Katie has had a loose tooth for quite some time. Of course, it became critical an hour after bedtime at gramma’s.
It was hanging by the tiniest string and of course she refused to pull it or to let us pull it. She wanted us to try and cut it (like David did with another of her loose teeth recently) so Tom was prepared…
But he ended up just pulling it out!
And a throwback:
We ate Chinese for our first married meal so for a bunch of years after, we would eat Chinese on our anniversary—we even managed when he was deployed. Then we got out of the routine. We decided today was a good day to jump back in as we had to make an unexpected trip to Milwaukee so we had a lot of good options.
This was a definite winner as every single thing was DELICIOUS but our fave was the Sliced Pork Belly in Garlic Sauce.
We Yelped to find a good restaurant for dinner, only to get there and it was closed. So on we went to our second choice—Tine & Cellar. We get there and get seated…then proceed to watch a bunch of other tables get seated—and get drinks and orders taken—while we hadn’t seen anyone. So Tom went to find a manager.
A waiter came up pretty quickly and apologized profusely—he said they hadn’t told him he had a table (which was believable since they didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason who served what table). He then said all our drinks that night were on the house. SCORE!
So you’re looking at a Smoked Manhattan and a pseudo margarita (I say pseudo because it was called Yolanda Be Cool and was just Blanco tequila, strawberry puree, lime juice, and habañero simple syrup). We were both VERY HAPPY and agreed that these free drinks made being temporarily forgotten about being seated totally worth it.
We went on to order the truffle fries which was about enough for four people (they really should say that on the menu)…but it was okay because they might have been some of the best fries I’ve ever had)
Tom had a fish and chips basket and I had JägerSchnitzel and both were really yummy. We were very happy with our meal!
What’s the story? We were meeting my dad and Linda in Wausau to make the exchange…and Tom decided he would rather drive up the night before and stay overnight instead of having to get up and on the road super early. I was fine with that.
It’s time for a road trip to take the kids to Michigan for Grandparent Camp! Usually we go all the way to Grayling but we decided to try something different this year and meet halfway!
I’m not sure what Katie is pissy about other than that’s her normal look these days. (I told you!)
One of the few times she’s sweet.
Our meeting point was Bilbo’s, one of our favorite restaurants from East Lansing that we hadn’t been to in 20 years (since we got married and left Michigan). We were excited that Kalamazoo was the halfway point!
Making the actual transfer! We’re free! Good luck and Godspeed!
Seriously though, the kids absolutely love this time with the grandparents and couldn’t be more excited… especially after Covid put the kibosh on camp last summer. Here’s to making memories!!
Our first (of hopefully many!) vacations together really couldn’t have gone much better! Lots of laughs, relaxation, drinks, excellent food, shopping, outdoor stuff, and tons of memories…with only a few kid squabbles. It was over way too soon for sure. Thanks to my dad and stepmom for hosting our motley crew! Can’t wait to do it again!
The kids wanted to go back to the nearby roadside park to climb the rocks again so Anna took them…and got some great pics!
These two really don’t get along at home —Honey is just too young and wants to play hard all the time and Maggie is just too old and wants none of it. So we generally try to keep them separated so Honey doesn’t accidentally hurt Maggie… but today they were both tired so I put Maggie on top of/next to Honey and Honey stayed calm and they were totally nap buddies!
Thankfully David and Anna let us put them in their RV to take home so we could keep them full length!
So on our souvenir shopping trip (while the men and kids were fishing)…of course we both picked up the same sale jacket unbeknownst to each other until checkout.
Anna and I went shopping in Copper Harbor and while she ran back into a store I looked down and saw my odometer said 9999.9 and I was suuuuuper excited that I caught it! So I was taking pics of it so I’d remember where we were… And then realized that that was the TRIP odometer and the actual odometer was already past 10,000. Lordy.
The boys were having a blast!
So Katie decided she wanted to go, too. And it started with super big happy smiles…and very quickly devolved into extreme pouting as she realized it was too windy and wasn’t as easy as she wanted. Ahhh vacation.
And this might be my fave photo from the whole trip… Happy boy.
