Real Life: We call it "MACSA Weekend"!

We are back to good health!!! I am so thankful for God's touch on us and for His healing power!

We are also back from spending the weekend at the cabin with my extended family! Last week, was a short week for school. The kids only had school on Monday and Tuesday. Our teachers had MACSA and so the kids had off.

It's been a tradition the past few years to take this time 'off of school' to spend at the mountains with my family. Everyone packed up Thursday night and headed for the three hour drive to the tiny cabin in the woods! We decided to wait till Friday morning to head to the cabin. (I don't ever mind missing out on the cold cabin and bug clean up! It's always necessary when the first people arrive! :) ) No joke ... that first night, my sister woke up during the middle of the night with a mouse scratching on her head. It totally freaked her out and the bedroom got a cleaning out the next day! Two mouse nests were in one of the bedroom drawers! Not anymore! We are all dreaming of a nice, big, new cabin ... someday! :)

Hadassah woke up Friday morning feeling better. She seriously was laying on the couch all week long with a nasty cold and flu symptoms. One huge problem with the flu is that it usually spreads like wild fire to the rest of the family. I woke up feeling achy and the feeling of a major cold coming on! Mike and I packed everything in our red van and after dropping Ginger off at Sadie's (Thanks lady!!! You are the best!!!), we were off to the cabin too!

The kids were so excited to get there! Spending the whole weekend with their cousins is a 'dream come true'!

Breakfast ... a huge breakfast every morning is the start of a good day!!! The early birds started with cereal and then the cooked foods were served at 10 AM.

If the girls think that maybe I will put a picture of them on my blog, they smile big! Don't you love Megan's milk mustache? Shakia makes the funniest faces!!! She can 'wink'! For real! It's so cute! Here though she's giving me a funny camera face!

Here are the younger girls lined up with their toys! The farm was the toy, that if it was laid down and someone else grabbed it ... too bad for you. The blue animal noise toy only worked when it felt like it. Shakia was entertained with a empty water bottle and cap. :)

Morgan and Hadassah never got dressed out of the pj's. For ... it is the cabin in the hills right? Why get dressed in normal clothes? (Then again, pj's are normal for some of us! :) )

Here's my sweetie ... She loved the outdoors and seeing the deer!!! Time with Daddy is important to her and she got lots of it all weekend!

The boys spent some time on the iPad! We played lots of games all weekend long though. "Golf", "Rummio" and "Scum"!!!

My brother, LaVern, has a looooonnngg story about this buck he finally got dead! He shot the deer on Saturday afternoon but it never actually fell over and died till Sunday afternoon. He knew he hit the deer and later that night, all the guys helped look for him. Sunday morning, Mike and Ashlyn went for a walk and kicked up this same, injured five point. All the guys went out to track it down but every time they got close enough for another arrow shot ... they missed or didn't get a good enough shot to put it down. They worked hard climbing the steep mountains after the deer. They finally came in for breakfast and then back out in the woods at lunch to find this buck. LaVern finally was able to tag him late Sunday afternoon! Not the biggest rack ... but the biggest buck story ever to be told! It grand totalled 14 arrows (some hit and some missed) to get this deer to the cart! Good job, LaVern (and all those who helped kill this deer!)! :)

Matthew taking a camera moment with the deer for fun!