Papa and Grannie took the kids back to the beach (leaving us home to relax and get ready for our dinner out) and Grannie sent these pics.
And added this commentary:
Katie found a puddle and added to it. (I confirmed she added water to it and not pee.) 🙂
Now it is a bubble bath she says.
Handstand Owen
Just gorgeous. And relaxing. Gotta love a swinging bench.
Tom and Owen fishing next door—you can see them if you look very closely in about the middle of the picture.
Owen caught a fish! Tom told him he had to hold it for a picture. This is him NOT wanting to do that AT ALL.
Still worried about it and refusing to do it. Tom told him he had to otherwise he was done fishing. 🙂
TA DA! With smiles, even!
Katie didn’t have a worm on hers but she didn’t know any better. 🙂
Fish #2!
No arguments this time!
He ended up catching three small fish! Dad cleaned them and we all got one tiny bite!
The kids got to pick wild blueberries earlier in the week to have blueberry pancakes…and I managed to find these today!
Owen happened to be wearing the same outfit…and of course Katie had on pink! And we were somewhere we could recreate the pic pretty well!
Katie loved throwing the walkway stones into the water—and she was really good at it!
The last time Katie was at Papa and Grannie’s, she was a few months old. This is where she slept:
So of course we had to recreate it…except we did it in the pretty garden instead of the basement (and I didn’t research the pic first so I had the wrong color bin).
Or maybe a flag pole. 🙂
But now we get to take birch pieces home!! (His first two projects were getting the wifi extender and the cell booster installed and running!)
We had been talking about looking for fallen birch pieces to take home (birch trees are rare in Virginia) and my dad said he had a small birch he actually wanted taken down. Say no more. 🙂 Two birds, one chainsaw. 🙂
Happy Shenny!
Otherwise known as my dad and stepmom’s house. It’s a loooooong way up here…but it is gorgeous.
Papa and Grannie introduced the kids to binoculars and they played with them continuously.
Owen wrote Katie at the top and then she wrote the letters herself! And then Owen graded it an A+!
We pulled into Eagle Harbor and immediately saw them on the beach!
Then it was off to dinner! We showed Katie the marks on her forehead from her swim goggles! Grannie Lin and I shared a lobster pizza—yum!
Then it was off to the playground…
…while daddy, Owen, and Papa went hunting Pokemon at the Eagle Harbor lighthouse.
Then they met us back at the playground.
Back at Burger King!
And back at the beach in Eagle Harbor!
We honestly didn’t think either kid would go in because it was too cold…but they both surprised us!!
It was nice shopping for a sweatshirt/jacket on the island yesterday and pulling out mediums. Mediums. Most of them fit, too, depending on the style of course. 🙂
Last night we ate too much but it was our 15th anniversary dinner so we said screw it. Crab and cheese fondue and lobster bisque (both shared with Tom) and scallops for dinner. In past days I would have scoffed at 4 measly scallops for a “dinner”—that’s just four bites!! But on NS it was 16 bites! Plus the other sides, of course. 🙂 I was full but not overstuffed at all.
This morning was the first morning since June 15, 2015, that we ate breakfast. We didn’t have OJ at the hotel and hadn’t brought any…and the room came with breakfast (that we’d typically skip) but we decided to eat. It wasn’t excellent but it was decent and we didn’t eat much.
This morning after checkout we walked from our hotel to town—it was only 2 miles (I had originally thought it was quite a bit longer) and it was the best walk. I actually wanted to walk farther. That would have NEVER happened pre-NS.
The weather was great in the morning, and we could tell it was going to be a perfectly gorgeous day. Of course. GRRR. :p
And better pics from Sunset Rock.
But, since it was so nice, we decided to walk back to town instead of paying $15 for the shuttle.
Stopping to pick wild raspberries.
Stopping to rescue snails from the trail! They were all over!
Waiting for the boat off the island. 🙁
We decided to celebrate our 15th anniversary just a bit early (since we had available babysitters!) and spend the night on Mackinac Island. (It’s actually a bit longer story. I had wanted to go to the Headlands International Night Sky Park in Mackinac City so Tom was in charge of picking the hotel. He thought he was making a reservation for Mackinac City, but when we had to change nights, he realized he had made a reservation on the island—he had a few tabs open on his computer and called a different one than he was looking at! So our plans changed to go to the island instead!)
Unfortunately, we knew bad weather was on the way, so we chose not to do anything time-intensive like biking around the island…so when this happened…
…we stopped our shopping for a quick lunch at Seabiscuit Cafe. We had yummy whitefish chowder and a mediocre whitefish reuben.
The weather app we were checking seemed to predict that it would only last an hour or so, but the rain just kept coming. We decided to take the shuttle back to the hotel and wait out the rain in our room.
Our room was GORGEOUS with an AMAZING view…or a potentially amazing view if it hadn’t been raining and foggy.
This was our view before the fog rolled in and obscured the bridge:
It was quite chilly in our room and the heat was slow to come on, so we pulled the extra blanket out of the closet, rearranged the chairs, and crossed our fingers that the front passed soon.
We rechecked the forecast in a different app and that showed rain pretty much all day. 🙁 So Tom took a nap and I sat and tried to catch up on writing blog posts…while listening to a wedding taking place below us on the covered back porch 🙂 and watching it rain and rain and rain.
