Summer vacations for me growing up meant either long car trips to see family out west or boating at fair field bay Arkansas. My children get to have two for one. We take long car trips to see family and go boating.
We started out Friday morning early and after seeing how stressful the drive was on Andrew we decided to get as many miles behind us while they were sleeping and ended up driving straight through. Shortly after we got there Nana & Grandaddy were taking off to the lake and they took Adam and Zachary with them. After some sleep and food we joined the rest of the crew at the lake. It was so great to see everyone. We went to the rope swing and swam. Andrew took his first swim. I was supper worried about him getting too hot and getting sunburned. He took the crazy boat ride like a champ. He is such a good baby. Zachary being exhausted from our long drive and waking up at 4:30am crashed. Everyone was amazed at how deep he could sleep. When he did wake up he played in the water with his cousins and with a family friend Brian Holmen. Something that I really like about Zach is that he gets along with everybody: boy, girl, old, young…it doesn’t matter he just goes with it. Adam mustered up the courage to jump off one of the cliffs which was a first for him. He also followed daddy around to the rope swing Adam saw a girl having trouble going off of the rope swing and announced his observation “Girls aren’t very good at this, are they dad.” That got a chuckle out of everybody. It was Josh’s favorite moment.
While we ate at the dock I laid Andrew down in a little baby thing and Harper and Chase were right there to love on their little cousin. I’ve never seen another little girl love babies like Harper loves Andrew. At every opportunity she was right by his side. She wanted to hold him, help him, love on him. It was the sweetest thing. Chase also wanted to help and love on Andrew but every time he got near Harper turned on him and hit him, and pushed him away. There were a couple of times that she even bit him but Chase never fought back. He told me several times that he loved her. Chase is quite the fearless handful but he is not a fighter.
My favorite moment was getting to see Kevin. One of the evenings I pulled him away from a movie and made him show me his mission pictures and tell me stories of his mission. Listening to his stories brought back a lot of good memories from my own mission to Japan. It was really fun getting to speak Japanese with him. It reminded me how much I used to know and how bad my Japanese has gotten. We stayed up till 3am talking and sharing stories. I loved it.
Hadley, Ben & Zachary quickly became inseparable and had a blast together. Most of the time when you hang out with someone for days on end you get a little agitated with them. I remember Kathryn and cousin Kristin at grandmother and granddad’s house, it wasn't long until they were bickering about something. But not our little ones they were pleasant to each other the whole time.
