Just the Six of Us: Adventures In Day Camp

I feel so blessed to be a den mother in Brayden's cub scout troop. It has been so fun for me to see him in his element and to be at all the fun activities we have, I love seeing him in action! This last week was the grand finale for the year--CUB SCOUT DAY CAMP! We drove back and forth to Shawnee River Front Park in Kansas, about a 30 minute drive, daily for five days.

On the first day, I had to take Brayden up late because he had a tennis lesson that morning. I had been there before and figured we'd be fine and I'd recognize landmarks. This was more of a right at the certain tree, left at the tractor trailers type address, but before we left, I programmed my GPS with the address and we took off. As we got closer I realized that it looked different. No worries I thought! My GPS won't lead me astray!

Down this little tree lined dirt road riddled with ruts and divots we went. This road was obviously meant for a four wheel drive, not a family mini van, but there was no turning around! At the end of the road it opened up to a field (the wrong field) and a dead end. Coincidentally, a police officer was sitting in his cruiser taking his break right there by the field. I pulled up along side him and asked him if I was in the right area and he said no and that he would take me to where I needed to be. So we followed him out and he got a little a head of us. In the dense trees on the little dirt road, I tried to avoid a divot only to have front tire slip off the road and right into a ditch! As I tried to back out, I got in even more trouble and I high centered myself! Both back wheels were high off the ground. Argh.

With the van slowly tipping and sliding into the ditch and the kids faces plastered to the windows to see all the action, I get out to inspect. Trouble. And no cell phone service! So we got out and waited for the police officer to realize we were no longer behind him and 15 minutes later, he's back. Uh oh he said, your daycamp adventure has begun! He had this idea to have the kids and I sit in the trunk area to pull the wheels back down while he backed out. Funny thing is, it worked! The back tires came back down and the van rolled out of the ditch on it's own! I would have never thought to do that!

What a blessing for us to have the police officer taking his break on that very road, at the very minute. We felt like we were being watched over. We did finally make it to day camp, an hour and a half later then we planned on, and with a police escort to boot!

This is what the skies looked like on our second day of daycamp. I was a walking leader that day and had a car full of boys. As we were doing our very first activity for the day, an obstacle course, the skies turned black and opened up. Complete and total downpour like only Kansas can deliver. Then came the lightening and thunder, now we were in trouble. We got evacuated in a big hurry at that point, running for our cars! We drove right through a huge hail storm too!

Crazy crazy weather: