A Week Away…

Our family spent the past week away from home for the most part. Just an hour away, but it seemed like so far! The first snow of the year came very early and hit harder than anyone expected, with power outages greater than Hurricane Katrina, and tree damage greater than what we experienced from Hurricane Irene just two months ago.

We waited eight days for the power to come back on at our house, and were blessed enough to have my husband’s parents welcome us in the meantime! Schools cancelled for the entire week (some longer than that!), so April vacation for schools in our area is most likely gone – I’m more than a little bummed, as we’d hoped to travel to see relatives next spring during my husband’s break. But… such is life!

A week away gave us time to hang around and relax, have no agenda, and spend lots of time with family and even some friends that dropped by! I loved that my son got to spend the entire week with his Mima and PopPop – he doesn’t get to see them enough, so this week was a treat!

After a week away, he knows all about “PopPop’s chair” and his “cousins!” (his favorite new word). He spent most of his time in the family room driving cars around the coffee table, through Mega Blok “tunnels” or “marching” around the border of the rug.

A week away… and although our life got put on hold, his certainly did not! He also got to play in the snow (which he insists is “green”), sled down the hill, play with his Auntie Suzy’s doggies Kurtis and Cole (and he can say their names!).

There was a visit to the police station, a ride on the carousel at the mall, and plenty of cookies from Mima! I even got to work on a fun Christmas craft and I’m almost finished! (more on this in December!)

I love how much his vocabulary has grown from being in a whole house-ful of family for a week! He’s always been a talker, very verbal, but this week he started really developing his sentence structure!

He’s really quite the self-assured toddler, happily watching the song service at church or playing with “kids” in the nursery.

After a week away, my refrigerator is exceptionally clean (there’s a plus!), my freezer is super-duper organized, and I appreciate hot water, heat, and lights more than ever! It was an unexpected “vacation” but we made the best of it, and had a good time!

Have you ever had major unexpected changes to your plans as a family? How did it work out?