Ha Long Bay and “Thin Places”

The kids’ jaws dropped when they dropped us off at our boat…it was a beauty and had a little staff of people to take care of us for the night.

Boy oh boy.

These guys worked hard to figure out the best place we could jump from.

Because it’s a rule that when you’re on a boat, you must jump off of it (at least in Max’s rule book).

Then we went kayaking.

One of my very favorite parts of the trip.

We came across little floating villages every now and again.

Dave loved what our tour guide told us about how all the houses are single:

But they float together and tie up to each other tight when there’s a storm coming.

Isn’t that how life is?  We need to be tight-knit to weather the storms that come our way.

My favorite picture:

…on our way paddling to the pearl farm.

Love this video of Max explaining it all to Lu.

 Claire always feels compelled to do these shots:

We sat in hushed reverence as we watched the sun sink below the jagged horizon.

We got to enjoy the beach for a little bit before we got back on the boat (which is in the background below…thank you Paloma Tours!)

We had the best little swim all together as a family.

The best thing about it was the show that was put on on the beach while we were out there.  A dog caught a mouse and was playing with it while a hawk kept trying to swoop down and steal it.  And all the while monkeys were jumping from branch to branch in the trees above.  Claire declared it one of the most entertaining shows she had seen.

This is what Lu wrote about it in her journal:

After the beach we went to explore a huge cave.  The opening is in the bottom left of that mountain in the picture below:

I thought about how incredibly blessed I feel to be their mother.

I let waves of gratitude wash through me that we get to be here, right now, in this magical window of time.

Next year who knows what Max will be doing.  And who knows how long Lucy’s vision will hold out.  Family trips will take a different direction from here on out.

Which makes me even more grateful for this precious time of togetherness.

As we waved goodbye to the kind people who took such great care of us, I vowed once again to not ever take any of this for granted.

I felt that “thin place” grow inside of me even more as we went home through rice paddies as far as our eyes could take us, and listened to Max’s Family Home Evening lesson I talked about back HERE, and as we got closer to the city where motorcycles replaced the rice paddy fields, again, as far as our eyes could see.

So grateful for this awesome guy who took such great care of us, and gave us a couple days to fill with some golden memories.