This was the reward for one of these competitions. Each rep on the winning teams was invited to spend a weekend at this amazing campground with catered food and fun activities like clay pigeon shooting, horse back riding (which was actually cancelled due to the fires and dry weather), fly fishing, massages, and a ropes course. They also received a tent and two sleeping bags each to use while they were there and then to keep afterwards.
Well, James wanted to have everything set up and ready to go when everyone got there. That's a great idea theoretically but has anyone ever tried to set up 62 tents? It's madness! We ended up only setting up probably 55 or so of the tents, but I'm fairly sure that I was a helper with at least half if not 35 or so of those tents. I should have kept count but that required more effort than I had left after setting them up.
Here is James with a co-worker. He actually helped us set up a bunch of these tents, too. We really appreciated his help! I'm not sure we had a good understanding of what a huge project we were undertaking.
Here is the first area we set up. It ended up with the majority of the tents. You can see the few we had set up and the many, many others laid out on the grass. Half the chore was figuring out how to get them all set up around their managers tents, with fewest sticks, rocks and holes, and without being right up against the next guy's tent.
I will say that I was feeling pretty good about our marriage while doing this. The fact that we were able to communicate and work together in a situation that was stressful and not get angry at each other was reassuring.
Yes, this was stressful. We had about 3 hours to set up 62 tents. Think about it. That's less than 3 minutes each.
When we started to get frustrated with how slow we were going or that we hadn't read each others' minds (darn it), then we would pretend we were on the Amazing Race and this was our road block: 60 tents, seven groupings, so many in each group... GO!! And we did it. Now, don't get me wrong. By about 4 to 5pm, we had several other people who volunteered to help since everyone was arriving and needing tents. And we were very grateful for their help.
You wouldn't believe how hungry this makes you... The food was catered by a local cafe type place and it was delicious! This campsite is in Pecos, NM and is a family run business. They were fantastic! I will forever speak positively of this place. The owner and all of his employees were probably the best examples of real customer service I've ever seen in my life. I would highly recommend this place for any work party or meeting, or any family reunion. There's a game hall with pool table and piano, a stream for kids to play in, beautiful cabins to sleep in and of course all the fun activities I mentioned at the beginning.
Did I mention that I sprained my ankle four days before this? Yes, yes... This was on a Friday and the Monday before this event, I fell down one step of our stairs and landed so hard on my foot, I fell and couldn't move my leg because of the pain. I really thought I had broken my foot since I couldn't even roll my leg to sit up. I just laid on my side until one of the landscaping guys for our apartment complex came across me and offered to help. Honestly, I would love to see his thoughts as he comes over a hill and sees a lady laying on the sidewalk crying. Good grief.
Well, I got ice and laid on the couch to ice my leg and the pain just got more and more intense to the point of me sobbing. So, I called James at work. No actually, I texted him first and said something real calm like, "Babe, I think I broke my foot and need to go to the emergency room." And when he didn't respond after about ten seconds, I called sobbing. I'm sobbing. That's important. He's asks what is wrong because he can tell I'm upset. I explain that I broke my foot and need to go to the ER. He asks, "Which foot is it?" to which I reply, "What does it matter?! It's my left!" And his loving response is, "Well, can't you drive yourself?" Remember I'm sobbing in pain. And so I remind him that if I could walk to the car, I would drive myself... Ha!
Well, end of story is, no broken bones according to x-ray. It's just sprained. So, come Friday, it's still in pain, I'm still wearing a wrap to brace it, and I've walked about 5 miles all around the campground setting up tents, guiding lost employees, and trying to chase down missing sleeping bags. By 10:30pm, my foot was too sore to go on anymore. James actually drove me from one part of the campground to the cabin where we ended up sleeping. We wanted to sleep in a tent with everyone else but we ended up being so tired and we had spent every minute until then getting all the other tents situated that ours wasn't even set up yet. Augh. It was a long - but enjoyable - afternoon and evening.
This campground is beautiful and has an awesome history. At one point it was a ballet school. At another, Disney used it to film a show called Bug Juice back in the 70's or 80's. And at another point, John Wayne was using it to throw parties while he filmed in the area or vacationed at another area a little further up the road. Cool, eh?
Here they are learning to fly fish.
Here is the ropes course. Or a part of it I should say. Intimidating, huh? I did not do this considering my ankle but I would have loved it!
Did I mention how tiring this whole weekend was? Saturday morning we got up, ate breakfast, made sure everyone would be ok the rest of the weekend and then left in a mad hurry to get back and shower before heading out to Youth Conference to teach a class on Dance and Dating Etiquette to the 14-18 year old youth in our church. We taught 3 sessions of that class (standing on our feet - yes my ankle was screaming afterwards) and then we went home and crashed.
Here is James... He cleaned out the fridge (for whatever reason) and didn't make it up off the floor. We were so tired he didn't have energy left to get up. This happens so seldomly, that I had to take a picture. This is the only way to show how absolutely exhausted we were. Haha! It was a very fun weekend, but sometimes we think we have more energy than we do and occasionally things like this happen to remind us.
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