Day One

We had such a fun time on vacation this past week!! The weather was hot when we were at the beach, so it was just perfect for swimming. Everytime we took our brood of 11 out to eat, the waiters we had went above and beyond to make it easy on us and entertain the kids. And, our friends are just so terrific! We couldn't have asked for a better time! We packed a lot into those 3-4 days, so I'm posting a lot of pictures and stuff. And, I'm doing them in order of how it went. We went to mom and dad's straight from our vacation, but I'll post those pictures another time, since we're going back there again on Wed night. Anyway, let's get started. :-) Like I said last week, we were going to St. Joseph, MI. First time any of us had been there. And, we went with our friends, the Thiry's. It was their idea and boy am I glad they asked us to tag along!





We left early on Wed and stopped for breakfast together. The kids were so excited to be together and be off on vacation together. Their energy was infectious! After breakfast we headed on up to MI. First thing we did when we got to the hotel was check in and get our bathing suits on! Here's Pete with a gaggle of kids. We have 3 and they have 4. So, it was quite a crowd!

After we swam at the pool for a while, we headed out for supper and then decided to take a quick trip to Lake Michigan, to scope it out a bit for the next day. We went to Silver Lake Park. Here you can see behind Madie and Noah is the lake. I thought it looked really close. But, it's actually down a huge hill, across a long road, and down a VERY WIDE beach. Our parking here was not a really good idea.

On our way, we had the kids stop at this gazebo, so we could take their picture. Charlie, their 1 yr old, was in his stroller, and Livie decided to duck out right before we took the picture. That's why there's a space between Noah and Jack. By the way, so you know, Jack is their 3 yr old, Tessa (the blonde) is 6, and Emma (with dark hair) is 8. They are all the same ages as our kids with the addition of Charlie.

There was this cool cannon and the kids just loved climbing on it. So, we wanted to line them up for a picture. Livie was still not feeling it, so she wore a bucket on her head. Sigh.

She was much happier sitting on the cannon balls. :-)

Here's Noah, Jack, and Pete on the cannon. Laura (mom) took lots of great pictures this past week too and she always managed to get smiles. When I took them, I'd get this. Thanks, Noah.

We finally made it down to the beach. It was soooo busy! We went at like 8pm and it was still packed like this. You can see the sailboats in this distance.

This was the first time the kids had ever been to a beach. As soon as we got to the sand, they were rolling around in it and just having a ball!

My prim and proper Madie just sat on the sand.

And, Livie just laid down and enjoyed it.

This gives you some perspective on wide the beach was. It was a chore and a half to walk through! I'm used to the shore, where you have boardwalks and short walks to the water. Here's Jayson, Charlie, and Pete watching us all play in the water.

We had not come in our bathing suits. We had come to the lake thinking we would check it out and leave. But, because this was the kids first time to even SEE a beach, let alone play in a lake, they couldn't be held back. So, we tried telling them to just go up to their feet, so their clothes would stay dry, that lasted about 2 1/2 sec. By the time we left, everyone was soaked to their eyeballs!! :-) Heck, even I got in a little deeper than I thought I would. Here are the kids and I.

Here are 6 of the kids playing in the water. They just absolutely loved it! And, it was so fun to watch their excitement. :-)

Jayson took little Charlie up to put his feet in the water. He's not walking yet, so Jayson held him up, so he wouldn't crawl in.

You can see the sun was setting when we were there. Even knowing it was late in the day, didn't stop Noah from splashing it up! Watching him was so cute. He just enjoyed every minute he spent in that water.

All the kids looked for shells and sea glass. Tessa brought me a piece of a coffee lid from McDs, thinking it was sea glass. I nearly died laughing! But, they did find a few little broken pieces of shells. That's what Livie is showing me here.

We finally gathered the troops and walked the very long way back to our car. Then decided, with that beach being so busy and so far away from the parking lot, we would go look at another beach and see what it was like before we went home. We drove down a bit to the Lions Park beach and it was heaven! The parking was right on the beach and very private. We didn't stay or anything. Just stopped long enough to take this beautiful picture of the sunset, then headed back to the hotel for bed. It was after 9 and well past bedtime for the kids. But, we made plans the next day to go back to this beach to swim.

A Full Day of Fun on Thursday!

On Thursday, we headed out to the beach about lunchtime. We decided to go to the beach down the way, since the beach we had gone to the day before was sooo busy and sooo far away!! This beach was Lions Park Beach and you could park literally right by the beach, so we didn't have to walk a million miles or anything. And, it was really private and just a handful of people were there. It was paradise!!!







Here's Madie carrying her floatie board.

Here we are enjoying our wonderful swim at Lake Michigan. The water was cold, but it was so hot outside, it was just perfect!

Livie spent a good hour just playing with the buckets, water, and sand. She absolutely loved it! She's wearing that handkerchief, so her parts in her hair wouldn't burn.

Here's Madie having a great time in the water. :-)

And, Noah with his bright yellow noodle!

We took a break about halfway through our day for a little snack/lunch.

Jack and Livie shared an apple together. It was so cute! The future happy couple already learning to share (yes, we've already brokered a betrothal deal between the families). ;-)

After our beach adventure, we all went back and got dressed to go out for dinner. We headed back to the Silver Lake beach we visited the night before and went to a great pizza place there. I took this picture to give you an idea of what it's like carting all those kids around!! They all liked Pete. We ate outside at the picnic tables. Pete and I were soooo burnt, that we had to find some in the shade, so we wouldn't be burnt even more.

