Saturday, October 28, 2006

An Unexpected Evening

Hot dogs cooked in a campfire. S'mores. Sleeping under the stars. That's what the two younger boys and I had planned for tonight. Ok, I actually had planned loading the Suburban, setting up a tent, frantically trying to get supper stuff out for starved children, exhaustedly sitting for a few minutes by myself next to a dying campfire, very little sleep on the ground in a drafty tent, and getting up the next morning to reverse the whole process only to pack up and head home (and whee! More word awaits at home!) Yes, my view of camping is different than that of the boys. But none of us got what we expected.

Florida weather as the temperature changes is unpredictable, and this weekend, they predicted rain and wind. So the camping trip with Cub Scouts was cancelled. AJ moaned, "My first camping trip!!!" Stephen wailed,"Now we have to stay inside!" Mommy was disappointed too. (Yeah right! Because I had to put away all that camping stuff I took out late last night!) But God had an entirely different plan for all of us.

First, I made a deal with the boys that they could camp in the living room. The really like doing this, so reluctantly I set the tent up. They moved the PS2 in and plugged it into the Big TV. We rented a movie. But unexpectedly, the power went out. No PS2. No movies. Lots of dark. We started lighting candles. Then we pulled out some games. And we had fun. Together. After lots of hysterical laughter over the Uno Attacks machine that kept shooting a hundred cards at a time, and the death-vengeance game of Sorry! the power came up. And once again today, we were disappointed. At least we did get to see our movies.

God had an entirely different plan for us tonight. And it was kind of fun. Makes me want to flip the switch on the electrical panel once in a while.

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