Mini Vacation

Last weekend, our little family went up north to have a little extra fun during the 3 day weekend. We stayed the night in an inexpensive hotel in a town we'd never been to, and it was loads of fun. We made sure the hotel had a pool so the kids could cool off and play around, then Tim drove us around and showed us a neighboring town where he lived almost 20 years ago.

I couldn't go swimming this time because I was much occupied with this fella...

Little Adam just loved the pool, but came to me shivering and uttered two words: "Cooold! Waaarm!"

4th of July pictures are up next!

Mini Babymoon!

(A "babymoon" is a last getaway for mom and dad before their new baby arrives. Honeymoon, babymoon. Get it?)

We went away! For the first time ever, Tim and I escaped together with NO children! (Well, except the unborn one.) Our church has an annual marriage retreat at an old castle here in Southern Colorado and we were really blessed that it worked out for us to attend this year. We also went last year, but we brought along little Adam since he was still nursing. I can't even tell you how wonderful our little getaway was! The food was wonderful, the fellowship was delightful, and the accommodations were beautiful. Oh, and did I mention the material? We studied "What Did You Expect?" by Paul David Tripp. We watched the seminar on dvd and it is absolutely excellent, I recommend it highly! It's a very real look at marriage between two sinners with flawed hearts. I can't say enough about it. Tim and I are thinking of getting the audiobook.

Our room even had a balcony! Tim was out there early Saturday morning reading his Bible before he started the day. I was still snoozing.

Love this window seat.

We were so tired coming in the night before, I didn't have time to take a picture of the beautiful 4 poster before we crashed, but it looked something like this.

The colors of the room's decor was so peaceful and tranquil.

Most rooms had wardrobes~ there were not many closets.

My favorite thing about the bathroom was the big, eastern exposure window.

A better shot of the fireplace.

This is the exterior of the room we stayed in~ the arched window on the left was our window seat.

The weather was gorgeous and the retreat had some free time scheduled in so we could walk and explore as we liked.

And because I haven't posted pictures of the kids lately...

A good friend at church (who happens to be a reading tutor) recommended that we start David with some cursive handwriting to solidify good habits for him. Since he's left handed, sometimes he forgets that in English, letters and words are written and read from left to right. We've seen good success with this approach and now he and Dabney do their cursive handwriting work together.

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation - Family Camp

This past August, we attended our church's family camp! For the last few summers, we'd added a couple little boys to our family, so we had been unable to participate with our family camp for quite a while. This year, however, seemed wide open to the possibility! We gathered our food and supplies, tents and sleeping bags and headed out into the "wilderness".

We camped at a state park so there were pavilions available to our group for meetings and devotions and bathhouses not too far from our campsite.

And there was a great field for the annual family olympic competitions.

We also visited a park nearby that had a wonderful volleyball area, playground for little kids and a fantastic water feature, which was the biggest hit for our kids.

Dabney is checking out the new space in her mouth.

We were so privileged to have Auntie Cait with us for our camping trip!

Wrestling with friends~ I LOVE this!

Tim, James, Josh, Adam, Cait, and I all slept in one really big tent (which I didn't manage to get a picture of) while Dabney and David slept in a tent David received for his last birthday.

And, boy, did we all sleep well at night!

* Breaking News! *

Dabney lost her first tooth ever at Family Camp last week!
We were all so excited that it finally happened, but no one more so than Dabney herself!
Seriously, isn't she the very cutest thing ever?

(This picture was mere moments after it happened! It all happened so quickly, I didn't grab my big camera in time and had to ask Aunt Cait to snap a few of the big moment with hers. Definitely more to follow!)