Butterflies and rainbows: "Vacation"

When I was young, my family and my dad's side of the family (2 other families that include 7 cousins and my grandmother) went to a family resort in the woods of rural Missouri off the Meramec River for a week. They have little cottages with screened in porches where families stay, a lodge with a bunch of games, a lot of playgrounds and games and activities, plus family style meals with servers to refill drinks and food. Plus float trips daily and a heated pool. We stopped going for awhile when my siblings and I were too busy playing softball and baseball all summer, but then my parents started taking my youngest brother a few years ago.

It's a bittersweet place for me. We went when I was about 10 weeks pregnant with Olivia and made a reservation the following summer for "2 adults, 1 baby", so sure that it was a sure thing then, already. We didn't go the following summer at all. The next summer, we went with Lucas, who was only about 8 or 9 weeks old at the time, so I pretty much spent most of the time in our cottage breastfeeding or pumping.We went back this year for a full week after skipping it last year. I have a lot of memories there.

Joe was shockingly surprised that a "vacation" with a 2 year old and an 8 month old in a 1 room cottage is not very relaxing. I think it gave him a new appreciation for what my day is like while he's off at work. We were able to divide and conquer a lot, plus my parents and youngest brother and sister were there to help chase Luke around or help with the baby, so it actually was pretty relaxing for me, at least compared to a normal week when I'm on my own. I had to laugh when at one point when we were going to bed, Joe said, "This isn't vacation! This is HELL!" after an especially exhausting morning of chasing Luke all over the place. (While I was in our cottage laying in bed feeding Matthew and reading a trashy book.)

Anyway, it was mostly good. Our cottage was directly across the street from my parents' cottage, and in between us there was a nice climber with a tunnel and and wave slide. Luke woke up every morning saying "pway?" "pway?" (play). And he played his heart out. We spent many many hours sitting there watching him play and playing with him. He also carried his trains everywhere and played with them a lot. And in the lounge, he got several hours of play out of the shuffleboard table (where he unknowingly kicked my butt), and rolling the white cue ball across the pool table into the holes and then running to get the ball back provided another several hours of entertainment though that was a pain because he couldn't be 100% trusted to ROLL the cue ball. He just ran around from one place to the next, one person to the next, over and over and over. He took a good nap every day because he seriously exhausted himself though he stayed up at night later than we would have liked. Having both boys in the cottage was seriously hell on our sleep, if one went to sleep early, the other would be up late, and then the kid who slept early would wake up early and wake up the other kid. There was NO sleeping in. We were lucky when they slept past 6. Waiting for 8 am to roll around so we could go eat breakfast kind of sucked, my kids haven't slept till 8 am, like ever that I can remember.

It is nice to be home again, with internet and tv and comfortable chairs and all of the kids' stuff. Luke is going to have some serious Cobblestone withdrawal I think, though. I need a few days at home doing almost nothing to recover.

Anyway, some pictures:

If you follow the path behind my mom, that's where our cottage was. If you follow the path behind Luke, that's where their cabin was, with this play stuff right in the middle. Perfect for Luke, except he thought he would run back and forth across the path between cabins and pay no attention to running across the road which thankfully was not busy and we could hear cars coming since it was made of rock.