Joyful Noise

Seriously, girls, I waited WAY too long to blog. I ended up chatting with the girls outside of my room for 2 hours... and it's now midnight. And you know how incoherent I blog after midnight. ha! At least I'm not designing right now, huh? Can you say TYPO? hehe.

Anyway, I was woken up at 7:30am with Jake yelling at the other kids to turn the TV off because he was trying to sleep. Sigh. So I had to referee that, then I went back to sleep. And Jim came in to snuggle, then Joe came in to snuggle. And I finally crawled out of bed at 8am.

I got dressed, fixed my hair and make up, got the kids dressed and ready, grabbed a soda, and we all headed to breakfast.

And DANG they had a nice spread! Sausage and eggs and bacon and oatmeal and cereal and fruit and potatoes and biscuits and gravy. My kids and I were in HEAVEN :)




We had about 30 minutes before the classes started, so I went and got my big kids, and told them that they HAD to come to the first 15 minutes of the "childrens" class. Jake didn't wanna go, but I told him it wasn't a choice. 15 minutes as ALL he had to stay. He agreed.

My new friend, who's name suddenly eludes me (again, it's after midnight), had an 11 year old girl, and she was spending the day with my older kids. She got along great with my boys and Eme. Anyway, at 9:30am, I dropped the 2 younger kids off at the daycare, and brought the 4 older kids to Sgt Nick, who was running the class. He took the older kids, and had a "pre-teen" class, and did some fun activities with them. They got to go upstairs to the tower, and see the sights, and see where Clark Gable and Judy Garland carved their names on the banister. Cool, huh?

And we had our class. Which was really 7 army wives sitting around a table chatting. And it was GREAT. We talked about communication, and deployments, and our hardships we were going through, and really all bonded. It was a great time :)

AND, we were told that because 7 people didn't show up, we were gonna get a $100 coupon to the SPA. Sa-weet! We got the brochure, and scanned it for what we wanted.
90 minute deep tissue massage, ALL the way! I'll pay $20 plus tip for an hour and a half massage. Heck ya!
Class was over at 11am, and we had 30 minutes before lunch. I gathered up all the kids, and we headed to lunch. Sandwiches and fruit. And KILLER brownies. So good :)

Do you think I could possible get a bigger sandwich???

Here's Joe, playing around :)

So Joe has decided that Sgt Nick (the chaplins assistant) is the MOST cool person ever. And is his new friend. He wanted to play with him ALL day long. It was the CUTEST thing ever. Sgt Nick had this new shirt, that was washed and super shrank, so didn't fit him, and he asked if he could give it to Joe. Awe! Joe kept wanted him to play chess, it was was appropriate :)

Joe thought it was the coolest thing ever. We ended up chatting after lunch, and eventually all headed up to the lobby. One girl and I ended up on nice chairs, chatting, while the kids were in child care. And Captain America called, and we got to chat for about an hour.

I couldn't go back to my room, because there were 4 pre-teens there, so the lobby it was. It was good to chat and catch up. I miss the boy :( But it was great to chat :)

My friends all slipped out for an hour at a time to go get massages, and eventually, it was my turn! 2:30pm. I was SO stinkin' excited!

I got there, and the lady brought me back to the massage room, and said that I could undress to my level of comfort. Ok, sounds good. I undressed, and climbed under the SUPER warm blankets, and then she came back in for the massage.

And it was SUPER heavenly :)
It was the FASTEST 90 minutes ever. I'd told her that I have 5 kids, and that my hubby was deployed, so she decided to give me the $25 hot stone treatment for free. Awe, SUPER sweet :) And when the total came up, she'd applied a military discount on top of that. SO, while I was planing on paying the difference of around $20 plus tip, the whole total was only $101. Again, AWESOME! I left her a $20 for a tip, and headed back up to find my friends. And I was SO super relaxed :)

I stopped by the cabin first to check on the kids, and grab a DDP. I took Joe and Jim, and we headed up to the main lodge. All the girls were hanging on the back lawn, near the pool. And the kids were running around, playing in the grass. Sounded perfect.

We sat and chatted and had a GREAT time. My new friend, Margot, is MAJOR into astrology, and told everyone about their signs, and what was in store for them in the future. I learned that my sign, Sagittarius, is the most "mature" of all the signs. hehe. Isn't that funny! And that I'm fun to be around, and can adapt to most situations. Good to know :)

We played and chatted in the back until 5:00pm, and it was time for dinner. I went and got the big kids, and off to dinner we went.
Here's my friend with the 11 year old who's name STILL eludes me, holding a "flower" from her 5 year old. ROFL!
And dinner was SO good. They only had 3 tables instead of 5 this time, so we all had to squish. And there wasn't a table big enough for all my kids and me to sit at, so I told them to grab their plate, get their food, and join another table. Yeah, Joe TOTALLY sat RIGHT next to Sgt Nick. hehe. And all my boys followed suit. It was the funniest thing. My 4 boys sitting at the table with the chaplin, Sgt Nick (no kids), and the 2 ladies at the retreat who currently didn't have kids. ha!

Here's my food. It was SO yummy. I ended up sitting with Margot and my friend who's name STILL eludes me. I'm gonna think of it. I know I will :)




There was a TON of left overs, so we got take out boxes, and boxed up food for tonight and tomorrow. I'm so smart. LOL!
The kids had a GRAND time running around in the basement conference room and being loud and crazy. They played Twister for a while, and built a fort out of chairs and the twister mat later. hehe. We were there for about an hour and a half, at least.

And soon, we decided to go and get ready for the pool. 7pm, and we headed to the pool. Woohoo!













We got there about 15 minutes before our friends, and the kids had fun playing in the pool/hot tub. Then all the other kids/moms came, and we all had fun hanging out in the hot tub. We were in the pool area for about an hour and a half.

Then, we decided to move the "party" down to my cabin. See, there's a little "living room" type place outside of my cabin. A common room. With a pool table, a foose ball table, a BIG TV and DVD player, table and chairs, a fridge and stove and sink. BIG area for the kids to play. The perfect hang out place.

So we all changed, put on our jammies, and met down there. I worked on getting my pictures on my blog, and my freebie posted and hosted and such, then shut it off to chat. I'd blog later... Little did I know it would be SO much later.

We were on Facebook, and we all friended each other. And showed each other pictures of our spouses. Margot said that she'd seen Captain America before. Cool :) We all chatted and the kids watched Looney Tunes, and played games, and had a good time.

And around 9pm, the party started to break up. And I finally sent my kids to bed at 10pm. Then proceeded to stand outside of my door and chat with Joslyn and Liezele (my 2 friends with no kids as of yet). And we chatted for about 2 hours, before finally calling it a night.

And here we are, at 12:35am. And I'm SO sleepy. I need to turn this off and go to sleep. So that I can wake up in the morning, go to breakfast, come back to the cabin, pack, load the truck, and drive the 2 hours back to El Paso. Pfew!

Click on the link below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. Thanks!

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Awe, love the dark colors, Sharon! Sing!!! hehe :)