Catching Up and more Michigan (finally)

I can't believe summer is almost over and how slack I've been on the blog this summer. Hopefully once the kids go back to school, I'll do better. We have been trying to live up each day of summer left around here even if that means sweating profusely while doing so. The other day we went to visit the sand pile on the intramural fields behind our house and while we were there the sprinklers came on for the fields. It was such a treat to be able to cool off and run through sprinklers and we thought we might get in trouble when a groundsman came by, but he said we were allowed to do it anytime as long as we didn't twist the sprinklers around. Yay! So now when we're too hot to do anything but melt around 4:30 pm, we know where to go!

Last night was *A*'s Kindergarten Open House. She was super-excited and knows so many of the kids already from preschool, dance and swim team. There are going to be 4 kindergartners from seminary families this year and they are all girls, so that should be fun! Poor (H) needs a new buddy though. Luckily he's at an age where girls are still fun to play with because there are a few 3.5 year old girls he enjoys playing with at the cookouts and they'll be in his preschool class too.
Ok, I have so many fun things to share still from our Michigan trip so here are some more pictures. Enjoy!

So after our mini-family vacation, we headed Up North a bit further to the Traverse City area. We were actually staying outside of Traverse City this year but we ventured to "the big city" a few times. We arrived on the last day of the National Cherry Festival just in time for the parade. I'm a big fan of parades and this is one of the best. Marching bands, hundreds of floats, and lots of cool stuff to watch. It was very long (and very hot, especially for Michigan) but there are so many things (and ice cream vendors), so the kids were entertained the whole time. Here are some highlights:

After this we headed up to our cute cabin and spent the next few days lounging on the beach and swimming.

I'll post again soon about a cool road trip we took while there, but to close, here are some sunset pictures of our beach. Ahhhhhhh.