The homeschoolers’ camping group was blessed again(!) with perfect camping weather during our weekend stay at Riverside Campground in Springfield. The warm sunny days and cool nights made our time in the outdoors so enjoyable.
This campground is owned by the city of Springfield and is located on the northern edge of town. Soon after we arrived, the campground host pulled up in his golf cart. He offered us free firewood, and even delivered it to our sites! Needless to say, we had some good campfires using all that free firewood.
This was the Zamora family’s first campout with us. Angel had been doing some internet-surfing and came up with some cool camping recipes. They tried out pizza pita pockets, banana boats, and apple pie on a stick—all done over the campfire.
Since Eric was in Springfield on business Friday, he stopped in mid-afternoon to pitch their tent in the daylight. He picked a really cool campsite up on a hill overlooking our grassy plain (think of the Grinch’s lair overlooking Whoville).
As soon as it was dark on Friday night, the kids started playing a Hide-and-Seek/Tag combo game. Eventually, one adult (Paul) could withstand it no longer, and he joined the game only to be chased down and tagged by Jacob. Not to be outdone by a teenager, he relished his turn to be “It”. He chased some kids down that big hill (think of the Grinch careening down the hill to Whoville) and nearly had someone within his grasp. All of the sudden he was tumbling head-over-heels in the gravel. Some of us got to practice our first aid skills, and Sara set up her picnic table clinic to tend to the injured. Unfortunately, Nick took the same tumble about half an hour later, so Sara had more than one patient in her clinic Friday night.
On Saturday morning, the Johnson family moved their tent down to Whoville where there were no acorns pelting their tent in the night.
The Schmidgalls attempted some fishing but only managed to lose a couple of bobbers and drown some worms. The Johnsons also reported no success in fishing. The Schmidgalls spent part of Saturday afternoon looking at the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield and also walking through Lincoln’s tomb. The Guenther boys hauled some interesting artifacts up from one of the ravines. The Zamora kids brought their marshmallow guns along with thousands of miniature marshmallows. The younger kids spent a lot of time pelting each other with marshmallows. There will be a lot of happy raccoons in that campground this week.
On Sunday morning, we worshipped together with Andrew again leading music for us. Richard brought us a message about vision, using Samuel & Caleb to help him out with the Ten Commandments.
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