Faith Quest and Beyond

Hi everyone!
We need to write more, so here we go:)
Faith Quest was AWESOME this year! Mara Brown was there and helped me with Macy so I was actually able to semi-participate. We spent a lot of time with Jonathan Thomas' family and it was so fun to get to know Dawnette and the kids better. It actually inspired me to consider having our kids further apart. There's something so cool about the idea of having one-on-one time with each kid because the other ones are older. Thinking about it...These bottom two pictures are from Faith Quest. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures with Tim this year, but this is Macy and me during worship and Macy with Anaiah...so sweet! The top two pictures are of Macy doing some of her favorite things right now - talking on her Elmo phone and kissing her baby doll.
Anyway, Faith Quest rocked. Macy had a fantastic time in the mud. It rained a lot and the culmination of lots of people and hours in the damp cold left Macy sick. It didn't start at first. She was teething when we were there - yeah, don't recommend teething while traveling. But I think her immune system was in a weakened state because of that and so she caught croup, of all things. You want to know how I identified it?!?! Yes, Anne of Green Gables. Not just a kids movie now, is it?!?!
It took a few days for it to fully manifest itself so went ahead with our "retreat" day after Faith Quest. We're going on a cruise in January, so we didn't want to spend money to take a little retreat away from home. We dropped Macy off at the Sellers' for day and night (thank you!) and just spent 24 hours on our own. Every time it's just me and Tim (especially when it's more than just a few hours) I am reminded of how much fun we have together! It's such a blessing to me because sometimes the daily grind is just that. Not super magical. But 24 hours alone with your husband - magical. We went into Portland and checked out Bunk Sandwiches...so yummy. We had seen it on the Food Network. We loved it and they had really fun soda. Then we headed over to Powell's and we each got a new book, even one for Mace. We bought Beatles' Rockband and rocked out. So fun.
We slept in the next morning (so exhausted!) and picked up Mace. She had a cough and by that night we were in Urgent Care. Got her drugged and spent the next several days keeping her inside and she got better quickly. She rocks. But man, when you don't know what's wrong with your kid, it's terrifying. I seriously only got through the "unknown" part of it by reciting Scripture. Once we knew what it was and read up on it, we were cool. But there's something to be said for having a sick kid and not knowing what to do to help them. Super scary. My heart aches for people who know the truth of that statement a lot more than we do.
We've settled into our fall routine now. It's wonderful to have a schedule. I'm really enjoying being involved in all our church activities, especially the MOMS group and our Women of the Word group.