June 30, 2010
I've told you once, I'm telling you again
These kids are crazy

So not that long ago, I posted a picture of Allison and Sam where they were each wearing one of their own shoes and one of the other one's shoes. Well, tonight they went upstairs to put their pajamas on - and came down looking like this.....

at least both pair of pajamas were The Incredibles, they match right?

Sam is going to be lost next year, when Allison is at school all day like the other kids.

June 25-27, 2010
Ionia State Park

The more we progressed into the summer, we were starting to lose hope of camping with the Peters's until fall. However, when we returned from camping last weekend, Paul said to me that he really would like to go again the next weekend. We just seem to be having a really hard time staying home this year, we are having so much fun. After having decided that we would probably head out again, and a quick chat on facebook it was a pleasant surprise to find out that we could actually sneak in a quick weekend with the Peters. Then the search for a campsite began. Fortunately, we were able to get 2 sites across the street from each other at Ionia State Park. The weather forecast was questionable for rain 40-60% chance of rain and thunderstorms all weekend, but in the words of Kevin Peters "when has the weather ever stopped us?"
We are so glad that we didn't let the weather forecast scare us away - it was a beautiful weekend, warm and sunny. We didn't have any rain until Sunday morning after we were already awake. It stopped and dried up a little while we packed up, rained a bit on the drive home, and then conveniently stopped in time for our unpacking.

Lightsaber wielding witches - you've heard of them before right?

We took a short drive to the other end of Ionia State Recreation Area to check out the oldest standing cobblestone schoolhouse in Michigan. Lyn read the information they had posted and shared it with us - so I hope I am getting this right. My understanding is that the man who built the schoolhouse was from the east side of the country. He didn't understand that cobblestone was not the appropriate choice for building in Michigan due to the freeze/thaw conditions we experience.

Because the cobblestone didn't hold up as expected, the school was later moved across the street to this brick building which is now owned by the Ionia County Sheriff. The short hill directly behind this building is covered in tires - which we are assuming is for target practice.

The big hit of the weekend was 2 trips down to the lake. One Friday night and one on Saturday. The water was wonderful and the kids had a great time playing in the water together.

Nicholas - still hestitant on learning to swim got brave enough to let Uncle Kevin throw him with his tube on. Saturday afternoon, Nicholas put his tube away and headed out with just his "water wings". He made it all the way out to the swim buoys by himself and was so proud. I predict he will be swimming by the end of the summer, if not sooner.

Gabrielle, on the other hand, became a full fledged water rat last year - teaching herself how to swim underwater in our small pool in the backyard. She started off with water wings and a swim ring for Uncle Kevin's wonderful launches into the air. But by the end of the weekend, she was free of all floatation devices and only armed with a pair of goggles and a hand to plug her nose. She absolutely loved it and is swimming very well. Being thrown in the water by Uncle Kevin was her self-proclaimed favorite part of the weekend.

Sam decided to lay around in a shallow puddle of water and get filthy dirty.

Leaning tower of swim rings.

You should have heard all the giggles while the two girls gave themselves mud baths. They would cover each other with mud, run into the water to clean themselves off, and then return to their puddle to start the mud all over again.

Knowing how much Aunt Lyn loves horses, a trip to Ionia would not be complete without a walk through the Equestrian Campground. We saw several horses, but were blessed to come across this elementary teacher from Indiana who was more than eager to let the kids touch and talk to her horse.

June 24, 2010
A miracle before our Eyes

Nicholas has been catching caterpillars all spring. One of them he caught over Memorial Day Weekend, turned into a cacoon overnight, but then nothing happened over the next few weeks.

Then the following weekend at Channel Park in Muskegon we spotted a Monarch caterpillar on some milk week near the dump station as we were leaving.
We quickly located Nicholas' bug house and captured the caterpillar with some milk week leaves.

The next day after returning home we found that it had turned into a chrysallis.
We patiently waited and kept checking on it. Paul had checked on it the day before and it was still the same. Then, as I packed for our next trip I was reminded that we needed to take the bug house with us. I went out to get it and found that a new butterfly had emerged.
Now that it was a butterfly we realized that the bug house was way to small for it to continue to inhabit our humble accommodations. We had to remove the actual screen of the bug house in order to get it out.

It quickly flew across the street, but landed on someone's driveway - not a very good place to prepare for it's new life. Nicholas gave it another nudge and it flew a small distance and landed in a nice bush near the neighbors porch.
A much better place for it to spread it's wings and learn to fly .

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.