Our little family "escapes" together

This past weekend we took advantage of my last little bit of time off work and made the trip up to Illinois to introduce Katie to one of her Great-Grandmas. It was a beautiful drive through Indiana and Illinois in the prime of the fall leaves, and it was nice for us to just get away for a few days before "real life" starts up again.

We spent some good time with Tim's Grandma Girdler, and we got to see Aunt Janice and then stay with his cousin Justin, who's living in Grandma's house now. That was the first time I'd been to see the family in Illinois, so we also spent some of our visit driving around so Tim could show me the various places he had such fond memories of from childhood.

Grandma was so surprised and happy to see us! She said that she couldn't believe we would take time to come up there and let her see the baby. She loved to hold her and watch all her funny little faces and movements, but she was convinced she kept making the baby cry. Finally, we got some really sweet pictures of Great-Grandma with Katie -- pictures that we know Grandma will cherish and that we can show Katie when she's older to remind her of how much she is loved. We would have loved to have been there with Tim's mom and dad so we could have taken a picture with all 4 generations!

We had some down-time at the house that Saturday morning, so we took some pictures of Katie to put next to her hospital pictures so we could see how she has changed since she was first born. By far, the cutest picture of the morning, though, was one we snapped while Katie was sleeping on Tim while he sat in a chair in the living room -- she was just so comfortable, arms flailed out to her sides, so content and so safe.

We took our time coming home on Sunday, enjoying the time we could spend together, as our own little family. There was a part of us that wanted to stay gone, to not come back to our daily grind, but we know that for now, we are living where God has seen fit to place us -- we are serving Him, and we really do love the life He has blessed us with. Every day there are new blessings for which to be thankful, and our little trip was one of those things.