Fantastic Fall Family Fun

There are few things I love more than fall.  But if you add time with my family in a beautiful lodge to the beauty and majesty of God's creation during autumn, there truly isn't much better.  This weekend was the weekend we had all marked on our calendars last Christmas as the payoff for the gift Jason and I got for my family as a gift.  Each summer when we gather in Benezette at the Winslow Meadow Lodge, we have always talked about wanting to come there sometime to enjoy a fall weekend.  And enjoy it we did.

We all took off from home on Friday afternoon and arrived to check in around 4:00. The kids immediately got to doing what they do best at Benezette--- running, giggling, getting dirty and exploring.  We all settled in, and unloaded our goods from home.  Pulled pork that had  been cooked at our house went into the oven to start getting ready for supper.  The chill in the air was perfect.  It definitely felt like fall, just like it always had when we arrived in Poe Valley on a Friday afternoon when I was growing up.

We filled the weekend with lots of arts and crafts, a visit to the Visitor's Center to see the elk (probably 50 or more were in the field plus a whole bunch of turkeys, too), Play Doh, coloring, pumpkin carving (thanks to Aunt Libby for the pumpkins, and the Daddies for the carving) and a whole bunch of food.  We had homemade ham and bean and chicken corn soup, hot dogs on the grill, taco dip, apple dumplings, whoopie pies, smore bars and Grandma Mary's raisin cookies.  Jason made breakfast burritos on Satuday morning, and Zig made french toast this morning.  Yum and yum.  The kids really enjoyed hot chocolate and had devoured an entire bag of Swedish Fish before supper on Saturday.  Evidently we have continued the camping motto of our childhood..."Anything goes when you're camping."

Somehow, we convinced the kids that early tubs on Saturday were a good idea, and then talked them into having an "Only Kids Club" in the big bedroom while we watched the PSU game in the living room.  It mostly worked.  They only emerged when they were ready to fall asleep and needed our presence to do it.  But the grown ups (and one very overtired, scroochy Mara) got to sit together and watch the PSU game while we talked, told stories and had a great time.  I absolutely loved it.  So often, our time together is spent scurrying about...but not yesterday.  And to top it off with watching such a great PSU victory was really the icing on the cake.

We talked this weekend about memories of our childhoods, and about how the kids will remember these kinds of things someday--- how we all got together and laughed and carried on, ate too much, and watched PSU win a big game together.  And somehow, all of the work cooking and packing and unpacking is totally worth it for the memories made...