sure would have loved getting to fish with Grandpa. They seem to have Grandpa's same love for fishing. I know he'd be so proud to know they were excited about learning.

We'll someone at Walmart gave us great advice. We told them we were just going to take the kids somewhere to cast and the guy suggested to just tie a weight at the end of the string rather than a hook. Great idea...less chance for hooking each other - like one of the kiddos did to my friend when she was showing them how to cast..sorry. =) So, that's what we did. Just got a weight and we were set.

This morning I spent some time on scholastics.com on a printables program I signed up for for homeschooling and found several worksheet pages with FISH. There were some handwritting, some coloring, some math, some stories for Bradley to read, etc. They enjoyed doing those on the way to our trip.

We had a couple places in mind to chose from and decided to head toward Sunnyside past Sweet Home. Once we were almost there Tom suggested we check out RiverBend which is a great campground not far past Sunnyside. That's what we went with. We were VERY impressed with RiverBend. It was funny, when we drove around looking we spotted some friends who happened to be camping there. What a blessing. They were able to show us where to go. We went to the water with our friends and the kids got to 'fish' for a little bit and then they played alot in the water. It was a perfect little spot. I got each of the kids a little net too so they were trying to catch tiny fish with those too. At one point, Hallie fell in the water on her bottom and I was sure she was going to be disappointed and start crying cuz it was pretty cold and we had only gotten our feet wet, but she stood up and started laughing telling me she fell and got wet. =) She got up and kept a walking and playing. It was too cute! Then we went to a park there to play and have a snack and it was warm enough that we pretty much dried off just playing.

On the way home we stopped in Sweet Home for Root beer Floats at A&W and it was a great ending to a wonderful day!