Every year, since before I was born, my entire family spends a week at Gull Lake Ministries.
It was my favorite place to be growing up. I still love going, but vacation is a little different when you are chasing around a toddler.
Less tanning by the lake and more running around the playground.
But I still love it.
It's such a great week to spend time with family, eat amazing food, and grow closer to the Lord.
The week was a little rough for me because we were planning on telling my family about our pregnancy while we were there, but instead I spent the week still grieving with the miscarriage.
While we were there I found myself getting all sentimental about when we were there last year and just how much Ellie has grown and how things have changed.
What a difference a year makes!
We stayed in the same condo this year, but we had the upstairs. The kitchen was a "kitchenette" so we didn't have a stove. So we had a lot of delicious sandwiches for lunch! But Lord knows we weren't hurting on the snack front. I brought 2 coffee cakes and some chocolate peanut-butter bars, we had 6 bags of assorted chex-mix, about 2 batches of cookies, puppy chow, 3 bags of chips, and some blueberry muffins. I'm pretty sure nobody lost weight that week.
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| I swear the house isn't shifting, evidently I have some shaky hands. |
This year the week went by so fast. Normally Saturday, Sunday, and Monday go by pretty slow and then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday fly by. But this year the whole wee was a blur.
Enter photo dump
The girls were obsessed with standing over the vents and playing in the curtains.
Ellie had so much fun at the splash pad. She has the best daddy ever!
One of the theme dinner nights was "Take me out to the ball game" We of course had to support out Detroit Tigers and Ellie and Jackson had the same t-shirt on. I told them to stand next to each other and this is what they did. I die. I kept saying "Leah, no Lucy, No Leah, GAH-ELLIE stand next to Jackson!!!" With 4 little girls in one house we could never get their names right!
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| The little girls. Obviously they were super cooperative for their group photo. The last night was the "Stars and Stripes Carnival" We made tutu's for all the girls to wear.  |
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| Cousins in the bounce house |
Our last day Ellie woke up from her nap with a fever. We brought her out to the living room and she just laid down on the ground. Mike and I just looked at each other in shock. She never lays down anywhere. She is always so busy. So we knew that she really wasn't feeling well. We gave her some motrin, before we took 100 pictures to document her actually sitting still, and she perked back up in no time. (We took her to the Dr's last Friday and she ended up having an ear infection and a respiratory infection. Poor sweet girl.)
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| We brought out all her animals for her to snuggle with. |
I swear we haven't converted, that is not a bindi on Ellie's head.
Before we left for vacation Ellie had a spot on her head that she would.not.stop.picking at. It was driving me crazy. She would leave it alone during the day but the when we put her down to sleep she would just lay there and pick, pick, pick. It was driving me crazy. And I didn't want her to end up with a scar. I didn't want to put a band-aid on it because I was afraid that she would pick it off and eat it. We tried a band-aid during one nap and when she woke up it was gone. I thought Oh boy, we're going to find that in her diaper later. Luckily we found it on her blanket, which happened every.single.time we put her down. But it did end up helping her head heal. But it didn't look very cute in pictures.
All in all we had an amazing week. We made memories that we will cherish forever.
