The Schrodt Family Campers!

This was the boys roasting their marshmallows the first night. On hangars!!!!

Yummy smores!! Jacob took one bite of his, and then said he just wanted plain chocolate!! Hilarious. Me and Josiah really enjoyed ours though - that was the reason I ran on Friday morning! So I could enjoy my smores without guilt!


Josiah and Jacob - aren't they so cute? I should have had David take a picture of my face, because this was at 10:30 AT NIGHT!! They should have been asleep long long ago, but look at how excited they were!!!!

Alexander, Josiah, and Bradley worked for over an hour getting "their campfire" ready - they moved all this wood all over the campsite to load up this firepit. It was hilarious! None of us really clued in to what they were doing until the 3 of them started moving these huge logs!!!

Alayna was the only other girl of the bunch - she just turned 1, and is such a cutie. Especially when covered in dirt!! Callie watched her with envy!!

All my boys canoeing! They saw a deer jump in the water and swim to the other side when they were out on their boat ride!!
Forgive the picture of me, but this was Callie in her camping clothes!!! I had to rustle up a pair of overalls for her to wear on her camping trip. She doesn't really have any "grubby" clothes, you know!
This was the best. The boys and I went for a hike on Saturday afternoon while David was playing bocce ball. We had a great time just hiking and exploring.


Yes, that's a real axe. And yes, they were chopping wood. And YES, TWO of them had babies in their hands at the time!!!!

Callie and Alayna - the girls were so cute with each other. This was one time they were actually both contained on the blanket!
I love, love, love this picture!! This was on Saturday morning. After breakfast, David and I were going to take the boys for a quick walk before Callie's morning nap, and slowly we kept adding kids who wanted to come along. We had the whole gang of big boys with us, and I got this picture when we first started our adventure. What fun! (It's Bradley, Josiah, Grayson, Alexander, and Jacob)
After our walk, we came back and painted some rocks that we had found.

Mr. Boyer took the boys for a little bike ride. (Oh, and in the background, you can see our van and the tent that we stayed in).

So here are some pictures (a few!) from our fabulous camping weekend. We had such a great time with some friends from our small group (a BIG thank you to all of you that helped us novice campers out!) and made some wonderful family memories. Josiah said his favorite thing was sleeping in the tent, and Jacob said his favorite thing was going canoeing. Really, we enjoyed the whole weekend so much (well, except for the part about the boys not going to sleep until 10:30 pm on friday and a few minor behavior issues due to lack of sleep the night before) and definitely look forward to doing it again. Enjoy the pics!! (By the way, sorry they are out of order. I can only load 5 or 6 at a time, and so they get in all backwards. How do you remedy this? I don't know how to move them around once they are loaded??) There are about another hundred pictures, but I'll let everyone else post their other ones for you to get the whole scene! It was great though!

Just a little prelude...

I don't have time to post for REAL about the weekend, but I'll say this. We had a BLAST camping and definitely would do it again. I even think we'll put some camping equipment on our Christmas wish list. Had a blast!!! Then we got to go to the zoo this morning with Beth & her boys, who are up visiting from Raleigh. What a FUN few days! David has band practice, so unless I collapse in exhaustion, I'm hoping to post some pictures tonight. I'll leave the video slideshow to Sue!!! :)

We're going camping....

....and we leave tomorrow after David gets home. The boys are SO excited (the girls are a little more nervous!), but it should be so fun!! It's starting to dawn on me (after Sue's phone calls this afternoon), that I'm really going to have to THINK through packing - for real!!! Just going to a campsite less than an hour away, and we'll come back early SUnday morning for church, but we're looking forward to it. Anyone have any camping wisdom for me - I will admit I'm nervous!!!

His "Woman"

This was so funny. At our friendly, neighborhood YMCA, there is usually an older man (probably 70 years old) that stands at the door and greets everyone and gives the kids cookies or lollipops when they leave. Well, he's there every morning like we are, so my boys have really grown to love Mr. Ira. (And boy does he love on Miss Callie! - he even carried her to the van one day when I had to carry out my fit-throwing, 2 year old!) Anyways, he told us about 2 weeks ago that he was going to be gone for a few weeks because his wife was having a hip replacement surgery. So the boys have missed him, and every day, they still ask me if he's going to be back. Well, this morning we were leaving their childcare room, and Josiah says "I wonder if Mr. Ira is going to be there. Oh no, I remember, he's still with his woman." I bust out laughing - I said "Do you mean his wife?" It was so funny - two moms were behind me and they got a kick out of it too!!

A Nice, Relaxing Beach Afternoon

Yesterday after Callie's morning nap, I decided we just needed a change of scenery so off we headed to the beach!! I've been wanting to do a beach day for several weeks, but never was able to fit it into our schedule until yesterday! I just decided we needed to go! The kids had a ball playing in the sand and in the water. Callie just LOVED it! I would have taken my camera, but I was trying to keep an eye on all 3 at the beach (and not ruin my camera like my sweet friend Courtney!!) It was so relaxing - felt so good to get out and just enjoy the afternoon together like that.

