June 17-20, 2010
River Farms Campground Pentwater, Michigan

The kids were very excited that they were finally camping with Grandma and Grandpa for the first time this year. They had been talking about it all week long.

It was Father's Day on Sunday, but the gift we had purchased for my dad was for use while camping so we decided to give him his gift: a digital clock with indoor and wireless outdoor thermometer on Friday night so that he could use it throughout the weekend.

On our way down to the boardwalk going down to the river,
the kids decided they wanted to take the high road.

Allison decided to play a little model by the baby trees
they recently planted along the river.

Last year, the kids walking sticks ended up in Grandpa's trailer.
They got them back from Grandpa this year - and found out that several of them were too small for some growing kids. We found this fallen branch that looked suitable for a couple of walking sticks. Sam thought he was pretty cool as he hauled/dragged it back to camp.

A friend of mine from high school, that I have connected with on facebook is always talking about their geocaching adventures. I, also, had someone at work mention that her daughter likes to participate in this hobby with her kids. So, after some research and questions to my high school classmate we thought it would be fun to do sometime in the future. The future came sooner than we anticipated because mom and dad got a GPS recently.

How does this work? You log on to the Global Geocache website and enter your zip code or address. It then brings up a list of caches that are hidden in that area. You use the coordinate given (and sometimes clues) and your GPS to locate a hidden treasure usually off in the woods somewhere. When you find the treasure you log that you were there, and you can trade items in the cache for items you leave. Treasures are small items like rubber frogs, pencils, necklaces, bells, etc. The kids thought this was great. We found 3 caches over the weekend and definately plan on doing it many more times in the future.

Sam leads the way up the hill for Grandma

Nicholas found this one hidden in an old log with another large stick/log over top of it.

For Nicholas, one of the most important things for us to do
while in Pentwater was make a trip to Cosmic Candy in town.

3 kids under the couch. A little too cramped for my liking - but they were having a blast.
Then, Grandma snuck out around the back of the trailer and opened the outside access door and scared them by grabbing their legs. Love the sound of children giggling and laughing over something so simple.

One day we drove to the Hart Montague Trail. All of the kids wanted to ride their own bikes, so we knew we wouldn't make it very far - but it was an enjoyable afternoon anyway.
We also had the coordinates for a geocache located just off the trail @ we were actually able to bike that far and locate the cache.

The kids love the swings and Gabrielle was having a blast getting pretty wild on her swing because she was in the baby swing and felt pretty confident that she wasn't going to fall out.
She kept tipping herself forward and backward and laughing her little heart out.

This was the weekend of the Pentwater Arts and Crafts Show. Grandma's big purchase of the day was super squirters. There were several water fights that followed.

After taking off his wet clothes, Sam decided to put on his pajamas.
I caught him inside trying to put on his PJs with his shoes on. I thought that was quite comical.
(And for anyone who is looking closely at this picture - no, Sam did not go to bed with those filthy dirty legs. He was cleaned up and properly dressed in his PJs following this picture).

No trip to River Farms is complete
without some fishing in their Catch and Release Pond.

True to form, after we have been fishing for a while -
the turtles discover us and the fishing turns into using our fishing poles to lure the turles into our nets. I think the kids have just as much fun going after the turtles as they do fishing for fish.

June 14 and 16, 2010
Crazy Kids

Sam got these new sandals the other day and has been wearing them around the house quite a bit. Even though Sam and Allison are 1 1/2 years apart they have close to the same size feet, with Sam's actually being a little larger. They walked into the kitchen the other day to show off their new style.

Sharing Shoes

Then a couple of days later, Sam got into a box in the basement he wasn't really supposed to be in. I have a small box where I am storing some 'special to me' handmade sweaters that my kids wore as babies - hoping to pass them on to a future generation some day. Sam dug out this sweater and hat that my friend Linda had made for the girls. They had matching sweater/coats for church. Once again, the only thing I can say is:
Crazy Kid...Isn't he cute?

June 13, 2010
The Pool Is Open for the Season

Today was the day to open the pool, it was a hot day and Paul and I were sweating bullets as we removed the grass and weeds that had started to grow back in the area where we had placed the pool last year. We also tried to make the are a little more level - as the pool seemed to slant a little last year.

In usual form - although you tell the kids the water is cold, they can't wait to get in.
They enjoyed hopping, skipping, slipping and sliding
in the pool with just an inch or two of water.

We wre gaining ground on the pool, but had a long road ahead while filling it with the hose. However, our neighbor "Mr. Tim" had arranged to have the fire hoses and access to the fire hydrant for the day in order to fill their big above the ground pool.
After he finished their pool, he generously offered to finish filling ours.
The kids loved watching the pool fill so quickly, and it created quite a whirlpool while it did.

Within about 3 minutes time - the pool was full to capacity.

The boys had just gotten new life jackets yesterday.
So, although they don't need them in our pool, they wanted to give their new jackets a try.

Even the girls got their life jackets out for some floating fun.

June 10, 2010
Summer Fun at the Park

So, we've returned from our first "school's out" camping trip of the summer and now we need to settle into some type of routine for these glorious summer days. It takes a bit of adjustment every year to get used to the "lack of routine" and having all 4 kids at home all day. The lack of routine is wonderful, but things still have to get done. So the deal is, chores in the morning - kids do theirs and let mom do hers. Then after lunch, we have fun.

