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!
Katie’s party was on July 13, but I forgot to get the pictures off my big camera—whoops! I’ll move this post to the right date later.
Once again, we had a gathering/pizza party at the Ramada pool!
I was kicking the ball back into the pool…and kicked my shoe right off! I watched it land on the side of the pool…and tumble right in. 🙂
The cake design Katie picked out!
And then back at Gramma Jean’s to open presents!
And she had to put on one of her new dresses!
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 took Papa and Grannie to the “goose park” (Burke Lake Park)!
Katie made fast friends, as usual:
Feeding the geese!
Papa and Grannie have been going to swim lessons and Papa brought his camera today!
Papa and Gannie took the kids to baseball tonight and Owen had his first attempt as catcher (he’s wanted to but he needed a cup…so we finally bought one!). He said he loved it!! (Thanks to Grannie Lin for the pics!)
Papa was good at keeping Katie busy while Grannie and I were trying to buy her a new iPhone.
Papa and Grannie got to see Owen build his bee in about three minutes. 🙂 And then they gave him $10 to pick out an Easter treat which he was thrilled with!
I was trying to get the new backpack Papa and Grannie bought her but didn’t quite get it.
We realized this morning that Owen and Papa both dressed in blue shirts and khaki pants (though you can only see Owen’s blue hoodie and blue coat)! Owen was laughing about it and said “Ha! I think we’re kinda like twins!” 🙂
Since we had no kids at home (!!!), we went for a walk! I took Grannie on the trail yesterday and took both today.
She suckered him into watching The Princess and the Frog. 🙂
Of course, we knew that they were coming, but we didn’t tell the kids…so when we came home from baseball this morning, this is what happened:
Pics from the video:
Grannie bought Owen a purple shirt to match Papa’s. They weren’t exact but they were close enough for them. 🙂
And with the purple birthday girl!
One of the two things* I wanted to do on this vacation was look for Petoskey stones in a target-rich environment…so we headed to Petoskey State Park! The kids were super excited to go to the beach and Grannie and Papa met us there! Unfortunately I didn’t take many pictures because I forgot the waterproof camera and didn’t want my expensive phone out in the sand and water!
Eating lunch after the grandparents left:
The stone hunting was fairly pathetic as we were obviously in a well-populated and well-picked-over area right on the main beach…plus we were in knee-deep wavy water trying to dredge stones from the bottom. This was all we found after about four combined hours of searching:
But the kids were having fun!
So we talked to a park ranger who told us where there was better stone hunting…so Tom went to scope it out. He came back about a half hour later with full pockets…so we packed stuff in the car then took off walking down the beach. It was quite a walk but it was the place to be—we filled about 2-3″ of a 5-gallon bucket in another two hours!
Unfortunately, Owen lost his goggles (even after I specifically told him to put them around his neck) and we hadn’t thought we’d be gone that long so we didn’t reapply sunscreen…so Owen’s face was pretty red and both kids had a little too much pink. 🙁
But! Both kids were amazing while we were out there—they stayed close, Owen mostly played in the water and Katie mostly played in the sand running between me and Tom (we were about 20-30 yards apart), and they listened well and weren’t cranky!
Of course, I’d forgotten how much I hate the beach—sand, sand, and more sand in every crevice of the kids’ bodies. Ugh. I pulled Katie’s bottoms off and literally a half cup of sand fell out (in addition to what was stuck to her). We were all done at that point (we’d been in the sun for six hours!) and had just trudged (guessing) 1/4 mile back along the beach to the car (with me carrying 20# of stones and Tom carrying Katie on his shoulders) and we just didn’t have the energy to go get them showered.
Within two minutes of starting the car:
Within 25 minutes:
So overall it was a good day…even though we can already tell we’ll be sore tomorrow. 🙂
*The other was to see the start of the canoe marathon.
Owen ran his first Fun Run (with daddy!) this morning during the AuSable River Festival! (Sidenote: it will always be Milltown to me…though AuSable River Festival does fit better.)
Katie wanted to run…on daddy’s shoulders. 🙂
We had time to waste before the race started so we wandered around downtown and ran into Papa and Grannie! 🙂
And a pout for good measure.
Pre-race announcements:
Heading to the starting line!
There they go!
Heading a block back to the finish line—it won’t take them long!
Here they come! There was no official time or finish places, but they were in the top 10!
And here’s the start—and finish—all in one video!
Post-race snacks! 🙂
Finally jumping into a pool that has a deep end! All the pools we frequent are a max of 5′ deep so he always hits bottom! This was a new experience for him and he loved it!
Showing Grannie Lin that he can really float now!
And this little stinker! Here she is jumping into the shallow end…BUT!…Earlier, she walked down to the deep end where Papa and Owen were, walked right to the edge, and jumped right in! Went completely under and everything—and came up smiling! SHE HAS NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE, even with prompting! It was so unexpected that I didn’t even have time to get a pic of it! She swam over to the ladder, got out, and DID IT AGAIN! I missed it again, too, because I had a brain fart on how to take a video with my real camera. ARGH! Of course, she refused to do it a third time!
She loves her brother!
Strangely enough, her in the pool doesn’t bother me…but her climbing up this ladder scares the crap out of me.
This is a horrible picture but I need to use it as an illustration. You can see I was a bit away from her and she had climbed up there. No biggie. Then she reached up and grabbed the first bar. Still no biggie. Then she leaned out and grabbed the second bar (as seen here) and right as I snapped the picture, she swung her legs off the bar so she was hanging there. I practically dropped the camera and rushed over there—knowing she couldn’t hang there very long on her own and not wanting her to come crashing down. EGADS. I grabbed her and she proceeded to work her way across the bars like no big deal. NO FEAR!
Looking up at a plane going by. We saw lots of jets and planes and helicopters the whole week!
She didn’t go in the water much, but when she did, she did some STOMPING and SPLASHING!
The one thing she liked to do? Throw shovels full of sand into the water. Yes, kids are strange.
And a fun screenshot I saw while I was editing the video:
It was impressive watching the beach guys carrying in the chairs in the evening.
Now that Katie was older and would hopefully enjoy it more and maybe even remember it, we wanted to go to the zoo like we did last year. Gramma Jean and Grandpa David had gone earlier with Doug, Marie, Gabrielle, and Robert, so we took Grannie Lin and Papa!
Shortly after she started pulling the wagon…she fell…
And scraped both knees in the process. 🙁 Thankfully it was over quickly and she was back to herself.
She loved the bunnies in the house!
Last year’s jump picture:
And last year’s family picture in front of the same sign (I almost wore that same outfit again accidentally!):
Upon walking up and seeing ALL the birds, Owen says: That looks like a big bird party.
Grannie: What are they talking about?
Owen: Birdseed.
Owen’s wingspan:
The kids were SO excited to ride on the train. Unfortunately, the train before us ran off the tracks so they were trying to get it fixed and we ended up having to wait almost another hour. We had debated getting our money back, but the kids would have been devastated…so we did our shopping first. 🙂
Last year’s mask:
Probably the cutest Katie picture of the whole trip:
Aaaand, zonked out within minutes of getting in the car.
Grannie had bought a ring/horseshoe toss game so they played that. I wrote in the sand. Katie played in the sand. Owen and daddy played with the glider. I took some artsy fartsy pictures. The men sat in chairs.
Gramma Jean had a kite that we took out for the kids. (We thought we had brought one but it turned out to be a glider instead of a kite.) The kids LOVED it!
