Vacation!

We took our first real vacation in a looonnnnggg time this month! It was so fun and refreshing.

We went to Missouri with Aaron's whole family. Aaron's parents, Stephen, and Jessica were in a two bedroom cabin, and Aaron, Julia, and I were just a two minute walk from them in our own one room cabin. It wasn't your Laura Ingalls-era one bedroom cabin, no sirree. It had a bedroom area with a king size bed (felt giant compared to our queen!) and crib for Julia, living area with a couch and huge flat screen TV (which we turned on exactly once to try to distract Julia while we were studying... haha), kitchen area with a table and chair set, and a big bathroom with a ginormous Jacuzzi tub and a walk-in shower with multiple shower heads in the wall and ceiling. The cabins were climate controlled and visited by housekeeping every day. And every evening, an employee stopped by to leave us fresh ginger cookies. Yes, it was the high life.

Our log cabin.

Delicious jacuzzi waterfall... haha!

Loving the jacuzzi tub!

So comfy. Well, Julia is anyway. I'm not sure about Ernie.

Aaron's family watched Julia for a while every day so he and I could get some studying done, which was great. Otherwise, we spent time doing a lot of the activities the lodge provided. We rented a pontoon boat one day and went tubing, we played mini golf, we checked out movies from the front desk to watch back at the cabin, we went swimming, we went walking on the gorgeous grounds. We also ate... a lot. There was a coffee shop for morning frappes and pastries and an ice cream shop for afternoon frozen treats. We had dinner one evening at the fancy old house on the grounds, and otherwise ate the big cabin. Aaron's mom had picked a great menu, so between meals and snacking, we were all eating high on the hog. In the evenings, we also played a couple crazy games of Catan, that involved a lot of boisterous trading and good-spirited arguing (probably 80% of the verbiage was Stephen and me... whoops).

Boating.

Do you think they might be related?

Mini-golf.

So beautiful.

Julia Crockett.

One of the funniest moments was when we took Julia to the stables for a pony ride. She'd just woken up from a nap and was still a bit out of it, but she was talking excitedly about the horse and saying, "Neigh!" until she saw the pony, Festus. Then, she became very, very shy. We encouraged her to pat the horse, which she did. Then, we made the mistake of trying to get her to sit on the saddle (while still keeping a firm hold of her). She flipped out. She resisted strongly and started crying, hard. We told her that Festus was a very nice horse, that we weren't going to let go of her, etc. but she would have none of it. She was terrified. The young man who was going to lead the pony around kept telling her, "It's okay, sis." We tried to get her to recall her former excitement about the pony and encouraged her to pat him again, which she did very gingerly. We asked her, "You love Festus, don't you, Julia?" Through her tears, she sobbed, "I love you, Festus." Her tear stained face belied her words, I think! Needless to say, the pony ride didn't happen!*

:'-( "I love you, Festus!"

We all had a lot of fun and really enjoyed getting to spend time together.

I already miss the Jacuzzi tub ;-)

*In other funny news, I have told the Festus story a few times in front of Julia. The other morning at breakfast, out of nowhere, Julia started saying, "I love you, Festus!" in a sad voice, imitating me imitating her, and she has done so several times since. Hilarious.