We took the kids to mini golf in Copper Harbor and due to Covid (short staffing) there was no one working so you paid your money and grabbed the balls and clubs and you could play as long as you wanted! A total dream, right?
Wellllll, we thought they would have a blast and they were okay with us leaving them alone while we ran to check out the campground and general store… except as we were headed back, we saw three of them walking on the side of the road.
UMMMM WHAAAAAT?!
Turns out Owen freaked the hell out (he says because we were taking forever and he couldn’t get ahold of us—phones but no phone service). We thought we were beyond that behavior and paranoia (he’s been staying alone for awhile now) but apparently the not-having-contact thing was the breaking point. So he took off down the road to…try and find us? Find other adults? We’re not quite sure. But Katie and Aiden were with him so they kind of all stayed together.
Of course we felt horrible…but we had zero idea that would be an issue.
Honey chased after Anna all the way down the shoreline and out onto someone’s dock!!
The kids were running around collecting bugs and we were very confused. Then we discovered that they had all the bugs under glass and were watching spiders catch ants and flies. I guess that’s what they resort to when devices are removed and it’s rainy out! #notcomplaining
Dad and Lin offered to watch the kids so we could have a date night—so we took them to The Fitz! It was sooooo delicious… And then after dinner we sat on the deck and enjoyed the weather and the view.
And on the way home, I might have stopped by a HUUUGE lilac bush and made David jump out and grab us some. (They were ALLLL over the place and I hadn’t gotten any fresh lilacs this year so I was kind of going crazy.)
And then…as Anna and I were enjoying the small bouquet…we realized that David was still cutting…and then he thrust a huge branch at us through the window!
Which we thought was absolutely hilarious.
Then we stopped at the Eagle Harbor Inn to see their bar (per Linda’s directive, so we could see their bar rails for ideas) and of course had to have a drink. My pretty one was Mermaid Water.
Then they wanted to go up Brockway Mountain Drive—and since I was the only sober one, I got to drive Dave’s truck!
And when we finally got home and went to get the ice… Ooops! With the crazy drive up and down the mountain and the bags Nott being tied tightly…
The date night continued when we got home—the weather was so nice that we went out and watched the sunset then had a fire!
And this is what happens when you tell drunk Tom we need more wood and there’s brush handy from when he cut branches earlier in the day.
It was sunny and nice but the water was freezing (as expected). We all walked the shore and looked (somewhat successfully) for beach glass. The kids did go in the water a tiny bit but didn’t swim!
We made it! Thimbleberry margaritas to go! I might have gotten a little too excited and bought two pitchers. It’s a good thing we had a bunch of stainless steel tumblers ready to go!
Gramma wanted to go see this so we made it a family affair.
It was definitely interesting, but I wanted more eggs! Also? Mom talked to the curator and will be donating some of her eggs!
We all went tubing today at Hanson Hills!! I had never done it before but I am all about NOT having to walk up the hill!! I hadn’t been inside the building in probably 25 years…plus they’ve totally updated it…so how can it still smell exactly the same?!
Tubing was so much fun…but everyone else in Grayling had the same idea and there were too many people (IMO) so we only got three runs in! It only took about 10 minutes max to ride up and go down but they’re were so many people we were waiting 15 minutes in line. (The tow rope also broke for about 15 minutes—THANKS, MARIE!—so that didn’t help.)
Katie only went down twice—she got too freaked out that she was going to come out of the tube. I could actually understand—you really got going fast and I was initially a bit freaked out. I went down once with Owen, once with Tom, and then the last trip with Tom, Owen, Doug, and Robert!
Thanks to Gramma Jean for taking pics with my phone!!
We relaxed the rules and let Owen use his phone for a bit to play Minecraft with his cousin Robert. (We allowed it since they also played an actual board game more than once!)
So the iPad lessons have been continuing and tonight I was helping Mom setup Snapchat and Bitmoji because she wanted a fun Bitmoji.
We were having fun when Katie came in and wanted to help. It was funny. Gramma Jean was looking at the type of body to use and said “OH NO! I have to use the last one (plump)” and Katie spread her arms to the Heavens and said “No, make yourself skinny!” So damn cute. Mom and I laughed and laughed.
Here’s the first Bitmoji she published to Facebook!