And then, to top it all off, the Titans won their Monday night game last night - big time!!! Go Titans!

Perspective

Yesterday, our church was told that our senior pastor is resigning. Very shocking and saddening news. Change, whether good or bad, is always hard to deal with. Especially when it's unexpected. A lot of heads were spinning yesterday (and today!), and God really calmed my spirit today. While I was running this morning, I was listening to "You Will Be Our God" by Travis Cottrell. It was the perfect message for what I needed to hear this morning. David and I have been working in church ministry for many years together, and have been through things like this before. The main thing that we have to keep focused on is that God is still God - even in the midst of all kinds of uncertainties. A church is made up of people following after their God - and this song spoke to that. The chorus says "You will be our God. We'll be your people forever. Because you have loved us and called us your own, You will reign in our hearts alone. You will be our God. You will be our God." (If I could figure out how to add a link of this song from my computer, I would!)

And so God, there are some people of Atlantic Shores today that are hurting right now and confused and a little scared too. But You will be our God and we will be your people.

Our first family run!

I tried to put this picture on the side, but it looked funny (trying to make it horizontal). I loved our first "running" picture though, and had to post it!

We're Activated!!!

Getting all warmed up and stretched out (do you REALLY have to stretch if you're just running a mile??)
And we're off!!!

Here's Josiah after the race!!! Happy, but hot and sweaty! He ran the whole way!

This morning was our first race as a family!!! It was not a REAL race, but the Y was sponsoring an "Activate America" day today down at our AAA baseball stadium. What fun we had! They had lots of fun activities and games for the kids, a Christian man there who has won Strongest Man competitions and pulled a BUS for us, and of course the 1 mile fun walk/run. We had a blast! Josiah has been looking forward to this all week (so was I), and we had a great time! They had everyone out in the parking lot to do our "stretches" together (and they did this hilarious "cha cha" song that I looked ridiculous doing (one of my 8 things should have been that I CAN'T DANCE!), and then we were off! And since most everyone was walking, Josiah and I led the pack!! We had so much fun - they had Y workers all along the course to show us the way, and they were cheering him on, clapping for him, it was too cute!!! It's gotten me very excited for the next REAL race for me!!! A very fun morning!!!


Oh, and Callie finally got to try green veggies today. Green beans - definitely did NOT like them!!! The boys got a KICK out of seeing that!!! We'll try again tomorrow!

Friday Night...and 7 kids!

Jacob, Seth Albritton, Joel Albritton, and Josiah (they were in bathing suits waiting for David to get home so we could go swim!!)

Seth was so cute with Callie. He said that "she really loves when you play peek-a-boo...but you have to do it two times before she'll smile!"

Here they all are (well, Callie was in bed already). Going around the table, it's Joel Albritton, Anna Claire Albritton, Jacob, Seth Albritton, Harris Albritton, and Josiah. And the pizza they all inhaled!

Seth, Anna Claire, Joel, and Jacob building yet another track.

So I'm hanging out on Friday afternoon, feeding Callie her lunch, when my neighbor Julie calls. She asked if I could watch her 4 kids for the afternoon/evening - she was heading to Lynchburg for a women's conference (jealous!!), and her husband had a wedding rehearsal that they forgot he had to do. Anyways, around 2 pm, her kids came over (ages 10, 8, 6, and 4). What fun we had!!! Jacob and Callie thought it was great waking up from their naps to a household of kids to play with!! Once David got home, we headed to the pool (indoor!) to swim for a little bit before dinner. I WISHED I could have taken a picture, but we were quite busy keeping eyes on the 7 kids!!! It was a blast though (I think we stressed the lifeguard out - those indoor ones are used to not a whole lot of activity!!!) We came home and had pizza for dinner, and I realized that I'm going to have to get used to making a lot more food once our kids grow up a bit more. We went through 3 pizzas with not a crumb left. They are sweet kids, and we had a great time with them! How grateful we are to have great neighbors!!!

Be Still

As I sat down a little while ago to do my Beth Moore homework (we're doing "A Woman's Heart, God's Dwelling Place), I could think of about 15 other things that I could also be doing. I knew Satan was trying to keep me from it, but I was ready for it!! The first page of my homework had our verse for the day, which was:

"The Lord will fight for you; You need only to be still." Exodus 14:14

I loved it! It's in the passage talking about Moses and the Hebrews leaving Egypt. They begin to see the Egyptians coming after them and they are panicking and crying out "Why did you bring us here...it would have been better for us to stay in Egypt." Moses tells them to stand firm and rest assured that God will deliver them, and then says that verse. I just LOVED it - if only we could really Be Still and know that HE is God more often!! I've enjoyed my "still" time this afternoon!! Thanks for that reminder, God!