Wedding Teaser!

Things got busy, as often happens around here, so instead of wedding photos galore we have a bit of a teaser! These pics were take the day before the wedding. The first three were taken at Heidi's bridal shower dinner at The Siding in Peru. We enjoyed delicious and huge dinners-- the guys all enjoyed our leftovers later that evening! :)

It was a special time together as we prepared for the busy day ahead and most importantly showing Heidi how special she is to all of us. We love you, Heidi!

Christina and Heidi.

Heidi and I

Heidi and Anne

This photo was taken at Heidi's final dress fitting.

A beautiful teaser for what's to come!

Beaches, Cousins, and Weddings, Oh My!

Our time back in Michigan after our trip to Wisconsin was a whirlwind of activity. Here are a few shots from our last few days...

After Kay picked us up from the ferry in Ludington we stopped for a picnic dinner down by the beach. It was a beautiful evening--a little snippet of heaven on earth.

Nana and the kiddos. They sure were happy to run after our long day of travelling!

We had a great day in Traverse City visiting the Children's Museum and taking a ride on the "Spirit of Traverse City"!

Can you tell Max loved the train ride?!

Our sweet Ruby girl. She still had the face paint on from our ride on the S.S. Badger the day before.

Whew! I have to say I was a little bit happy when the train ride was over. You get pretty nasty sitting behind that smoke stack!

Evening on River Street in Elk Rapids. Ruby opted to get a bee on her knee, just like last year!

Ruby and Caleb had a great time playing together. Here they were playing "gas station". Ruby said, "What kind of gas does your bike take?" Caleb thought for a while, "Fuel". "Okay, I've got that!" Ruby replied. Too cute!

Max and Anna loved blowing bubbles at Kaley and Michael's wedding!

Michael and Kaley's fairytale wedding! Congratulations!!

Over the river and through the woods...

"Are you sure we're supposed to be up this early!?!"

As you can tell, our early departure from Ludington on the S.S. Badger was a bit exhausting for us after a somewhat restless night in the hotel room. We sure were thankful that we had Nana with us to help us get to the ship on time! So, with baggies of dry cereal in hand, we climbed on board along with cars, motorcycles, motorhomes, and even a HOUSE!! Max was very impressed (not that this photo shows that!).

Once on the S.S. Badger we explored the ship--they have several lounges, two eating areas, a kids play room, a movie room, and lots of room up on deck to get some air. The highlight of a trip on the Badger must be the BINGO though. I'm not sure I've played bingo since my grade school days, but it was fun (even though I didn't manage to win). Somehow, they manage to get you caught up in the adventure of the trip and even have you happily chanting, "Big Ship, More Fun!" dozens of times over the course of the trip.

The kids enjoyed the playroom for a while, but we spent much of the trip migrating from place to place-- a little bit of BINGO, a little story time, a little coloring, and a lot of exploring the ship. All along the way we were peppered with fun facts about the coal-powered car ferry. I was most shocked to find that the four hour trip across Lake Michigan was only 60 miles long! I guess I thought we were moving a lot faster than that. Amazingly, the four hour trip went by quickly and we were excited to see Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Bollman waiting for us when we arrived in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

The trip from Manitowoc to Bruce was a bit long (nearly 6 hours with all of our stops), but the kids did well on a steady diet of cartoons. Thank goodness for DVD players. I'm not sure what two year old boys can do in the car aside from watching videos... Though I understand and appreciate the need for carseats, things sure were easier for car travel with kids when you didn't have to be strapped into a 5 point harness!

The day after we arrived in Wisconsin it was Grandma's birthday! I made a cake for her big day, but as it turned out we had plenty of sweets including some delicious cupcakes made by Aunt Judy in honor of Grandma's birthday so Grandma decided to share some of the goodies with Susan Mayer. She claimed that she would, "pass them off as (her) own"! Though I'm quite sure all that know her well enough to be a house guest know that she does not bake. ;)


I'm sure that Grandma will be thrilled that I put this photo of her and Max blowing out their candles together online for the whole world to see, but I thought it was cute and it's my blog, so I win!

As I try to think back on what we did while we were there it seems that eating desserts figured in pretty high on the list. I know for certain that I had two kinds of cake, cookies, cheesecake, strawberry shortcake, and some sort of fruity crisp dessert. Good grief, how do you people stay so slim with all of those desserts!? I must say that the kids were in heaven, though now we're back to the real world of desserts just now and then.

Much of the time around the house was spent down by the Flambeau River which runs behind the house. The water was quite low, but just perfect for the kids. Ruby and Maxwell had a blast searching for freshwater clam shells and especially treasured those that still had both halves connected (at least until Max would crack them apart!). Ruby also enjoyed searching for crayfish claws to pinch us with. Meanwhile, I just sat in my chair and read a book. The easy life!

My one annoyance was Max's very frequent bathroom breaks. One of the things that we're struggling with right now is that he's figured out (as all boys do) that it's actually kind of fun to go potty outside so he would wait until we were outside, down by the river to need to go. Arg! Since then he's actually asked when he's inside the house if he can go outside to pee!?! Uh, no!

I thought this was a cute photo of the kids in the river. They really are good buddies most of the time, which I'm so thankful for.

I think that right around the time I snapped this shot we saw the tail end of a bear across the river! There is SO much wildlife out there--I can't even remember how many deer, rabbits, and squirrels we saw. Max, especially, thought it was the best.

