Weekend of Four Ribbes

This weekend we were down 2 kids. Ben and Jake were on a men only camping trip with Church of the Apostles youth group. They drove to North Carolina and hiked and camped in woods near Panthertown. It was cold and beautiful. They hiked along mountain rocky rivers, stood behind waterfalls, ate dinner at 1am, hiked a mile up an almost vertical trail to an awesome summit view, and climbed really slippery rocks--according to Jacob "we almost died." There were some talks on what it means to be a Christian man. The themes we were able to extract from the boys included: "We were made in the image of God" and "we are supposed to protect women". I bet there was more to the story. The event ended with a car break down and a few extra hours of car time, a pancake breakfast, and a later than expected return to Columbia. All of that sounds great to this camping dad.

Back on the home front our smaller family went to Eli's soccer game on Saturday. They were 5 men down and had to play a man short. Eli scored his team's only goal with bubble wrapped cast. The team played fantastic defense, showed great ball control, and ran the entire game. It felt like a northwoods game because it was about 45 degrees, cloudy, with a misty rain. Perfect! We got to wear our sweatshirts! Later on Saturday we went to the South Carolina State Fair. Needless to say it was a bit more expansive than the Vilas County Fair in Eagle River. There were a variety of very big cows and pigs. Sorry Bill Long...there were no large vegetables. Did you know that the average age of a SC farmer is 59 years old? Grace, Eli, mom and dad enjoyed the cold rain, bumper cars, a hot fudge covered elephant ear, the hypnotist (Jackie didn't like this), and a ferris wheel ride.

The weekend concluded with an all church picnic after our worship service in the SC State Museum. We traveled about 30 minutes out of town to a cabin by a small lake. After fried chicken there was a s'more making extraveganza at the 4 portable fire pits scattered across the yard. Pictured above is the first blog appearance of Chip and Beth Edgar, our pastor, friends and Columbia hosts. A great weekend it was...maybe because it was 40 degrees and I spent it outside. By the way, we had to turn on the heat.