More on the Retreat

I thought I'd tell a little more about the retreat, since before I was pretty obsessed with our lack of heat. We went up a day earlier than most of the people, and Mom and Dad did too. We ate out together at Hoss's (a steakhouse like Ponderosa, for those who don't know) Thursday night, and it was surprisingly good. Two other families got there that night, both with 2 young children and expecting another. We had a lot of opportunities over the whole weekend to talk about child-raising, discipline issues, homeschooling, and other fun topics like that. It's still hard to believe that people actually think of us now as the "older" parents who can dispense advise and wisdom. Both families had older children who might be considered "strong-willed", and they were dealing with the temper tantrums and so on that go along with that. My kids really can't be considered strongwilled in the traditional sense, I don't think, and they don't usually act up a whole lot in public. This gives the impression that they are just really "good" kids, but in fact that is more a reflection of their personalities more than anything, I think--they are shy so don't pitch big temper tantrums or draw a lot of attentionto themselves. They still are rebellious and disobedient, but they are more passive about it, and sometimes it is harder to see and correct. At least if the child is throwing a huge tantrum, then you KNOW there is a discipline issue that needs to be dealt with! If on the other hand, a child just quietly never gets around to doing what you ask but instead goes and starts doing a different thing, then it is harder to discipline because sometimes you don't even notice until later. But the same disobedient attitude is there! So I tried to encourage these parents to just keep on being consistent and enforcing the standards, and eventually they will see fruit. It can be so discouraging though. We talked about other stuff too, not just parenting! It was fun to stay up late and talk and laugh with other adults. Baby monitors are a great invention!

I didn't hear alot of the speaker, Art Apgar, because I did stuff with the kids. I did get to be in on the worship times which were led by another couple, Dan and Carol. I really enjoyed their music as well as how they interacted with each other. It was very natural. They sang songs in a lot of different styles, and many of them were songs they had written.

We got to hike around a little Saturday afternoon. That was a beautiful day, unlike Friday where it rained all day long. We took some family pictures over the weekend too, one of which will end up being our Christmas picture. I got the pictures back today, and we actually have to choose between a few good ones! That RARELY happens with 4 squirmy boys! The weekend was too short, as usual, and we rushed back home to get the boys to AWANAs Sunday night. After we dropped them off, Caleb didn't want to go home (maybe he remembered how cold it would be?). He just wanted to go back to "White Silver 'Prings". And Nathan can't wait until he can be on staff there.