5 days of NO COOKING!

Monday means it's time to load up for High School Summer Camp. That's right. All 6 Trenkles are headed to Lake Bradley Christian Camp for a week with 200 teenagers. Woo-hoo! 20 of 'em are ours.

We knew that HS camp was part of Bry's new duties as youth pastor and I says to him, I says, "You ain't goin' without me, baby! We're all going... or we're all NOT going..." And then, "PLEASEdon'tleavemehomewiththe3babesandanewborn!Notquitereadyfor4nightsofsingleparenting... boo-hoo-hooo!"

So, we have a housesitter, Nikki, and a dogsitter, Nikki. And we're ALL 6 going to camp!

Well, at least that was our plan. Thursday about 2am, Bry woke up in excruciating pain and managed to get thru the night with a suspected kidney infection or you know, something "minor" like appendicitis. I read up on his symptoms on WebMD and everything he was experiencing sounded like kidney stones. Yeah, didn't let him read that. Sometimes it's better to know less than to have a pre-conceived notion that you're going to die.

A friend of his came and got him at 8:30 that morning to take him to urgent care (thanks, Clay!), since I was up with him since 2am, while [miraculously] all four children slept thru the night. At 10:30 Bry passed 2 kidney stones. Sheesh! No wonder he was writhing in pain all night. The doc said he most likely passed the first one when he woke up in those pre-dawn hours.

So, apparently kidney stones for a guy are like childbirth for a woman. And so Bry sent me a text from the exam room BRAGGING that he'd "given birth to triplets and beat that!" And I reply, "Um, Babe... it's not even the same. You got nothin' at the end of all that pain, and I got Bryson, Kennady, Kev and Karsyn. Where are your 'babies?'" Well, he told me he could say that since the DOCTOR said so and SHE'S a FEMALE. And his babies were in a cup somewhere in the lab. (FYI, his babies were about the size of bb's!)

Poor guy. He's feeling much better. But we wondered if it might be a spiritual attack, since we were just a few days from Summer Camp. We wondered if it might be God protecting Bryan from racing in the pseudo-Nascar races on Saturday to win the title of "Faster-Pastor" for Douglas County. Like maybe kidney stones were a good alternative to dying in a car-crash or something?

But then, right as I started packing up the kids' clothes for the week, Kennady came up missing. She had laid down for a nap all on her own. NEVER HAPPENS. Out of nowhere, she has this 104.9 fever! So we treat it. And we wonder, again, hmmmmm.... spiritual attack? And then she pukes. And that does it for me. I'm seeing it for what it is... a sneaky enemy who wants to distract us and get us all freaked out (Bry esp worries and battles big-time stress anytime our kids get sick or injured). And then Kev wakes up from his nap with 104 fever. So yeah, it's been interesting around here to say the least.

Would you pray for these babes and for my man? And for our other 35 kids (20 of 'em are going to camp with us). Somethin's up... God's about to do a huge work or something. We are asking for the Lord to protect Karsyn from this fever thing. And for us to just be in His will. We just wanna go and serve Him and be together as a family this week.

At least if we're at Lake Bradley, I can care for the babes, and God's providing the meals once again by the faithfulness of another's labor of love. Lake Bradley's chef is AMAZING!

Thanks for covering us, Jesus, with your mercy and unfailing faithfulness. We trust Ya!