vacation recap

Well, it went a little like this:

• We didn’t pull out of Happy Valley when we thought we would (the crack of noon) meant a arrival time at my parents’ house of almost 3 am. That’s late, even for us.
• Pulled hamstring (see pic 1) on the first day on the lake, first time in the water, first run on skis in years. Let the record show that even with the hammy, I skied two full laps around that dang lake. Decidedly determined? Stupidly stubborn? Hard to tell them apart.
• We got to celebrate Jase’s 1st birthday with my mom, dad, and Maw Maw. That was pretty sweet.
• I took the big kids tubing down the Lower Green River, which was a blast. The float took a lot longer than I expected, but we had a great day on the water.
• The flu bug landed that night. Sadie, me, my mom, dad, and Maw Maw spent most of the night tossing our cookies. It would stay with us through our travel day to the beach. Charlie blew minor chunks in the van, and Lilly heave-ho’d after dinner in the parking lot of the pizza place!

The night wasn’t a total loss, as Jase learned how to drink ice water!


• My brother and his awesome family joined us for the first part of the beach stay. We spent a nice day at the beach, though we were pretty much on shark-lookout all the time we were in the water.
• We alternated between beach days and bum days. But every day was low-key, low-stress. There’s not too much to do where we stayed, but that’s what we were after.
• One night while we were watching Bride & Prejudice (a Bollywood blockbuster, Romeo & Juliet set in the early 2000’s in India!) there arose the biggest thunder/lightning storm I’ve ever seen. Lilly was filming it on her phone, and happened to catch a bolt as it hit a house near us. 5 fire trucks and 2 emergency response vehicles rolled out to answer the alarms from the house, but there was no fire. The neighbor lady across the street from the house did, however, go into labor!
• The lack of touristy spots is one of the draws for us. There are a couple of those cheap surf shops (Nothing over $9.99…except for the stuff that is…) that we walked through a couple of times.
• We had a pile of time to spend laughing and talking, playing games…We got to spend some good family time reading and talking about the Bible. We had a family worship time Sunday morning and listened to Pastor Dan’s sermon online. It was a great message about living worry-free, in the What If…series.
• We missed Levi, who stayed home to work. He actually picked up a second job while we were gone! And the house was pretty much intact when we arrived!

All in all, it was a great vacation. We got away long enough to decompress, didn’t try to shove too much adventure into the trip, and made some good memories. We missed Levi something fierce, and wished we had packed Settlers of Catan. We are incredibly grateful for our friends who let us stay in their house. Their generosity is inspiring and amazing.

How was your vacation?