Good Times near Gull Lake

This past Friday, Aimee and I drove up to our church's (Autumn Ridge) annual marriage retreat up near Brainerd, Minnesota, at Cragun's Resort after Aimee got off work. Because Aimee was unable to get off from work early, we ended up missing Friday night's sessions. I didn't like feeling like we were missing out on anything, so I tried to get us up there as quickly as possible. However, the traffic was ridiculous on 494 and 94; and I was about to lose my mind (I actually passed a car on the shoulder of the road). Aimee asked if I had time to do my devotions on Friday. I said "no," and she said that she could tell due to my horrendous driving. My morning devotions are literally my daily medication to keep me centered. However, once we got on to highway 10 at Clearwater-Clear Lake, it was much smoother sailing.

I have to admit that for the past four years when Aimee and I have gone up to the marriage retreat, I generally do not feel like digging deep to examine our marriage and to work on our issues. I also must admit that this year was even worse than in years past in that regard. The only thing that I can think of that may have led to me feeling this way this year is that since we have been actively participating in marriage counseling every week on Thursday nights for the past seven months and have been having more frequent deep discussions about our relationship during the week, I really just wanted to "escape" for a weekend, relax, and not put our marriage under the microscope for a couple of days. I will say that we did garner a good amount of helpful tips and tools and godly wisdom from the sessions led by Dr. George Kenworthy and his wife, and we were also led in great worship by Autumn Ridge's high school pastor, Reggie Nichols and his wife Karlee. During our free time, we spent some time hanging out with Travis and Allison Vail and Karl and Beth Bristol, two couples from our small group who were able to join us for the marriage retreat. In the picture below, we are getting ready to break out some Phase 10 on Friday night.

The retreat was two weeks later than normal this year, and so Aimee and I also spent some time checking the NCAA tourney scores and brackets in our room on our laptop (I am so glad we were able to get a laptop almost a year ago).

On Saturday after the morning sessions from 8 a.m. to noon (way too early for me), we had the rest of the day free. Aimee and I decided to use the sports centre at the resort this year which was a lot of fun. I ran on the indoor track while she and Beth biked in the fitness room. Then Aimee and I played some indoor volleyball with some of the other couples at the retreat. We then took on Nick and Korrie Johnson in a game of indoor carpeted doubles tennis, and I am proud to say that we won 7-5. Nick then kicked my butt in singles tennis beating me 6-0. After that, we all got cleaned up and went out to supper together at Grizzly's in Baxter. Pictured below are Jake and Hannah Calhoun, Karl and Beth Bristol, us, and Nick and Korrie Johnson. Good conversation and fellowship were had by all.

After supper, we went back to Cragun's and played some SkipBo, Nerts, and some more Phase 10. On Sunday, we finished up with two more sessions and then headed back to Rochester. All in all, I felt like it was a good weekend (even though it was too short); and I think we both needed to just get away for a couple of days. Looking at our calendar right now, we will be getting away every weekend in April, so I am pretty sure we will have plenty to blog about in the coming weeks.