Change of Plans...

Last weekend Nate's friend invited us to go hang out at his cabin for the weekend. We were excited to go and get away for a bit. The cabin is right by a pond that is stocked with fish and the boys were SO excited to go fishing!!!  They also have a fire-pit on the property, among other things, and the boys were excited to roast hot dogs for dinner.

We had soccer games Saturday morning, so we couldn't leave until lunch time. We figured we would get up there in the early afternoon and then come home Sunday afternoon.

While we were at the game, Nate's friend called and said he was concerned about the conditions of the dirt roads leading up to the cabin because it had rained quite a bit over the last couple of days up there and the roads would be pretty muddy. We figured we could handle a little mud and it wasn't worth calling off the trip.

We left at noon and met our friends and made the hour drive to the turn off. The we had about 14 miles of dirt roads to drive on to get to the cabin property. But the dirt roads were not dirt, they were mud piles by this point. We started off a little sketchy but then we seemed to be doing pretty well. It was a long and tedious drive up the mud hills but we were making good progress. Until we got to the mother of all the hills. Our friends knew there was no way their little SUV would make it so we all piled into our SUV hoping our new tires would make us proud. Nate and I were both really nervous because this was a BIG hill. We were in the middle of nowhere by this point, and we had no cell phone service. Nate offered a prayer that we would make it safely, without incident, and that we wouldn't get stuck. Then we started our climb. We got about 3/4 of the way and then we had to slow down to make the turn and we just couldn't make it. We tried over and over and we were just sliding all over. We debated just hiking in the rest of the way (about another mile to the cabin) but it just wasn't worth it with all of our luggage, ankle deep mud, and 6 little ones between our two families. So, we backed down the mother of a hill, and retraced our progress back down the miles of mud we had already conquered and came home. Very disappointing. But the worst part was, it was our friend's little girl's birthday that day and they had been telling her for 2 months that they were going to take her to the cabin for her birthday. They had all of Maggie's party stuff in the car ready for celebrating. She was one sad 6 year old!

So we headed back to our homes, power washed 87 lbs. of mud off our cars, unloaded our coolers, and asked Maggie what she wanted to do for her birthday instead of go to the cabin. She reluctantly agreed to a movie so we headed off to the theater to see Zookeeper. But, as our streak of disappointment continued, we got the to theater only to find out that the movie was sold out. Strike 2...

So...what now? Out of desperation her dad suggested miniature golf. We headed to Cherry Hill and thank heavens...they were open. So we had a fun playing golf.

The cheater

I know the ball is in here somewhere...

How does this thing work?

Preston's form was so awful, we aren't sure how he ever actually hit the ball.  And after all those "golf etiquette" lessons from dad...

Our unconventional way of golfing...Lauryn on Nate's shoulders while he lines it up.

Almost a Four!

After golf, we went to our friend's house for a BBQ and a Birthday party.  Maggie seemed all smiles by the end of her day.  And although the weekend didn't go as planned, we were grateful that we didn't get stuck, and that we all made it home safely.