Aaron, Jen, Kayla, Madeline & Savannah
On Christmas Day Aaron, the older girls and I bundled up and headed out in the three feet of snow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much snow in my life! Here’s Madeline standing by the mailboxes at the vacation home we rented.
And the four of us with Lake Michigan in the background …
This year we once again traveled to the Outback Lodge in Stanwood for a horse drawn sleigh ride. Besides having frozen toes, we all had a wonderful morning! And this time Aaron even came along!
Two weeks ago we vacationed in our back yard. With temperatures in the upper 60’s, we spent most of the daylight hours playing, having picnics and going for walks. I put laundry and cleaning on hold, because I knew winter was coming. Here are the girls, geared up for an afternoon walk:
The summer weather is over, and winter is here. We don’t quite have enough snow to build a snowman, but the girls are eagerly awaiting a couple more inches of packing snow.
Savannah is nearing 9 months now. She has been army crawling for about two months and occasionally takes a couple crawling steps on her hands and knees. She can get where she wants to go pretty quickly! Savannah’s words so far are “mama,” “dada” and “more,” and she does a little bit of sign language. Here’s a picture of the pretty girl:
Madeline is our fun-loving middle girl. She enjoys life, wears ballerina dresses, and carries princesses with her everywhere. She also likes holding Savannah. Spending time alone with Madeline is delightful. I cherish those moments!
Kayla is the type of child who, if you give her a spare moment, creates some sort of imaginary world for play. I definitely support and encourage her imagination. However, I’ve discovered that if I want to do some sort of learning activity with Kayla, I have to be very careful of “transition times.” Before I know it Kayla has entered her own little world, and it’s tough to bring her back to reality! She and I work together to find the balance she needs. She’s super creative, and she’s a great reader, too. I can’t believe the stories she is already reading as we work on phonics together.
Stay tuned for more news from our family …
If you’re a woman and you know me well, I’ve probably recommended one of my favorite blogs in the world to you: http://girltalk.blogs.com/girltalk/
If you read the post for today, you will find a suggestion sent in by a reader named Jen … okay, yes, that’s me. So check it out! And if you’re married, go do something good for your husband.
My little artist, Kayla, drew this picture last week. This is Caleb and his family, along with Joshua and his sisters. Caleb and Joshua are boys at church who are also the main characters of most stories in the Kerr Home. As Madeline calls them, “Cay-wub and Gosh-u-wub.”
left to right: Mrs. Ericka holding Ben, Caleb holding Klara, Joshua holding Gracie, Rebekah, Mr. Matt, Ariel.
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 
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