Summer Blessings

We finally got our mini-vacation in Erie: two nights and most of three days of wonderful outdoor time. How grateful we were for the gift that enabled us to go.

We stayed in a very small, rustic cabin in a campground in a rural area about 20 minutes from the peninsula. I laughed at the memories that cabin brought back of my years as a camper and especially as a camp counselor. The sweet girl saw her first granddaddy longlegs, tasted her first toasted marshmallows (well, the first ones not toasted over the blue gas flame on our oven burner) and saw thousands of stars.

That late night of incredible stars was perhaps the highlight of the trip for her Dad and me...after a long day on the shore by Lake Erie, to come back to the cabin and find the sky above us dark and cloudless and just awash with more stars than either of us had seen in years, more stars than we'd ever been able to show our little girl before. You could even see the slight, silvery band of the Milky Way. We wrapped the sweet girl up in her Daddy's sweatshirt (it was much colder than we anticipated in the evenings!) which looked like a long dress on her, and we all just marveled over those stars, while listening to the peeping of frogs across the field. D. and I saw two shooting stars, which S. just missed.

I knew I was green-hungry, but hadn't realized how star-starved I was. Even the lights of a small city really drown them out. It's comforting to remember anew that they're there, bright and glittering tokens of God's splendor and goodness.

The shore was just lovely. So much stress and tension we've had this year, and somehow, in God's goodness, we were able to lay it all aside for those two days and just soak up the sounds of wind and waves. The first evening on the beach was misty and gray, the first full day there was cloudy and a bit chilly, a lovely mix of blue and gray (see photo above!) and the final day was hot and clear, with an almost cloudless blue sky, D's favorite kind of beach day. We loved the variety.

And the afternoon we arrived, we were able to meet up with Erin (dear friend and faithful blog reader!) and her parents, who treated us to an afternoon at the Erie zoo. The sweet girl loved the huge tortoise, her dad loved the red pandas, and I felt especially fond of the two very lovey-dovey giraffes who kept hugging each other with their slender necks. Thank you, Erin and family, for a terrific afternoon!