Here's sweet Charlie playing with Noah's shoes. He kept trying to grab his shoelaces and pull them off his feet.

Here are the terrific trio! Tessa, Madie, and Emma. They had such a ball all week!

My silly Noah.

Livie and her daddy.

After supper, we headed down the street to the ice cream shop. Yum!! My only regret all week was that we only visited this place once.

Noah, Jack, and Livie had to do a group hug before we loaded up into our separate cars to head back to the hotel. Aren't they such cuties?!!!

Curious Kids Museum

On Friday Pete and Jayson went golfing, so Laura and I took the 7 kids down to the Silver Lake Park area/downtown St Joe, to the Curious Kids Museum. I've never been to a kids' museum before and boy, was it awesome!!!!





This is the entry way. The kids were listening to the instructor telling them the rules.

The first station we went to was the face-painting station. Livie went with Jack, Charlie, and Laura into the toddler area while I painted the kids' faces. There were lots of other things to do in that room, so they played while I took them one by one. Noah wanted to be a cat.

Madie was a dalmation doggie. She dressed up in the dress-up area after I painted her face.

Livie wanted to be a dinosaur (of course), but since I have no idea how to make dinosaur faces, I just drew a dino on her face and she put on the mask.

Here is the super-awesome volcano that they got to slide down. Every 80 seconds it "erupted" and made thunder noises and flashing lights went off. They LOVED this part!! See them all lined up at the top?

This was where they fed the dinosaurs. They could feed both the carnivore and the herbivore. Livie was feeding them both dino beanies. :-)

This was the jungle room. Madie dressed up as a macaw.

This was the apple orchard. They picked apples off the trees and put them in the box. They turned the conveyor belt thingy and it would drop the apples back into the tree. All the kids got into this one as well.

Then we went on the second floor. The stuff up there was really cool! This was a space shuttle. It was really big and really fun!

This is one of those lightening ball things.

From 1-3pm they told us they would have a special dinosaur thing in the basement. We were so excited. Livie could hardly contain herself about going to the dinosaur exhibit!! Well, we got to the basement and found 2 long tables with xeroxed pictures of dinosaurs to color. Not QUITE what we expected!!! But, they did the crafts and had fun. Livie made a dinosaur hat.

This was the Chinese writing room. They got to use stamps to make chinese lettering things. I now have 3 strips of paper with chinese lettering and I have no idea what they mean! All in all, we had a fantastic time! Granted, both Laura and I were glad when our visit was done, because keeping track of 7 kids isn't easy!! But, the kids had a great time and none of us got burnt in the process! :-)

It Always Has to End

Saturday was the final day of our vacation. We left around noon to come down to Goshen, while our friends the Thiry's went to the beach again. We had breakfast together, but not before taking a few more photos.







Here are the 7 kids. The 7 crazy, sweet, ornery kids in a gazebo by the pool area at the hotel.

These are the fantastic friends of ours that suggested the trip in the first place. We love our Thirys!!!

And, us. The burnt-to-a-crisp Trolinger family. :-)

Vacation

Well folks, we are off on vacation very early in the am. And, by early, I mean early for us - at 8am. This is our first official family vacation where we didn't go see family. We're going with some friends of ours who have 4 kids and we're all driving up to St Joseph, MI for 4 days. Can't wait!!!! The picture at the top is of the lighthouse there. :-) After our short vaca with the Thiry's, we're headed down to Goshen to see my brother and his family as well as my Aunt Phyl and Uncle David who will be in town too. We'll be there for a couple days, then heading home. But our stay here at home will be a short one. Just long enough to get the laundry done and re-packed, check to see if the cat is still alive, and go to Noah's last tball game. Then we're going BACK to Goshen to see my cousins who are coming to town too. :-) Going to be a busy week and a half, but a fun one. I will not have Pete's laptop with me, but once we get to mom and dad's, I'm hoping to use their computer to do some blogging. So, please pray for safe travels for us and our friends and family and I'm sure I'll have lots to share in a few days. :-)

By the way, in preparation of our beach visit in MI, I got a pedicure for the first time and I think I have fallen in love! Nothing like an hour on a massage chair, where your feet are getting scrubbed and painted and jeweled! It was a wonderful break from the craziness of packing and getting ready. If you've never had one, I HIGHLY recommend you get out there and get your feet ready for summer. You won't regret it!

Swim Lessons

You know summer is here when swim lessons begin! Swim lessons actually started last Friday, but since we were in a hurry to get up to Jill and Adam's after the lessons were over, I didn't remember to bring my camera, so here is their second lesson instead.



Because my kids haven't been to the pool much, they are sadly terrible swimmers. And it wasn't until last year that they were even willing to put their heads in. So we go to a private instructor, where they get one-on-one treatment. It's really fantastic. Mrs. Palmer is quite famous around here for her swim lessons. They have 5-6 instructors and 4-5 kids in the pool at a time. The kids did this last year and did a really great job! They learned a lot, so I'm excited to see their progress this year. Here they are getting ready to get in for their lesson.

Noah had 2 instructors today, but the one that's always with him is Garrett. He really seems to be able to handle Noah well. And, Noah listens to him really well. He tries his hardest and does such a good job. He's a goofy swimmer, but he gives it his all!

Madie's a much more timid swimmer. She doesn't go for it like Noah does. In fact the way they swim is very much like their personalities. But, she too tried her best and has made lots of strides since last year. She also had 2 instructors, but her constant one is Ashley.

It was in the low 90s today with humidity, so you couldn't have asked for a better day for the pool. They had a great time and look like 2 very happy swimmers! :-)