Wisconsin Dells!

A couple of weeks ago we got to go to Wisconsin Dells for a little reunion with great friends and a mini family vacation. It was so much fun! We left Friday night and stayed with Carl's parents on the way through. We had a great time visiting and playing cards with them and Tyler got lots of love!

Saturday we headed to the Dells where we stayed at Wilderness on the Lake. We were there with some of my closest friends from college and their husbands/boyfriends. Very fun! We had a great time catching up and hanging out and playing at the waterparks. We stayed in a beautiful condo with a gorgeous lakeside view. It was incredible. I think I could have moved there. Seriously.

On Sunday after some more waterpark adventures, everyone else headed home and we moved to a normal hotel room at the Wilderness.

Our sweet son did not exactly follow our plans for sleeping that weekend, so that threw us off a little. He didn't sleep for any of the car rides until maybe the last half hour on the way there. Then it took him 2 hours to fall asleep Saturday night, he woke up 3 hours early, and he didn't take a morning nap on Sunday! The boy was exhausted. So for that first day, he was a little tentative in the water and stared off into space a lot. Thankfully, there was enough going on to distract him, that he wasn't acting crabby, just mellow. Finally, Sunday afternoon he fell asleep in the tube with me, floating around the lazy river. So we just went around and around and around until he had a decent nap. It was so sweet. :-) And for the rest of that night and all day Monday, he was in his element. He loved the water park! It was so much fun to watch him play and explore in the water. None of us wanted to leave.


Of course we took a few pictures of our adventures.

Crazy Hair Day

If you've seen Tyler in the last few weeks, you know how badly he needed a haircut. We finally got it done last week. It was his second haircut, but the first one at home. We had a little bit of fun with it. :-)

Doesn't he look about half a year older with his big boy hair cut?

42 Days

I wrote about our lovely water problems in our basement awhile ago. Finally, after 42 days, we got our family room back. Because of the broken pipe, we had water all over our family room, which meant we had to have sheet rock cut out and replaced, the walls and ceiling painted, and the carpet replaced. The first steps happened pretty quickly, but the carpet took forever. We kind of had to get used to living without our entire basement, because all the furniture was piled up in the other rooms. Our family room had a cement floor with nail strips all around the edge for over a month! We are all lucky we didn't step on any. It was hard to not be able to bring Tyler downstairs at all, but it wasn't safe for him. So needless to say, 42 days later, we were very excited! The carpet was put in about a week and a half ago. Tyler and I had to stay home all day while it was happening. And that turned out to be great. It was a little rainy out anyway and Tyler was fascinated by everything going on. This is how we spent almost every minute he was awake.

The carpet guys had pretty loud music, so there was a lot of dancing too! It was a pretty fun day. And at the end of it, we had a carpeted, and usable basement! We still have to hang things back up on the walls, but at least we have our room back!

Tyler was so excited when the door opened up and he could actually go down to look at it. He learned how to go up the stairs right after Thanksgiving, but he hadn't learned to go down them yet. He would just try to walk right off, with no fear or caution. We've tried to teach him to slide down, but he was 100% non-interested. He wanted to walk down like we walked down. Which meant our stairs were always off limits. But the day we got our carpet in, that all changed. It was like a whole new world opened up for him.

What a champ.

This is all he wants to do now. The only thing he wants to use his toys for is to throw them down the stairs. He goes up and down over and over again until we tell him he has to do something else. It is easily his favorite thing to do. Every day a whole new collection of toys migrates from the living room upstairs to the bottom of the stairs in the family room. He has a bunch of farm and alphabet magnets that we keep in a little basket in the kitchen and I think he could spend hours throwing them down over and over again.

Let The Bike Rides Begin!

Awhile back we were given some money to use for something for Tyler. We saved it for spring so that we could get something for outside and we decided to use on a bike trailer.

I was incredibly excited about this idea. Really excited. I couldn't wait for the big box to show up at our door!

The funny thing is I didn't really ride my bike all that much before. But now that I'm home and go for a lot of walks I was ready for something different. And there are a lot of parks around our house, but we don't go to most of them because they are a little too far to walk to. But not too far to bike!

Anyway, our bike trailer finally came. And like I said, I was pretty excited. Like a little kid.

Tyler was less excited.

He kind of just puts up with it.

Clearly he wasn't catching on to my excitement.

Actually, he likes the bike trailer. And he doesn't mind the helmet. He just doesn't like them together. I brought him to the park across the street without his helmet once and he was happy as a little lark. And he walks over and pulls his helmet out of the trailer often when it's parked in the garage. This morning Carl put it on him and he walked around playing with his helmet on for awhile. He didn't try to take it off or complain even once. It's just the combination of the trailer and helmet that he doesn't love. But he will get there, right? I mean what's not to love?

He was a big fan of the box! That has to count for something.

It has definitely brought on a new interest in bikes. He points them out everywhere now! In books and in real life.

For now we take short rides to the park right by our house. But pretty soon we will be riding all over town!  I have visions of riding to the pool, the farmer's market, Caribou and all kinds of parks this summer. Maybe even garage sales. It's going to be fantastic! And if I fill the trailer with balls, dinosaurs and crackers, I just know Tyler will love it too. :-)

Because I Exist

Last week was my last week of MOPS for the year. The speaker's name was Jill Talents and she said something that I don't think I will ever forget. She summed up exactly how I have felt, but put it into better words than I could of. She painted a beautiful picture of God's love for us.

She described the love a parent feels for their newborn baby. You are handed that baby that you have dreamed about and waited for and you are immediately in love. I can't even describe that feeling of love. But I know that Tyler didn't do anything to earn it. He didn't work for it, he didn't perform for it, he didn't try to meet any expectations. He wasn't even dressed yet. I loved him indescribable amounts just because he existed and because he was mine.

Jill talked about those things, how all our babies had to do was exist and she compared that to God's love. Amazing. I think every Christian struggles at some point with feeling inadequate. With feeling like we're not good enough or deserving of God' love. And the truth is, we're not. We sin continually. But God loves us not for what we've done to earn it, but because we exist and because we are His.

There is nothing that Tyler could do that would cause me to stop loving him. He is and always will be my baby, my son. He doesn't always listen to me, in fact he seems to find a thrill in sneaking into places he knows he's not supposed to be. But it doesn't matter. I love him anyway. And throughout his life, he will make mistakes, he will disobey me and he will probably even frustrate me. But I will never stop loving him. I will only love him more each day.

I continually fall short, but God loves me anyway. With an unconditional love that is more than I can even imagine. And no matter what I do, no matter how many mistakes I make, He will continue to love me because I am his daughter.

Isn't that comforting? I've always heard God's love for me compared to the love of a Father for his child. And thankfully I have an amazing dad, so I always thought I understood what that meant. I knew how much my dad loves me. But now that I have a child of my own and I have experienced that love for him myself, I understand it so much more. I still probably can't begin to understand the depths of God's love, but I think this paints a pretty amazing picture and gives us just a glimpse into his heart.