One of the biggest highlights of our trip to Wisconsin for the kids was going out to Susan Mayer's house where they met Indy (her dog). They just thought she was the best and were talking about how much they missed Bubba and Fink and every other dog they've ever known for weeks afterward. They also really enjoyed getting up on the hay bales--a story that I've heard many times since!

We were thankful to be able see some of Grandpa's sisters for meals and games while we were there. We even had a chance to visit with Aunt June for a while out at Susan's which was a real blessing.

We took a few outings to parks in Ladysmith--always a hit with the kids-- and even brought a picnic lunch one day. The parks were like a flashback to my childhood with the TALL metal slides and merry-go-rounds and monkey bars. It was a whole new experience for Ruby and Max!

I really enjoyed seeing some of the places where Grandma and Grandpa grew up. Of course their house is very close to the original stone house that Grandpa grew up in. Also, we saw the farm where Grandma grew up, which looks very different now and the route she walked to the little school house. I can't imagine sending Ruby out for that looong walk in the woods all by herself!

This hotel is one that Grandma worked at while Grandpa was in Japan. It looks like a really neat place and reminded me of an old hotel that Jared and I stayed at on our honeymoon. I wish we could have seen inside, but that wasn't on the kids' wish list!

Well, that about sums up our trip to Wisconsin. We had a great time with Grandpa and Grandma. Ruby and Maxwell are anxious to see them again... maybe this time in our neck of the woods!

Lots of Playing!

One of the best parts of vacation is that you don't have to come home and make dinner (usually!) or do laundry (not much anyway!) or clean the house (very rarely!) so mommies are freer than usual to just enjoy their kiddos. We took quite a few trips to the playground and had lots of time to play and relax which was just what we needed!

One afternoon, the kids and I got together with Jared's cousin-in-law, Michelle, and their three kiddos at the playground. Noah and Jenna are two year old twins and were a blast to play with! Ruby decided to take a ride on the hood of Max and Jenna's hot rod-- I think she was having more fun than they were! ;)

I got the cutest photos of these two in the car. They kept alternating watching each other as they rocked and rolled! Max thought Jenna was the cutest girl he'd ever seen...

Ruby, Noah, and Max go around and around!

A few days later we were on our way to Ludington (about two hours south of Elk Rapids, MI) for our big trip to Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa's house in Wisconsin. Since our ferry left early in the morning, we decided to get a hotel room the night before. They had a wonderful playground that the kids really enjoyed. Here's Ruby walking the wiggly balance beam!

What's summer vacation without ice cream?!?

Coming up next-- Grandma and Grandpa Bollman's house!

A Day at the Beach

On to part two! These photos are from a trip we took down to the beach on July 5th. We had all taken looong naps after church and hit the beach about 4:30 in the afternoon. It was just perfect. Not crowded, not blazingly hot and harshly sunny, just fun.

Here's Ruby makin' some mud!

Look how big my little man is! He and Nana were staring out into the wide blue yonder. Looking for jet skis and boats...

Max loves moving sand. Here, there, and everywhere.

I absolutely love it that Ruby and Max enjoy playing with each other. Ruby and I spent a fair amount of time on our beach trips digging holes to bury her brother in and he just loved it. It's hard to believe that last summer he wouldn't even put his feet in the sand!

Fire in the hole!

My pretty girl in her baggy swimsuit, but she just HAD to have those princesses.

Run, Forrest, run!

Ruby's super fabulous stick castle! (Now we know what to do with all those sticks lying on the beach.)

When we got back to the house, Bobo took the kids out for a ride on the jet ski. Max got on there and knew just what to do. He loved driving and Bobo let him!

Ruby wasn't quite so adventurous as her brother, but she had a BIG smile on her face the whole time she was out. Unfortunately, the weather was never nice enough when we had time to take them for a spin again. Oh well, there's always next year!

4th of July

After paging through the several hundred photos that I took over the course of our 18 day vacation, I decided that I'm just going to have to wing it a bit and split the trip up into a few (I'm not willing to put a number to it at this point!) posts. Hopefully I'll control myself and not bore everyone TOO much!

Once we arrived in Elk Rapids we were ready to play! In between pulling out the summer furniture and toys we managed to take a walk/ride down to the water at the end of Bob and Kay's street. Ruby's a mean tricyclist this year... I wish we could have brought her two wheeler along.

Max isn't so handy on the bike, so we were thankful for this push along version! Maybe he'll get the pedaling concept next summer!

As you can see it was a bit chillier in Michigan than we had been used to. I did bring one cool weather outfit for each kiddo--we got a lot of use out of those!

Max enjoyed helping Bobo mow the lawn, though he wasn't crazy about the noise! I guess he needs a pair of noise-cancelling earphones just like Bobo.

All the cousins, aunts, uncles, and even MawMaw were in attendance at the fourth of July hoopla. I found this little picnic table at a yard sale and the kids just loved it. I'm going to have to keep my eye out for one in our neck of the woods.

Kiddos in attendance: Ruby (4), Jenna (2), Annie (3), Noah (2), and Max (2). It was a busy group!

Jill brought poppers for the kids to throw on the patio. It's amazing how fast they can go through a box of those little buggers!

Max and Bobo just hangin'.

Check back tomorrow for more pics from our big trip!