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Have I bragged about how incredibly kind, sweet and thoughtful my husband is lately?  A few weeks ago Aaron suggested I should go on a retreat—a chance to get away, recharge, and do some things I enjoy.  He told me to invite a friend, and he would book us a cozy, comfortable spot in Northern Michigan.  

We made plans.  My good friend, Kylee, and I were going to head to Traverse City for the weekend with our nursing babies.  We had a beachfront condo reserved on the East Arm of the Grand Traverse Bay.  The weather forecast was outstanding.  We both had long lists of things we were looking forward to talking about.  

But the plans changed.  

If you look at this picture of Savannah’s arm, you’ll see why:

We had an outbreak of Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease among our friends at church in August.  I thought we had avoided it, and after hearing of no new outbreaks for over a month, I forgot about it.  Madeline ran a temperature between 103 and 104 on Monday and Tuesday of last week, and Savannah was between 102 and 103.  The high fever should have been one red flag, but it didn’t occur to me that it could be HFM until I couldn’t get Savannah’s odd-looking diaper rash to clear up.  HFM typically starts with sores in the mouth and then progressing to sores on the hands and feet, sometimes the arms and legs, and rarely the face.  Madeline’s sores were pretty much isolated to her mouth, but most of Savannah’s body was covered.  For as bad at the sores looked, thankfully they didn’t seem to bother either girl.  Once the fever was over, both girls were pretty much back to normal.  

Kylee and I talked on Wednesday once I had figured out Savannah had HFM.  Obviously Kylee’s baby, Ian, would be at risk if we proceeded with our plans, so we decided to cancel our retreat.  

However, with the gorgeous weather forecast and the hopes that our girls would be feeling better by the weekend, it was hard to cancel our reservation.  We could stay home and go on with life as usual, or we could all go to Traverse for on last family adventure of the “summer.”  

Kylee and I are rescheduling our trip for a future date.  She was completely wonderful and understanding about the unforeseen circumstances.  (And thankfully, she had just gotten away with her husband the weekend before).  

I’ll leave you with a few pictures from our magical weekend.  Obviously God knew what we needed, and we’re grateful for the time we had together.  

We’ve lived in this house for over six years, and tonight I saw something I’ve never seen here before—a hummingbird.  I walked by our dining room window, and there it was hanging out in the impatiens.  The hummingbird flew away quickly, but I took a moment to thank God for sending what I like to think of as a love note.  A while later it returned, and this time Aaron, Kayla and Madeline saw it, too.

We’ve had the opportunity this year to explore the incredible Dow Gardens. They are located a little over half-an-hour away in Midland, Michigan.  This makes for a great evening getaway–which we took advantage of tonight.  We took two cameras along and got a variety of nice pictures.  Just click each thumbnail for the full picture.  Enjoy

Today at lunch Kayla was picking the flaxseeds off the crust of her bread when she said, “mmm, Mommy, these are so good.  What are these?”  I explained that they are flaxseeds, that they’re super healthy and that they can even help your skin not to itch so much.  Motivated by my speech, Kayla was eager to try some plain, so I poured some on her plate from a container in the fridge.  Madeline wanted the same.  I lost count of how many times the girls said, “may I have more flaxseeds please?”

I didn’t intend to make my own belated birthday cake this year.  It just sort of happened.

Each week Kayla picks a recipe from her Sesame Street cookbook.  We make a shopping list, purchase the ingredients and then spend some time cooking together.  It’s great fun for me, and good practice for my little cook!  So far we’ve made sweet recipes instead of nutritious side dishes—like cool cucumber soup and golden zucchini coins.  That’s what you get when you let the lil’ chef choose! 

The recipe Kayla picked last week was “Elmo’s Hooray, It’s My Birthday Chocolate Cake.”  As we were making the cake, Kayla said it should be for my birthday, since mine was the most recent birthday in our family. 

 So, hooray, it was my birthday last week!  We even had enough candles.  

(On a side note, I had a terrific birthday last Monday.  Aaron, the girls and I went out to dinner, had ice cream and walked to one of our favorite parks.  It was a perfect birthday.)

Tuesday was our first official day of school, though it wasn’t much different than most days this summer!  Learning together is the norm for us, but it’s always fun to make a big deal out of the start of school in September.  Carrying on our tradition we started last year, we camped in our tent (in our yard) Monday night.   Once again, it was a perfect night for camping!

Tuesday morning we enjoyed blueberry pancakes for breakfast and then had Bible time together (complete with musical instruments for our praise song).  Next we did chores before moving on to the rest of our school time.  We recited the pledge of allegiance, and let me tell you, hearing a two-year-old saying the pledge was flat-out adorable!  I wish I had videotaped it.  

Here’s our first day of school picture:

Kayla used the camera for the first time and took a picture of me, the teacher:

Next was gym class outside—racing, jumping, galloping, throwing, kicking balls, doing somersaults, etc.  We played a little wiffleball, but I think Daddy makes a better teacher when it comes to playing ball.

We wrapped up the school morning by building towers with the stacking cubes and practicing numbers, shapes and animals.  Madeline said this was her favorite part.

In the afternoon Kayla and I did a reading lesson together, working on words with the short-o vowel sound.  She’s turning into quite the little reader!

In the evening, while Aaron was at the men’s prayer service, we had a play date with some good friends at Jameson Park.  It was a wonderful, fun-filled day.