Northwoods

 The Northwoods

Where do I even start. We are from a large family with not a lot of money growing up. We played outside a lot. We didn't take elaborate vacations. I am pretty sure I didn't even know Disney was a land you could go to. There was a place though, that was magical. This place had no television, no thrill rides, no characters, or anything fancy. In fact we loved to drive down the road at night, turn the car lights off and just marvel at the darkness and the stars. We fished, we played in the dirt, we went on boat rides, and on rainy days we played in the tiny cabin, or begged our mom to let us swim anyways. In this magical place my grandpa would swim to the floating raft (and carry us over the weedy parts) so we could jump off over and over again. My dad was a workaholic at home, but in this place he fished and he laughed and he played with us. He wasn't too tired to listen to our crazy stories. In fact he would designate one day a week to take all the girls out fishing; looking back on it we know he wanted to rip his hair out, but he smiled and said, "just a second sweetie" as he untangled, re-hooked, wormed our hooks, and fixed someone's pole. When we got one... well that was just about the most alive moment I have ever seen my dad. His face lit up and you would have thought we won some sort of lottery. He was in his element and in return this place had a sparkle to all of us. We lost our dad a year ago as many of you know, and our family is still healing. We thought what better place to heal than the Northwoods. So we did it, we found a massive cabin that held all 16 of us (yes it was tight) but we tend to congregate in small rooms with a bag of chips and salsa anyways. Pulling up the the area was heavy, there was a smile missing from our trip. He was with us though, I think we all felt him that week.

The week started out a little rough for me as I spent the second night in the hospital with renal failure, massive kidney stones, and was in active labor because of the pain. I thought for sure this little peanut was coming and the Northwoods was going to have another reason for being special. :) But my body had another thing planned. One 8 inch stent later I was able to go home the next day, but a lot of my week was spent recovering so I don't have nearly as many pictures as I would like, but I wouldn't trade the week with my beautiful family for anything. These people are seriously wonderful. Thank you to them for taking care of me and making sure Ryder always had what he needed. Miss you all and looking forward to our next Northwoods adventure together.