September 14, 2009

Sandy Island Part 1: The Arrival

The first weekend after Labor Day Weekend is our church's annual retreat on an island in Lake Winnipesaki. Lucas and I have been 2 other years, and really cherished the time there with our church family. So, we decided this year to take the twins.

As I prepared for the trip, I felt a deeper connection with my mother. See, I always used to joke about how my mom would get ready for vacations aweek in advance. Suitcases would be laid out. Clothes to take would be picked & put in as they came through the laundry. There were lists galore. I thought my mom did it this way because she was so excited to travel that she couldn't wait to start packing. But as I started making lists and laying out clothes as they came through the laundry (a week in advance), I realized she did it out of necessity to try to be organized and make sure we had everything! I actually wish I had started earlier, and am already putting the lists together for our trip to MI for Loralee's wedding!

We stopped to feed the babies, but Allie couldn't wait to get there!

We got out the door with relatively few bumps, we made perfect time, the twins slept until we got to our first destination. We fed them their bottles and then looked for a pizza place where we could meet up with another family to eat before catching our boat. At Zacky's Pizzaria, we fed them their cereal, had our dinner with our friends (whose children the twins LOVE), and headed to meet the boat. We got the van unloaded without a problem, but the twins were starting to get grumpy (the time our boat was supposed to leave the dock was their normal bedtime. We tried to work in an extra nap to get them to the later bedtime, but that didn't go over well...).

Their first boat ride was...not as big of a deal as we thought it would be. We thought they would be so excited. They really didn't seem to care. Not at all. The biggest event of the boat ride was meeting Jo. Jo was one of the staff at the camp, and Ryan LOVED her. When she was around he couldn't stop looking at her, and she never failed to bring a smile to his face (even once when he was throwing a fit, he smiled through his screams at Jo!).


Jo & Ryan


We arrived on the island and moved into our cabin - #26 Pinewood. This cabin is generally reserved for those who have babies. However, there were 4 other families with lovies 1 or younger. But we had 2, so we got the cabin (a blessing and a curse, as you will find out in a post to come later)! We put the babies down for bed, tested to see how far our monitor reached (the Lodge - which was within seeing distance of the cabin), and ended up going to bed early because we were exhausted from the travel!
We settled into bed for our first night so excited about the weekend that was to come. Our babies' first Sandy Island!

1 comment:

Nana & Poppy said...

Not a big fan of the ...to be continued stories, I'm like Lucas I hate to wait. I was surprised to see this up so soon though, so that was exciting enough. Ryan sure is a flirt with the girls.haha I hope you guys had fun and got to relax a little. Hugs from Nana