Vacay?!?

Note: I wrote this before Riley's accident. I had planned to publish it Friday night. So here, finally, is a post about our memorable vacation. ;)

So. We have recovered from our "Vacation".

 I've debated, "Do I share the nitty gritty details of our trip?"
(no pun intended, but holy batman, we had sand in our teeth on the drive home...very nitty gritty.)

Or "Should I leave out the bad parts?"(Ever seen a four year old have a panic attack? NOT pretty!)

Or "should I just pretend like everything was rainbows and unicorns and post a slideshow of pictures?"

Hmm.

I suppose in life we could focus on the crappy stuff. But everyone has to deal with that. I've learned through these struggles we've been through, that everyone is dealing with something.

 I can focus on the hard stuff.

Or I can say, forget it. And treasure the good moments.

We did have good moments of our vacation.

We might of fled to the pristine beaches with full abandon.

 Because the campsite only made it seem like a hellish experience.

And like only those beautiful beaches can do, they washed away all the ugly.

The waves brought peace. And in those moments life was magical.

At one point I said. "Who needs a campsite, lets just sleep out here!?". I realize I was only saying that because I knew as soon as we returned to the campsite, mosquitoes, tears, arguing, dogs barking, and raccoon's (oh,the raccoon's!)  would reign down their terror and I'd be begging to hang a white flag and say
 "We give up!", pack our van and get the heck out of dodge.

But, we stuck it out. Sand storm, raccoon's, billions of mosquitoes, sunburns and swollen eyes, panic attacks and all.

 And the only way we were able to is because of this:

Yes. It was this glorious. It looked as though the ocean was fed right from the heavens. 

A few of my favorite memories of our trip were watching our children play sweetly together. Riley always wanting to hold my hand as we walked out onto the beach. Hearing their delight as yet another big wave came that they could ride to the shore. Elliott seeing his name written in the sand (by Clara) He looked at me and said: "Who wrote this?"...I said very seriously: "Oh, I don't know, it was here when we got here, I think someone is in love with you Elliott". He looked at me in shock, completely believed me, and ran to everyone to tell them "GUYS! You won't believe it! Someone is in LOVE with ME!". We laughed so hard. Watching Jackson body surf for the first time, and catching on like a pro. Me almost stepping on a pretty good size sand crab. Reading bible stories by flashlight. Hearing the waves hit the shore, and my four little's snoring, was music to my ears. A branch fell out of a tree (like 60 feet up) and landed RIGHT on Brandon's foot. Elliott was inches away. If it had hit him in the head, surely we would have ended up in the ER. We were SO thankful...and had a good laugh after the fact. Only on our camping trip.I told you the campsite was evil. Thankfully his foot was fine. And we fled to the beach asap before another branch fell and impaled someone.

So here you go, a slideshow of pictures! Yes, I am choosing to forget the not so lovely parts of our vacation and highlight the beautifully magical times. 

Thank you for your prayers for our Riley. He is still on pain medication, and has labs tomorrow 

(Tuesday at 10am to be exact). Keep praying his hemoglobin numbers are up! Baby boy lost quite a bit of his own blood, and it's taking longer than expected for his numbers to come up.