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.