Ahhh. Life.

Life can be so crazy sometimes. Sometimes I have this weird feeling that I am still living my life like I am 16 years old... that's certainly the way I tend to treat my body! I have this tendency to be a very big kid.... but at the same time I live a life and have a job that carries with it a lot of responsibility...

Sometimes I handle that responsibility well... like when I take the kids on mission trips to foreign countries and bring them back all safe and sound... or I organize big events and remember every little detail. Sometimes I am just that kind of person... detail oriented, mature, responsible.

Sometimes I lack a few of those parts... sometimes they escape me for a few seconds or minutes or hours and I make decisions that can only be described in hind-sight as not so bright. That, friends, is the story of my weekend. Here we go...

So. This weekend we had our second annual Winter Retreat. I started this tradition last year because my youthies LOVE to go on retreat. We go to Camp Otterbein, we have an AWESOME weekend together, we have a winter olympics (first lapse of judgement, one event is the downhill ice run. uh, yeah), we do a luge track down the hill from the outdoor chapel and down around some cabins (lapse #2), we eat lots of junk food, do crafts and generally act crazy... all while spending good times in lessons and discussions. It's winter retreat, its organized by me...

that's what you get.

This year I had another lapse of judgement. After an afternoon outside on the big sledding hill, with wet, cold feet (my #1 hate in the world), and snow packed into places I'd rather not discuss, I said to the kiddies "Hey, let's go inside and get warm... we can come back out and sled later."

That evolved into this...

We'll call it... NIGHT SLEDDING.

For the record. This is a BAD IDEA.

BAD in the fact that those nice, snowy hills refroze, our sledding configurations got more crazy.... and I ended up with near heart failure. BUT... lapse #1,000,00 of course was that I went down the hill too... 5 or 20 times... screaming the whole way, bailing out of my little saucer sled at the bottom to avoid taking the ice right into the creek bed... and going head over heels into the snow. Yes. This is a BAD IDEA because... I am 31 not 13.

These girls... they are teenagers. Their cute little selves can handle things that leave me bruised and sore for DAYS.

Any hoo it was a good weekend. These kids proved that Sulphur Grove Youth can play 4 Square ANYWHERE. They shoveled and scraped their way right to the bottom.

And this is all of us. Just before heading home. The snow and ice storm on Friday kept us from leaving as planned and we didn't get to camp until Saturday... but in the end.... it was one of the best retreats on record....

And just for the record...

I'm not getting any younger... my poor battered body can attest to that!