I ended up cooking breakfast in the morning. Josh set his alarm for 6AM so it could wake us up and give me an extra half hour to stall before getting out of bed. I was over there by seven and then breakfast was at 8. They were having oatmeal with toppings which isn’t hard. The biggest thing is making sure you get the water on the stove in time for the water to boil so you can add the oatmeal in time. You wouldn’t think it would take a long time for water to boil, but in large pots its different.

With two large pots with 1 1/2 gallons of water each, it took over 30 minutes for the water to fully boil. So I was right about that, probably having learned it at some other point. I had gone over the evening before to check and make sure I would have what I need. I have to be a “I’ll do the job right myself” person when it comes to camp cooking. I thought I had everything, but today couldn’t find brown sugar. I walked back home to get some of ours and all we had was about a fourth cup if that.

So I knocked on the bathroom door and asked Josh, who was in the shower, if he could drive down to main camp and bring me back some brown sugar. This is one of those things. If you are going to take the risk to serve something as plain as oatmeal at a ladies retreat, you have to at least make sure you have the absolute basics. No brown sugar would’ve been a failure as far as I’m concerned, with the hot feeling of shame and embarrassment and wondering why no one already had it there.

So thankfully he brought the brown sugar and all the toppings went over well. There was a really nice lady there who offered to help me. I didn’t think that I needed it but it turned out being a wonderful thing. She cut bananas and set out yogurts and told me stories about former things in her life and I told her I was sorry. She said she hadn’t had homemade oatmeal since 1967 or something long ago like that. She was very excited to try some and told me later it was a dream come true.

Something like that. So we hugged and I told her it was meant to be. She said it was. Gosh, I was thankful for her sweetness and help. Josh had started the dishwasher and filled the first tray with bowls. He packs them tighter than I do so after he left the kitchen I spread them out a little more. He went back to the house and made the boys pancakes and bacon. I had some too. along with the leftover toppings that I brought home in a cup. Sometime after that I went back to bed for a while.