Caglewood Heads to Cumberland!!!!

This is a picture of some of our group from last year. For those of you that have never heard of Cumberland Island...look it up. Such an amazing, beautiful, and rustic place.

Yes, it is 5am and I am blogging. I have been up since 3am, told my hubby goodbye, they met the campers at 4am, and now they are off! And of course, now I cannot go back to sleep. So coffee, a girl movie, and blogging for me=)
This week has been so very hectic, I am SO glad to see that they are finally on the road. I don't think I have ever talked about how much preparation goes into our camping trips. Paul and I deal with all of the reservations (months in advance), the meeting letters, the planning of the trips down to the hour, all the gear, food to cover every meal for every person, packing, organizing, arts and crafts, and so much more. Really, I do everything by myself until the day before because of his work hours, but he helps me get the gear from the storage unit and then pack everything up into the truck the night before and the morning of.
Cumberland is really our most thought out trip of the year. Reason being, the campers and counselors have to ride a ferry to the island and because of the ferry ride, everyone has to pack in their own food and gear for the entire weekend. How much gear do you really need, you say?? Well, see below:

This is what our garage usually looks like before a trip, nd this isn't even all of it!!! 8 sleeping bags, 5 tents, misc. gear, and all of our food. No cold food, so we have to be creative and bring in small, high calorie meals, some that are in powder form so that you just have to add water and voila....yummy dinner =)  Can you believe that all of this has to go on their backs? And they do wonderfully!!
Paul was in Las Vegas all week on business and didn't arrive home until 7 hours before he had to leave again to head to Cumberland. Even with all of that, he was still pumped this morning at 3am! I, on the other hand, am absolutely exhausted. All of this packing was done while Paul was out of town with the help of 4 little hands and a lot of patience from those 2 little bodies. I think we will all be happy once next week gets here and we can relax and see daddy again.
I am very excited about raising my boys in this environment, though. They are already our youngest counselors and what they will gain from being a part of this organization is so exciting!! And now they will have TWO special needs cousins and maybe more if my sister gets her way =) so that is an exciting adventure ahead.