O give me some soap ...

I never appreciate good personal hygiene (a shower, a blow dryer, clean clothes, your basic smattering of lipstick) as much as at the end of a camping trip. There is also the small matter of a good night's sleep.

I neglected to post my Friday Five a few days ago because between recovering from our Co-op Demo Day (i.e. unloading the mounds of STUFF from my van) and packing for our AWANA family campout (i.e. loading mounds of STUFF into the van) there simply wasn't time. This Friday looks more promising. 

But anyway, back to the campout. Here are the highlights:

1. Game time, during which I got to watch my husband face off (literally) against three other dads in the pie-eating contest, our whole family make a respectable showing in the obstacle course race, and myself and two other similarly-sized ladies triumph in the Moms' Round of Four Way Tug O' War (Scrawny Girl Power! Yeah!). 

2. Listening to people of all ages, from my 5-year-old dd on up to parents in their fifties, share their salvation stories on Saturday night. 

3. Playing with my children and the other families in the cold, clear Pedernales River on a hot Saturday afternoon. (No camera. Wahhh.)

4. Climbing with the kids on the rocks near Pedernales Falls, listening to them exclaim over the hidden caves and signs of wildlife they discovered. 

5. Letting myself relax about how well my children would do with winning friends and influencing people. We don't know these families terribly well, and despite the fact that, like many of them, we're Christian homeschoolers, our family style tends to be a little different. Also, one of my children is shy and tends to cling to me in social settings, while another has trouble reading social cues and joining in with an established group (but hey, don't we all?) so tends to want to monopolize one person or just be a bit overbearing. On a couple occasions I resisted my urge to jump in and "fix" things, and you know what? They did fine. Truly. 

And here are the lowlights: 

1. Feeling grungy. Personal comfort and vanity very much compromised. 'Nuf said. 

2. Not sleeping at all on Saturday night until the sun came up. Seriously, at some hour just before dawn, I was sitting in the car listening to a LOST podcast on my iPod just to pass the time. Between the wind and occasional rain spurt buffeting our tent and the sardine-like nature of our sleeping arrangement ... but wait, isn't that what our sleeping arrangement ends up being every night?

3. All of us feeling tired and cranky on the ride home -- rather a letdown after the euphoria of scrambling over rocks together. But hey, we stopped at Costco for "just a few things" and lo, they were serving a veritable feast of samples, including dark chocolate, coffee from New Guinea, and fine cheese from three different countries. At which point a peaceful, golden glow descended upon us, we rode off into the sunset, and we lived happily ever after.