The same stage!

On the same stage where my school pictures were taken cough 30+ cough years ago. I’ve been wanting to visit the school for probably the last 15 years and finally just went and did it! It was a bonus that I was able to take the kids, the gym was empty, and I could take a picture! Funnily enough, I had forgotten my phone in the car so after our brief walk around, I had to go back to the car to get my phone so I could get my picture! I had waited so long to do it that I wasn’t going to miss my opportunity!

  
   
 

Riding bikes on the last day!

We had high hopes of having the kids practice riding their bikes on vacation since Gramma Jean and Grandpa David have a great driveway and live on the corner of two (basically) flat roads…but we were so busy that we didn’t get to it until our very last night. Uncle Rob was tasked to help out!

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Tom said they actually did pretty good…but they still need LOTS of practice. At the rate we’re going, they might be able to ride without training wheels by high school.

Sorting Stones

I finally got around to sorting the bucket of stones from our beach trip…

Unfortunately…not all the stones were legit. I blame Tom, who was grabbing lots of random fossils, LOL. (They’re neat and all, but they’re no Petoskey stones!)

Only the bottommost piles were actual Petoskey stones (broken up into partial Petoskeys, good Petoskeys, and excellent Petoskeys). 🙂

Kaliseum Daredevils

We took the kids to Kalkaska today for open swim…and boy did they have a blast! Owen was excited to go down the slide again (mom fail: I may have forgotten to mention he did it for the very first time when he was there earlier this vacation). I LOVE the faces he makes. 🙂

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My favorite:

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You see his harem standing by watching him, right? 🙂

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Katie really wanted to go down the slide but she was too little…or so we thought. The lifeguard came up and told Tom she could go down as long as he was at the bottom to catch her. So Owen took her up:

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There were other kids going up and they were getting too close to them on the stairs so Owen put his hand out to stop/block them and protect Katie. And then he guided her into the slide while he made sure to keep everyone back. Awwww, I know. 🙂

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Here she comes!

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Caught her!

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Her reaction? She LOVED it and wanted to go again! (But she was done after the second time!)

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I still can’t believe it—Owen was 6.5 when he finally went down the slide…and Katie was 3! You can tell who the family daredevil is!