We had almost the same view at dinner:
And then we got to watch the wedding guests wander around during the reception:
Our meal was very, very good. We knew we’d blow NS principles out of the water, but we didn’t care because it was our anniversary and everything sounded amazing. And everything WAS. We were very happy with our dinner. 🙂
It had stopped raining during dinner so we went for a walk around the grounds and out to Sunset Rock.
And the panoramic view (click for larger version):
And do you see what we saw in the water? 🙂
It really was a pretty place.
After our walk we headed back to the room where we listened to the reception rave on while we watched Breaking Bad on Netflix. 🙂 Then it started raining again but thankfully didn’t storm since it was bedtime (though I wouldn’t have minded watching a storm from our room).
While overall it stunk that the weather was so crappy, we still enjoyed being together—alone!—all day! That’s always worth something. 🙂
At Fort Wilkins. Grannie said they zipped through it due to potential approaching weather (and we know how Owen is with storms) but they liked it.
Katie did this twice!
Visiting with Great Grandma Pat, or Pappy. She gave Katie a Cinderella Barbie (which she ADORED) and Owen a mini pillow pet (which he LOVED). [Edited to add: Katie has slept with Cinderella every night since then.]
With Lin’s Aunt Carol.
With Lin’s Aunt Mary Kay and Uncle Bob.
A U.P. sunset at 9:45!
I had debated forever on what to wear for the reunion—and ended up bringing about four potential outfits. I ended up going very casual in an outfit I feel great in. 🙂
I was very anxious (even after having done it already the previous night) but while somewhat awkward, it was fine. I even left Tom on his own a few times while I was chatting with people (he spent most of that time talking to Mike’s +1, his girlfriend). There ended up to be probably 30 people there by the end of the night, but only a very small handful of those I really wanted to talk to. (A few people complained that it wasn’t handled very well and I agreed—but also said I hadn’t wanted to do it so I had no place to complain.)
With my old besties, Mike and Joell. Only having Jeremy in this pic would have made it better.
Overal it was a good night (not great and not awful—which is about as much as I’d hope for) and I was happy to say “It’s over!” as we walked out about 10:30.
Grannie sent me pics all along the way. They stopped at McDonalds twice plus playgrounds…so they had a ball.
Finally at Papa and Grannie’s!
This place—Food at Northbound—came with rave reviews…and it didn’t disappoint!
Smoked pork torta (with pork, lime aioli, jalapeño slaw, cheddar, and sweet & spicy jalapeños) and BBQ fries (with beer-battered fries, BBQ-rubbed pork, white cheddar, sweet & spicy jalapeños, and bourbon BBQ sauce). TOTALLY AMAZEBALLS.
The kids are buckled into Papa and Grannie’s car to head to the UP ahead of us! They were excited!
My 25th high school reunion Meet & Greet was being held at a local restaurant—which of course was exactly where the whole fam decided to go for dinner. I had been on the fence about attending, so was kinda forced into going. I started thinking that reunions sounded better in theory than in practice.
So I watched from our corner booth, tried to drink through my anxiety, saw when people came in, and had to work up the nerve to go over. Kathryn said she’d be my wing woman but I finally just did it.
And yes, it was as awkward as you’d imagine. But I made it through about an hour and had Tom come back to pick me up about 9. 🙂
We had hoped to go mini golfing or to Hartwick Pines but it was overcast with the threat of rain…so we lunched at Spikes with Papa and Grannie (Spikeburger!) and then went bowling!
Retrieving a Katie ball that didn’t quite make it to the pins. If we didn’t help her, this is what would happen. It might have happened more than once. 🙂
The kids had a blast—here’s Katie in her slippery shoes and Owen getting a spare!
Tom won both games and Grannie came in second—though, to be fair, she was playing on the kid lanes with the bumpers! 🙂
Sticks always become fighting instruments:
Owen has been begging us to do the fireworks we have left (really just sparklers) so we finally got them out tonight.
‘Murica!
And we had a pooping dog leftover! Bonus!
And then a fire (with s’mores):
We weren’t sure if we’d be able to make it to Traverse a City to see our wedding brick, so when my dad and stepmom were there, they stopped by to take some pictures for us! It has really grown up in 15 years! 🙂
Then:
Now:
Then:
Now:
There’s now a waterfall.
And a wooden train (the dinner train is no longer running):
And our brick then:
And now:
Then:
Now:
When the weather gives you crappy beach days, you improvise at home!
Cousins: Izzy (almost 14), Owen (7.5), Anna (12), and Katie (4)
The plan was to hit the beach at Petoskey State Park for play, rock hunting, and a picnic…but the weather had other ideas. We saw whitecaps as we approached…and it was a measly 72° (so with the wind it was probably about 60-65°) and the sand was painful as it whipped around.
So we were trying to decide what to do instead while sitting in the car. 🙂
We ended up heading inland to Burt Lake State Park (30 minutes away), assuming it wouldn’t be as windy. Ha! It was almost as bad! So we ate a fast picnic lunch (wrapped in towels because no one thought to bring jackets or sweatshirts for a day at the beach!), then got right back in the cars and headed home. We were all bummed.
