Wednesday: Sandy Pines

 Uncle Lee and Aunt Sue invited us to Sandy Pines again!  We had a great time.

We played some mini golf.  Isaac improved a ton from the first time in 2018 when we visited.  Joshua has improved, but will often just hit the ball a ton.  We just play for fun though, so it doesn't matter.

Then we went swimming.  Isaac was a little on the fence about it because it was in the low 70s, but we decided to go anyway.  It was an excellent choice.  He loved the water slide.  Once Joshua finally gathered up enough courage to go down the water slide he loved it too.  I think they both went down it at least 20 times.

We then went for lunch and ice cream.  Joshua crashed while waiting for the food, but the ice cream seemed to pick him back up again.  Phew.  We stopped by one additional playground and swung a bit, looked at the flowers and bird feeders at their house, and then were on our way.

We got home and I crashed.  I didn't think that we had done anything that hard, but I laid down for a nap almost immediately and was asleep within two seconds.  I woke up a few times to direct the children on the school work they should be doing after they had screen time, but just could not wake up well.

We also got the wrong package from Amazon.  It was supposed to be for another house and of course we didn't get the package that we were supposed to receive.  Amazon deals with the stuff easily, but it's annoying.  I couldn't just wait to see if my package showed up correctly because I need some of the items by Sunday for a birthday.  Joshua and I took a walk and brought the incorrect package to the correct house, but just left it on their doorstep.  

Tuesday: crazy town

Oh my goodness, it was crazy town today.

We'll start with the thunderstorm last night.  It was amazing.  I don't think I've ever seen that much lightning in a storm...it was constant.  It totally put the fireworks to shame.

Next we'll talk about Joshua.  He talked the entire day.  I'm not kidding.  He probably spoke at least 3x his normal amount of words.  I could barely handle it at the end of the day and hid in the office.

Next we'll talk about Isaac and Joshua.  Any time they were together it was wrestling/running/hugging craziness.  We'd tell them to tone it down and two minutes later they were back at it.  I finally threatened them with cleaning their bedrooms by themselves if they didn't move the crazy away from me.  And I went to take a nap, so that they couldn't start again in two minutes in front of me.

Joshua jumped off the diving board at swimming lessons.  It was probably his first time.

He also made a new tower.  It got rather unstable, so he took it down right before dinner.

I found the lost Giraffe!  He had been missing for a few days.  He likes to be on top of heads, so I let him sit there for a little bit to celebrate being found.

Monday: Happy 4th

For this year's 4th of July we didn't really do anything special.  We just continued our normal weekend activities.

Joshua did a lot of building.  First with hot wheels, which haven't come out for a while.

Then he built a fort in which to play the switch.  Just before dinner he started listening to an audiobook and feel asleep.  I had a hard time waking him up.  The baby blanket is a hammock for Grey Bear.

Last Tuesday: Mackinaw City

We debated between which fort we wanted to visit in the morning: Colonial Michilimackinac on the mainland or Fort Mackinac on the island.  The webpages were obviously made by the same person and looked fairly similar.  We ended up deciding on Colonial Michilimackinac.  (I don't know if it was the best decision, but it was a good decision.)

We took the ferry back and decided to make a quick detour to cross the bridge.

The fort was excellent.  There were people in costume and willing to answer all the questions.  I had more questions than the kids this time, but they enjoyed exploring.  Joshua really wanted to go on the ...I don't know the correct terminology...bridge around the inside of the fort and the corner lookouts.

We heard the artillery fire and the muskets fire.  I probably could have stayed a bit longer, but Joshua was starting to be done.  So we grabbed lunch and went home.  It was a short, but fun, trip.

Sunday: fireworks

Even though it's only the 3rd, it appeared that everyone in the neighborhood was doing fireworks tonight.  In our little cove there were three parties going on out of the five houses.  Anyway, we went out on the deck and had a wonderful fireworks display that lasted quite a while!  The mosquitos weren't too bad this year either, so we were able to enjoy them outside for the whole time.

Last Monday: Mackinac Island

Monday we took the ferry to Mackinac Island.  We were hoping for a tour of the bridge on the way out, but the water was too rough.

After dropping off our luggage at the very close hotel, we started our bike tour around the island.  Isaac rode his own bike and did well, while Joshua was on a tag-a-long with me.  He is just able to ride a bike, but I think it would have been too stressful for him and I'm not sure he could do well with awareness of stuff around him.

Our first stop was Arch Rock.  We climbed all 207 steps.

We continued around the island, making lots of stops.  We played with rocks, climbed on rocks, saw Arch Rock from the bottom, etc.  For a while it seemed like we were stopping every half mile, which at our leisurely pace was still felt like once every five minutes.  (I'm not sure how long it actually was though.)

Near the end Ben and Isaac went ahead of us a bit, but we were never too far behind.  We had good bikes, but at the same time I just wasn't that fast.

We were able to get into our room a bit early, which was wonderful.  Ben had a comfy place to relax and the boys and I went to see the butterflies.  A whole bunch landed on Isaac and Joshua was rather annoyed with that.  One briefly landed on him, but it was definitely less fun.  There was an insect zoo attached to the butterflies and we spent a surprising amount of time there.

We met up with Ben for some fudge and then had a short rest time before dinner.

The boys were going a bit crazy, so we did a mirror maze and then walked a half mile to the school playground.  I thought the playground was a little closer, but at the same time it meant energy was being used up.  In the mirror maze we came out the entrance a surprising number of times before we finally found the exit.

Saturday: screen time day

The boys were elated yesterday to find out that we were having a screen time day today.  I think Isaac mainly played Minecraft while Joshua jumped around between several things.  (Joshua was forced to jump a few times because I needed my computer and that's the one he plays Minecraft on.  I felt a little bad for him, but he didn't seem to mind too much.  Normally it isn't an issue.)