Five Days Ago . . .

A Boy had his 14th birthday!

And our house and many, many other houses had no power.

We lost it on Wednesday, this was Friday.

But, no matter...a boy still had his birthday!

I grabbed Harrison from school lunch this year, just as I did last year. Pretty much going to be happening every year I get the chance now. (-: But, recall...power was out everywhere so our streak of birthday lunches at Olgas ended as they had NO POWER, oy!  We ended up at Mark's Coney Island and I'm sorry but a gyro at a coney island is pretty darn tasty too.

Then, still with no power at the house he had a basketball tournament all weekend.  Didn't end up on top at the end but so awesome to have seen this boy develop over his school and then a semi-travel team season.  He is amazing to watch on the courts.

Still with no power...oh no, wait...power came on about five hours before this picture...Sunday afternoon around 12:30p.m. is when my neighbor Lyle called while I was court side saying it looked like my furnace was up and running, whoo-hoo! We were beyond blessed that the basketball tournament was five minutes from my folks house so we camped out there Fri-Sunday...I'm thinking the weekend camping-out-theres with all the kids might need to happen more than just during power outages, what a treat, wow!

We ended the weekend and basketball games with a batch of fried up chicken legs, thawed from my powerless freezer (we had a big meat eating party on Friday at the folks with all the sibs as I emptied out my non-generator-powered freezer (sent fridge food over on Weds), and an ice-cream cake and a photo-bombing, much-loved seven year old sister.

Then, we headed home, loaded up the washing machine, cleaned a fridge with a bunch of wet, gooey, who knows what and unbeknownst to me at the time waited for the 10 year old to begin throwing up in the middle of the night...

Yep.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, Harrison. May He let his face shine down upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give. you. peace.

Amen

Our sledding hill . . .

Sleeping Bear Dunes!

The approach was a little lackluster this year, being the first time in seven years to not have any snow and about 45 degree temps.

One friend even figured he'd take his shoes off, I mean, it's sand for heaven's sake, that's what you do when hiking up a sand dune I suppose...

Nope, no snow, not over any of the dunes no matter how hard we looked.

But, smiles were still had!

Frisbee was even played.

And with a shorter time at the dunes we decided to add in a hike up the Empire Bluff where you can see the ol' sleeping bear at the tip of the lake shore.

It wasn't an easy trip to take my friends because we were missing our Ben of course, so I was actually kind of glad for a very different weekend this year. Grateful for His loving care while moving through these difficult firsts.

This was last year, which never got posted.

That's our Ben all the way down the big ol' hill.

The loss is beyond profound but the faith is strong which is really the only thing a mother's heart can cling to during such times. 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.