Lake House and Family

Early this summer we were blessed enough to enjoy a week at a lake house in Benton Harbor. The place was beautiful, but the thing that really set the week over the top was the company. The only way it could of been better is if Jeremy's youngest sister and her husband would have also been able to join us. Lucky, for us we got to visit them in Colorado a few weeks later - don't worry, there will be a blog post ;).

I already have three sisters who I consider friends, so I don't understand how I got so lucky to also have three sister-in-laws who I think the world of. All of them are smart, considerate, and generous. We planned this get together to celebrate Heidi being done with her surgical vet residence. Vet school plus surgical residence means sacrifice, and sadly one result was that we didn't get to see her nearly as much as we'd like. 

Above she's showing the kids some of the operations she's done - they are pretty impressive and some them (turtle, snake, etc) are a little out of the box. The week was about celebrating her and giving her a chance to relax. However, she and her husband Colby are such servants that they ended up preparing almost all of the meals and taking care of most the clean-up too. Boy, do they have skills! I am not the healthiest cook...sadly, I love me some sugar...whereas Colby and Heidi pretty much always eat paleo and have done a couple Whole 30s in the past. Jer and I were pretty convinced that we'd never join that band wagon. After eating their "healthy" food, though, and hearing them talk so passionately about the difference whole food is making in their lives we've decided we are going to give it a try in September. 

 

Even more than that, I love getting to call Jeremy's sisters my sisters, I love that my kids get to call them aunts and their equally amazing husbands, uncles. It's such a gift when you have amazing people pouring into your children. 

The kiddos also have some pretty sweet cousins. It's so much fun to watch their love for each other grow. 

Maca's in charge of the matching pajamas. I think she does a great job! I hope these kiddos will always be up for wearing them. 

Jeremy has told me that his mom had three main goals when homeschooling her children: they would love books, know how to swim, and learn to play the piano. She succeeded in these goals with all her children and it looks like, at least in 1st goal, her grandkids will also be following suit. 

There were so many great things about the lake house property but the sunsets were over the top. I couldn't help but take pictures every. single. evening.

It was so hard to leave at the end of week. It is also hard to put all the joy we had into one blog post, so you can expect another one soon with some pictures of all fun we had on the beach.