Phil and Helaine (&Sota)

So, back to our trip....after the youth retreat in Wisconsin that Matthew spoke at, we traveled with Helaine and Phil to their house in Minnesota. We were able to stay for a week, visiting and hanging out together which was sooooo nice! Their house fit 7 extra people without too much trouble and we enjoyed spending our days just being together or braving the cold and going on different outings.

One of the favorite things for all 4 youngest kids was this....Uncle Phil pulled out a big bucket full of enough Lego to keep everybody happy and busy for hours=)

We did play quite a few games over the course of our time there, sometimes all together and sometimes just the 4 grown ups after we sent the kids to bed.

Another thing that happened when we were up there was that Matthew was able to work for one of the families in the church there putting in a tile shower for them. It was just another way that God took care of us on the trip. We were also invited out to several peoples houses and had a good time getting to know some of the church family there at Grace and Truth, Phil and Helaine's church.

For example, Uncle Jack invited all our family over for an afternoon in which we enjoyed some snowmobiling, played some games, got a tour of the meat shop, went sledding, and had a yummy supper! As I mentioned before it was COLD for the whole time we were up there and only very rarely did the thermometer make it up above zero! So, as enjoyable as the snowmobiling was, it was quite short lived! I didn't take many pictures that day as it was too cold to have the camera outside for very long at all.That being said, one of the kids favorite things about being up there was all the sledding they got to do. Literally one block away from Helaine's house there's a bit of a park that had a super hill for sledding. One afternoon, while it hovered around -12 to -20, Zach and Logan spent 3 straight hours sledding.....!!! Alana was there for 2 of those hours - I went for about 15 minutes, long enough to snap some pictures and that was enough for me!

Zach hitting the jump=)

Another fun thing that the boys were able to do was to play some hockey. After prayer meeting on Wednesday night some guys got together, and girls too for that matter, and played at the rink close to the church. Matthew and Zach were lent some skates while Logan just ran around and played. Once again, Helaine and I braved the cold for about 20 min. to go take some pictures. We took Sota with us=)

The pics pretty much all turned out like this - between the combination of it being dark outside and the speed of the players (ok, the speed of some of the players) I didn't really get any good shots. It made me wish we lived around something....anything....where my kids, the boys especially, could be a part of sports like this and have more friends to do fun things with.

Matthew, being the native Mainer that he is, loved all this cold weather stuff! Another treat for him and Zach was that they were able to spend an afternoon ice fishing with a gentleman from the church. They noticed some similarities and differences between Minnesota ice fishing and our ice fishing in Maine...it was different in that they sat in the ice house the whole time since the holes were inside and not the tip-ups, and the same in that they still didn't catch anything=)

And yet another thing that Phil and Helaine lined up for us was to go swimming. We were able to go to a beautiful resort pool (thanks to knowing someone on the 'inside') and spend about an hour and half in the pool just the nine of us! From the pool you could look out the many windows and see the skiers and snowboarders coming down the slopes just a little ways away. Jesse was much easier to handle than his usual 'pool self' due to the rather large bump he received on the back of his head from our last pool experience on our trip out to WI/MN.We enjoyed the hot tub and some keep away before we headed home to some great stir-fry! Now that I am typing this all out I realized all the other things I wish I'd taken pictures of....more of Helaine and I, the kids with their auntie and uncle, Helaine and Phil by themselves....Oh well, maybe soon we'll get together again=) It really was such a neat and refreshing break to spend some time together with family - whether it was just Helaine and I getting to go on a quick trip just the two of us to Target, or taking all the kids to the library (many, many times=), or watching a movie in the evening! The only thing that could have improved it would have been to have ALL our family there...maybe next time!