Today, I got the kids all ready for what they thought was just a bike ride. I didn't tell them our destination. This was the first bike ride I took with the kids where all 4 of them were on their own bikes. They all did great, Sam and Allison kept up and there were no complaints.
First, we rode to Conklin Park and the kids got to play on the playground for a while. Then we biked from there to the grocery store to pick up some french bread for dinner and get a drink to share. Then we road all the way back home.

Here are some pictures of our time at the park.

We headed over to the swings and Gabrielle decided it would be fun to put more than one person in the baby swing. Well, she was right - as you can see in the pictures below.

June 4-8, 2010
Muskegon State Park - Channel Campground

School's out for the summer - what a better way to celebrate than to go camping right?
We have always wanted to get a site at this campground right on the channel and were fortunate enough to get a reservation for one this weekend. It was wonderful.

School may be out - but the learning never stops. Nicholas found some bricks on our site and started to play with them. Before I know it, I had him experimenting with different things as he tried to life the heavy brick with a stick. He was learning about leverage. He moved his fulcrum closer to the brick and then farther away and even tried making it taller to see what would make the brick easier or harder to lift.

Friday afternoon before we left for camping, I made a quick stop at the library. Normally, the kids are with me to pick out their books - but today I just grabbed some that I thought they would like. Apparently Nicholas liked this book I picked, he carried his chair up by the channel and sat their reading for at least 30 minutes.

Muskegon Lake was cold, but apparently warm enough for the kids because they loved having the opportunity to swim.

Paul decided to challenge the kids and they all agreed to try to climb this massive dune that we pass when entering the park. We have talked of trying to climb it for several years, but this year we actually did.

Almost there Sam...

The view from the top

From the bottom of the dune, you can see this heart made out of sticks. When we reached the top, we decided to move the sticks around. Instead of a heart - we made it into a 6 for the Van Wesep 6 to prove that we were there. When we got to the bottom, it wasn't as obvious that it was a 6 as we had hoped, but we knew it was.

Going down was much more fun than going up.

On the way back, our legs were feeling really heavy. However, there was a pretty decent sized dune yet to be climbed before we got all the way back to the road. Our legs were really burning as we climbed - but we triumphed!

The next day, we decided to do a short hike back in the woods. When we got out of the truck, Sam proceeded to walk right through a puddle in his canvas tennis shoes. Obviously, his feet and socks were now soaking wet. However, we were not going to quit the hike because of this - he was going to have to reap the consequences of his actions. He proceeded to through a nice temper tantrum and laid right down in the middle of trail and stated that he wasn't going anywhere.

The girls -pretending the ferns they found were umbrellas.

Straddling a deep groove in the trail.

Friday night, we started chatting with our neighbors and had a great time visiting them on and off throughout the weekend. We shared with the husband that we were praying that we would see a freighter. Paul loves freighters, but we always seem to get "skunked" whenever we are camping at Channel Campground and have yet to see one when we were there.
He returned from an errand one night and informed Paul that a ship was coming in.
We all got really excited. We were disappointed to learn that it was actually only a barge. Still exciting for the kids to see, but a tugboat pushing a barge is was definately not the 1000 foot ore freighter that we had been hoping for.

Grandma and Grandpa came out to visit on Monday (our last full day there) and brought watermelon. As you can see below - our kids love watermelon.

Grandma and Grandpa left soon after dinner and I started to get the kids ready for bed. A few minutes later, my mom was back. I came out of the trailer just in time to hear here telling Paul that they saw freighter on Lake Michigan. This time, Paul was a bit more hesitant to get excited so he took off on his bike to confirm the report. We were elated to find out that a freighter of unknown size was indeed on it's way to the channel.
The last time we were fortunate enough to actually see a freighter this close was 4 years ago, so the kids really had no concept of what to expect.

Having grown up with a father who practically lived and breathed freighters and made many trips to the Soo Locks Paul knew the trip to getting the ship to blow it's horn. The kids were so excited to help Paul wave "the white towel" (well, the white jacket in this case). However, when the blast actually occurred - Gabrielle broke into tears as it was much louder than she thought it was going to be.

The 704 foot M/V H. Lee White’s name
honors former American Steamship Company chairman, Harris Lee White.

The weekend could not have ended on a more exciting note either - as we were starting to pack up the next morning, Paul looked up and realized that the freighter was headed back out into open water and we got to see it head back out. Once again, we were honored with the blow of the horn, and this time there were no tears.

Sam watches the M/V H. Lee White head out into Lake Michigan.

What a wonderful weekend we had and the freighter
experience was definately the cherry on top!

June 2, 2010
The Popsicle Boy

Nicholas' class did a play at the end of the year. They actually did this play over and over again for almost 2 full days and that doesn't count all the rehearsals before. They did the play for class after class until all the classes in the school got a chance to see it. The parents were invited to attend any of the presentation throughout either day. If one parent showed up for a specific time they would do their play. The kids and I attended the last show - as we had provided bikes as props and then I could bring them home.

The play itself was a re-telling of 'The Gingerbread Boy', except it was the story of the Popsicle Boy who ran away from 2 little kids. Everyone he came across he would tell them than they couldn't catch him. By the end of the story - the popsicle boy ended up melting on the beach.
It was a cute story and all the kids did a great job, especially given how many times they performed it. Nicholas and his friend Josh were two boys on bikes, who wanted that popsicle but the popsicle ran away.

June 1, 2010
Filling Dad's Shoes

I think Sam misunderstood...and no, I don't think Dad's pants fit yet?
He'll have to wait a little longer to wear the pants in the family.