Life at the Lake...

On July 13 we did our annual trip to see the Michigan Philharmonic at Kensington Metropark with grandma and grandpa - this year we got the extra blessing of having Kendall and Avery with us as Maeve and Aaron were in Ireland on their anniversary trip and mom and dad had the girls.

Mixed in with our Kensington pictures are pics of the following beautiful day out at Paula's. Both David and Tyler were able to come and we had pizzas with the MacLellan family and enjoyed some time with them. They have twin girls just younger than Mateo and two little boys in between Paulina and Lucy.

Isabel and Andrew

Jackson (left) lives next door to grandma. He is Peter's age and he was nervous about jumping off the dock. Peter offered to jump with him and it took a few false starts but once they started they didn't stop! His friend Lane joined them and the three of them must have jumped 20 times easy!

Before Kensington on Saturday I had to work at EMU. Tyler and Maria came down when I was done presenting and we did a little Ypsi tourism. Though we missed going in the Eyrie or to Corner or Beezys or The Rocket or Unicorn Feed & Supply or Red Rock or Taproom or Vegorama or Wurst Bar or other favorites of mine...we walked from Frog Island park to Depot Town and ate lunch at Sidetracks after deciding between that, Ollie, Maiz or Aubrees. After yummy Rueben, French Dip and Pork BBQ Sliders we headed to Cultivate and had some delish coffees. Since it was so hot we drove through down town and stopped to look in at Materials Unlimited and then headed back home so they could catch some Plymouth Art in the Park before we headed to Kensington for the evening. What a beautiful weekend!!

And we'll leave the blog with some more pics of Grandma Paula in Espana!

July

Since 4th of July was a Thursday this year, the university and unions agreed to take Friday off and in exchange for using 4 hours vacation, EMU pays the other 4 hours of the day off. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity of a 4-day weekend to head to Indiana with the little kids. I had planned to ask the big girls to go but they had big plans to head to South Haven with friend, Katie, on Saturday for a Fab-Four Beach day...this is the only pic I got.

At the Masons we had s'mores and did some backyard fireworks on Thursday. We could hear a bigger firework show but couldn't see it for the trees in the back yard. On Friday we headed to a nearby water park where the Masons have a membership. On Saturday we hit Zip City, an indoor zipline, climbing wall, lasertag and trampoline park. On Sunday we lounged for just a bit and then hit the road early so we could make a stop in Sturgis to see Grandma Alice - who had recently broken a rib.

Before and after of Lucy with s'mores/marshmallows. As Carmen so astutely put it "she's disgusting"

Below: the kids waiting for lasertag and Peter and Kendall on the high ropes challenge course!

All four of the bigger kids on the climbing wall...

Paulina on the zipline!

Paulina adores her older cousin, Avery, and especially loves her dress-up stash!

A few photos from Spain: Paula's childhood home below...

A meal with her sisters and their husbands (selfie by Miguelangel!)

Looks like sushi with Miguelangel and a pic of the pool at "campo" (dreamy home in the mountains)

How I love, adore and miss these beautiful, wonderful people!!!