Family Vacation to Windermere

We had a blast with Marsha’s side of the family during our vacation to Windermere this week! All 27 of us (10 adults, 17 kids) stayed healthy and safe, despite our active, daring adventures on the ropes course, in the lake, during archery tag, etc.

Praise the Lord for family vacations!

If you’d like to see pictures from our week, you can click HERE.

Highlights from our STAYcation

We had a great time as a family this week taking “vacation” in Istanbul. Sometimes sleeping in your own bed each night makes for the most relaxing and enjoyable vacation. Still, we did our share of fun stuff, and here are a few picture highlights. To see more pictures, please click HERE.

We had a great time at Aqua Dolphin!

HOT weather made the pool great.

Ice Age 4 was a blast.

Great time watching dolphins, seals, walruses and a beluga whale.

Silas could hardly get enough of the show.

All the animals were impressive, but the dolphins were probably the highlight.

Great Times in Greece

We just returned Monday from a one-week trip to Greece, where we had a blast on our family vacation. We stayed each night at a friend’s house in Thessaloníki but spent most of the days out and about relaxing at the beach, going to a water park, hiking at Mt. Olympus, seeing ancient ruins in Philippi and Dion, going to the park, and enjoying the peace and quiet of a city much smaller than Istanbul.

We give thanks to the Lord our God for this vacation, as it was very relaxing, refreshing and peaceful. None of us was ready to return home to Istanbul, but life must continue. Each of us had our own favorite parts of the vacation:

Marsha: Hiking at Mt. Olympus and eating dinner at TGI Fridays.

Noah: Playing in the wave pool at the water park and playing with all the toys at our friend’s house.

Levi: “Going to the beach…actually, going to the park.”

Nick: Spending the day at the beach (two hours of which we had the whole beach to ourselves).

It is interesting how Noah and Levi are so easy to please. They both agreed they would have been happy to just play at the house and play at the park because everything was new and exciting to them. Marsha and I were also very content relaxing, but we did wish we could have hiked more up Mt. Olympus. Maybe someday we will return without the kids.

Overall, we were very blessed by our time in Greece. We are thankful for the beauty of God’s creation, the incredible history (both Christian and other) and the time we got to spend as a family. You can see more pictures on our photos page.