surviving (by the grace of God): missing again

Yes, I was missing again for about 5 days! We went camping. Again. Honestly, still the best vacation ever! We went with my family this time. The cousins had a BLAST together, as usual. (Although there were a few missing, which always makes me sad, but sometimes nieces and nephews grow up and have to be responsible and stuff.) Same campground as before (Gold Country Campground - it's about 1.5 hours away) but for a longer period of time.

My kiddos are now old enough (4 and 7) to wander around between our campsites and trailers and I don't have to worry about them as much. I still had to track them down once in a while if they went a little too far up the hill or didn't come back on their scooters like they said they would. And if I got caught up in a game of Farkle (yes, that is a real game) or Fast Scrabble (one of my favorites) or Sequence and I didn't see (or hear) the kids for a while, I'd have to get up and go search for them to make sure that I knew where they were. Sometimes they were in their Uncle and Aunt's trailer or in another Aunt and Uncle's tent. I'm pretty sure no matter how old they get, I will always want to know where they are.

We had a quick conversation about that this weekend. Just mentioning how much less stressful it will be when our kids are 18 and out of the house. I'm pretty sure we all know that this idea of "not worrying about our children" is never really going to happen. There are some days when I (to be very honest right now) can't wait until my eldest is 18 and is an adult (and I use the term "adult" only in legal terms, not in regards to maturity because those of us who are parents understand that maturity comes when you have children of your own and those of you who are grandparents know that true mature wisdom is greatly received after the kids are grown!) But even as I mutter those words in my mind, I know that I will NEVER stop worrying about my children. There will always be something to worry about.

So we might joke about our children turning 18 when we are having an especially difficult day with them. But we know that day will come too soon when they will be going off to college or getting married or moving to another state. We will miss the days when the toughest part of our day was a child refusing to eat their dinner or cleaning up an accident on the floor or dealing with a tantrum in the store over a $3 toy. Because when they grow up, then they face real life. That's when their decisions affect their future. That's when the real worrying begins and we, as parents, hope our life lessons that we started at such a young age in our children begin to pay off.

So, just to get you back in the mind frame of today (so that you don't get too worried about the future), what is something that happened today that made you enjoy your children or your family? And isn't it nice to know that no matter how old we get, we still have a heavenly Father keeping an eye on us?

Here was my "enjoyment" for the weekend: