Michigan Randoms

Finishing off some random pics from our time in Michigan...

Drove up to the Detroit temple one evening. It ended up not being the most calming experience as traffic was awful and my phone (GPS) died when I was 5 minutes away from the temple. So I ended up missing the endowment session. I was able to participate in some sealings and was the only person in the Celestial Room when I went which was quite nice, so it was still a good visit in the end :).

 We waited outside the church for 25 minutes one Friday morning to do Zumba and no one ever came...I found out later it was cancelled...Shae kept busy taking pictures...

 "Mom, I don't want to put shorts on, I just want to play with no shorts." So he did.

 The school pride here! Michigan everything, everywhere! Love this barn with GO BLUE on the roof, and all the maize and blue buses.

It was such a nice surprise to find out that our good Williamsburg buddy Nicky (rather, Mickey, as Shae continues to call him) was doing the same program that Darin was. It was so fun to catch up with him and watch him entertain our kiddos.

 Fun day playing baseball with sticks and rocks at the park. I felt pretty nostalgic for softball running around the bases with the kids.

 This cute baby girl...er, toddler girl in the tub. Where did my baby go!?

 Can't get over how big she looks sitting in nursery!

 Shae mastered the art of scissors while in Ann Arbor.

While Belén mastered face powder.

And being stinking cute.

First ponytails!

I just realized that I never posted these pictures from our first weekend in MI when we took a trip to Lake Independence. It was only about 20 minutes outside of Ann Arbor and was the perfect lake for our little kiddos. Much more tranquil than Lake Michigan with perfect sand castle sand.  

Darin really got in to the sand castle building. I had to comfort him a few times when other kids came over and knocked down part of the fortress. 

Boys doing swimming lessons.

 Girls chowing down.

When they realized what they were missing out on.

 FHE about putting on the armor of God and what that means. (Not sure why all of these pics are blurry, but they were too cute not to post). Belén did not want to keep her helmet on, but was pretty happy about everything else.

 Ready to fight.

The helmets and shields quickly turned into drums and the swords into drum sticks.

We had such a great time in Ann Arbor. Everything worked out so well and we are glad that we got to explore a new city (one that we were sure we were going to be living in...) Thanks for the good times Michigan!

Traverse City Part II

We both really wanted to see a light house while we were in Michigan, so after the beach we drove all the way up to the tip of the peninsula to go to Leelanau State Park to see one of the few light houses in the area. 

Unfortunately, the light house wasn't exactly what we expected. That is, it wasn't what we had envisioned in a light house.

It was still cool to walk up all the steps and see the view from the top, but I have to say, it did leave us wanting.

Pretty fun watching Darin make this tight squeeze (I'm sure it was equally funny watching me do it).

Seeing the light house was really only worth it because we got to go through this adorable town that I seriously fell in love with. It was so cute! It was small and quaint. There were little shops along a boardwalk/deck lined with serious fishing boats.

Check out all those fishing poles!

After Fishtown we headed back to Traverse City to look for a cherry orchard to see if we could pick some and grab some ice cream. We found a place, but sadly the cherry picking was not happening that day. So we grabbed some ice cream and sat outside and watched Shae take on a chicken.

The chicken won. (I wish you could see the chicken going after him in the picture but I took it a second to soon).

He sat on the table eating his ice cream like this while the chicken circled the table. Let's be honest, I was up on the table with him. Creepy chicken.

When the chicken finally walked away and we felt safe enough to get off the table, we went and looked at the lambs.

She loved them.

Still bummed that we didn't get to pick any cherries, but whatcha gonna do. There were orchards all over the place up there. Traverse City was actually just finishing their week long cherry festival while we were up there, which we didn't end up seeing since we went searching for a lighthouse instead...

Kind of funny that we are calling this our Traverse City vacation when we didn't actually do anything in Traverse City but drive through it (which, it was also a super cute town, right by the lake, really beautiful). But it was fun to be flexible with our plans and we ended up doing a lot in just that one day. 

We were both SO impressed with the kids. They were really wonderful to us while we tried to jam in as many things as we could and take them in and out of the car. We didn't end up getting home until midnight that night and they were even kind enough to sleep in for us the next day (we all slept till 9:30!! It was so great!). Poor Belén only slept for about 45 minutes on the drive home that evening, she sleeps so terribly in the car (did I mention we are leaving to drive to Idaho tomorrow? Are we crazy?)

So glad that we got to take this trip and make these fun memories together!