We slipped away for a few days this past week to rest and spoil Patsy before she leaves for camp. We pulled the camper down to the Oregon Coast, at South Beach State Park, one of our favorite spots to camp. An added bonus this time is that it’s fairly close to home. We can get there in under 2 hours, even pulling, so even with the gas prices rising like crazy, we could still go.

It was not Oregon’s spring break, yet, so the campground was quite empty and peaceful. Pouring rain was promised and only happened during one night. We actually had quite mild, sometimes even sunny weather with a few sprinkles or mist at times. One day we did take a drive, but otherwise stayed close to the campground.

We spent quite a bit of time studying for the new Sunday school class we started teaching today. We get to take on the 5th graders. Because the curriculum is new to both of us, it needed some extra studying. We are team teaching so we split the lesson up and each of us took different parts to get illustrations, examples or little scripture cards ready or study more in depth. I’ve been helping in 3rd and 4th since Christmas and Rob’s been observing this class for 2 weeks, so that helped a lot. The class went well this morning, and each week we will have a better idea of how much time things take, which activities the kids like best, and so forth. I’m excited. It seems like we have a really nice group of kids to work with.

I did my own personal quilting retreat. Rob and Patsy went rock collecting on the beach a couple of times and I stayed back at the camper and sewed. I continued my project of sorting out old projects to see if I still had all the parts and pieces and using up scraps and pieces of fabric I’ve had on hand for a long time. I am happy to report I’ve organized yet another old project and am ready to sew on that one soon. I actually sewed on a baby quilt I’m working on that uses both scraps and fabric purchased in the past. I’m not fast, and I have a lot of old projects and fabric, so I’ll be at this for a long time.

We took walks on a trail that surrounds the campground, down on the beach, and around the campground. When we took our little drive, we walked a short distance on a trail near the town of Yachats. It runs along a rocky area of the coast. We want to go back another time and go much further as the area was beautiful, but Patsy had elected to stay in the van with the dog after Rob walked her, so we couldn’t go far. Patsy wasn’t in the mood for a hike right then and we didn’t want to just hike off and leave her in the van, so…..more to look forward to in the future.

The beachcombers were happy with their haul.

We cooked at the camper. These brand-new pans were part of a set Rob and I found on one of our walks in a “free” box alongside the road. They were much better than what we had in the camper, so we snagged them, popped them into the bottom of the stroller, and gratefully wheeled them home. Thankfully we had the baby along that day!

I felt very ill-prepared for this camping trip. Usually, I cook lots of food ahead, and all I have to do is warm it up. This time, I was too busy to get that done. We worked over 80 hours, plus babysitting and our normal life projects last week. We made out just fine in spite of it. I had to ride down to the beach with an almost-forgotten mayonnaise at my feet, and we had to loop around the block (with the camper of course) for another forgotten item, but we survived! I baked cheesy biscuits from a box. I warmed up canned chili. We used assorted crackers and chips, ate hot dogs and opened a can of pork and beans. I’m glad I always keep the camper well stocked with those kind of foods, and it’s good to use them up when the occasion arises. I emptied and took leftover food from our home fridge and we ate it the first day or so. I did get 4 potatoes baked to take and we fried them, or ate them with meals.

Part of the purpose of this trip was to spoil Patsy. So, we did Taco Bell one time, got French fries another time, and some candy another time. The beach-combing was something she loves and she got down there 2 or 3 times. We even got her a t-shirt. She also got to sleep in a lot, stay up late watching movies, and read books.

We saw the babies for hours the day before we left, and had no sooner got parked and unpacked when they showed up again Saturday afternoon. We saw them again today, so although we missed them while we were gone, we got our “baby fix” right away. Mac was a little mad at me for being gone, and I got the cold shoulder for a couple of minutes, but he soon got over it. So funny! We took him to church again this morning, and he’s loving the nursery so much now, it’s heartwarming to see.

Our camper is starting to show how much we have used it and we had a couple of things break on this trip. Although it was very annoying, we were so happy that Rob could get down on the ground to peer at the broken jack and could get up again! For you new readers, that sounds funny, but for years, before his total hip replacement, he never could have done that. We felt so blessed that he could do that and that between the two of us, we got the problem fixed enough to go home. I mean, you can’t drive around with a jack half up and half down. It involved bungee cords, an electric drill I ineptly ran, a long iron bar we got pulled out, and so forth. He was on the ground, peering up, calling out directions that I was just terrible at following, but we made it through and will make it to our 40th anniversary this fall, still happily married. That jack is completely broken and will be replaced, not a huge issue. The heater stopped working. He figures it may be a fuse and will fix it or get it fixed here at home. We just used a space heater when we felt cold, and were toasty warm.

We were talking the whole week about how 2 years ago he could not have gone down to the beach 3-4 times, walked along the trails, or any of those things. We are constantly grateful to God for His healing through this surgery.

I’m heading into a somewhat quiet week. I got a lot of rest at the beach. I slept in a lot, and even took a nap one day. Even with all that, I won’t argue if I get a little more rest after the hustle and bustle of getting Patsy off to camp. We’ll see how that works out for me:)