Forest Lakes 2015

Our weekend trip to Forest Lakes this summer was an absolute blast. The second we got to the cabin, Blake was attached to his Opa! They immediately went to the garden where Opa showed him some different vegetables! (Opa pretended to pick this watermelon but he had actually bought it from the local store and put it under the bush for Blake to see! Ha!)

We took many golf cart rides around the block. Here Kade and I are cuddling in the back on our way to pick some eggs from someone who has chickens. Blake broke a couple as he threw them into the basket. He always cracks his hard boiled eggs at home, so he didn't realize he needed to be careful. I should have warned him! 

Blake shocked me with how well he played with these little people-animals and tree house. I have never seen his imagination so great. Its coming! 

Leave it to Kade to find the little blue rocks! Both boys enjoyed finding and playing with there. Blake even had 5 of them in his bed at night one evening. 

We went mushroom hunting in the forest during Kade's nap one afternoon. Blake kept looking for sticks and was excited to show us the ones he would find which were ALL OVER! It was cute though! 

Blake and I shared a bed - for the first time! I never knew he was such a wiggle worm and even talked in his sleep. So crazy for a kid who is in speech therapy. Love this little guy. In this picture, he looked at me, turned around and snuggled closer. 

On the way home, we stopped by the Forest Lakes Fire Department and the boys got to see the fire trucks and ambulances. Blake loves these right now. We look for them as we drive all of the time. He was so intent on me when I was explaining what everything did. Wish we could have heard what he thought of it all, but we are learning that those thoughts may be a while in coming. We are learning to appreciate what he does share, even how small it may seem to most people. 

We loved our cabin trip and our Omi and Opa! Kade got to know them even better and we had such a memorable weekend! :) We love you, Omi and Opa! Thanks for being the best great-grandparents to my boys! They love you! 

Welcome to Holland

Kamille shared this with me at our latest coffee date. I am thankful for a friend who gets it... a friend who is walking in Holland with me. We both pray we get to Italy some day, but right now, we are stuck in Holland. And I am beginning and trying to learn how to not only adapt to Holland but to enjoy the day to day life - a life so different than I had imagined. Please take a read!

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this…

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland?" I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy.

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland. 

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley