Our delightfully long weekend was spent...

...playing with Rudd cousins...watching fireworks on a grassy hill, singing and dancing in Go-Go's downstairs, practicing for the 'cousin show' that never happened, swimming, running, playing, eating out on the deck, art fair shopping with sisters...





...and saying farewell to the 'cottage,' the beautiful old Harmson A-frame nestled into the woods by a creek...just steps away from lake Michigan. Maya and Sophie and I escaped being soaked by the annual Fourth of July water fight. I was grateful that 'nap-time' provided an excuse for me to avoid getting wet. It was far more fun watching everyone else scream and surprise each other with balloons, water-guns and buckets of water.

The water fight of 2005
(including smaller versions of Emma, Liam, Jaelyn, & Addison)

2008

The chaos of chasing a silly two-year old, calming and feeding and diapering a 3-month old, and keeping track of all the 'stuff' that accompanies these tiny people provided a welcome distraction from the sadness of saying good-bye to this perfect place.
Even I have accumulated eleven years of memories here. But for Ryan, I know, this is the place of his childhood memories...snowy Christmases, hot mosquito-y summers playing by the creek, riding down an impossibly steep wooded hill in a wagon?, playing with cousins, visiting his Grandma and Grandpa...