July 4th- Jenny, Brett, & Maya

The week of the 4th of July, Jenny, Brett, & Maya paid us a visit. We had a great time together. Brett & Jenny were able to get away for an overnighter and enjoy a couple fun bike rides along Lake Michigan. They were in Muskegon area. We had fun watching Maya. She fit right in and the boys decided they wanted to keep her and that Jenny & Brett could get a different Maya for themselves.

Highlights
Brad and Brett enjoyed several strenuous bike rides, racquetball, and tennis. We all enjoyed walking through the nature preserve, camping, BBQing (on the 4th), seeing Ratatouille, playing tennis, and swimming. The week went by like a whirlwind. We went from one thing to the next, but, enjoyed it all.

One of my favorite things was seeing my mom ride a bike again after not being on one for at least 30 years. On her first ride with us, she led the pack the entire time! I was impressed.

The night of the 4th, we hosted a BBQ at our house with two other families. We made homemade rootbeer and had lots of good food. The evening was wonderful until 12:00pm. We were all sound asleep when my mom starting calling for help- Spencer was barfing all over his carpet. He didn't feel sick or anything, I think he just drank too much rootbeer. I didn't even know how to begin cleaning up the mess. I told Spencer, "this definitely takes the cake for the grossest clean up job in my nine years as a mother." We covered everything with baking soda to get rid of the smell and left it till morning, when we could get a wet vac to help. The carpet will never be the same.

So, in the midst of our figuring out how to clean up all the barf, we started packing for our camping trip and left around 3:00pm. It literally took us all morning to get ready and our cars were packed to the hilt just for one night of camping.

Camping
We camped at a park called Addison Oaks (about 25 min. from our house). It's a beautiful park with biking trails, a man made beach and lake, and lots of shade. We set up our camp around 5:00 pm and a few hours later, the sheriff came through and said a bad storm (with 60 mph winds) was headed our direction. So, we got in our cars and thought we'd wait it out. It rained a little, but the worst of the storm never hit us. Although, we found out later, that our neighborhood was hit and without power for several hours, so we were glad to be camping. For us, one of the highlights of the storm was seeing a double rainbow.

Jenny prepared some delicious tin foil dinners (with cream of celery soup in them), that hit the spot. The boys roasted hotdogs, and we all enjoyed smores. The little girls were making us nervous around the fire, so we strapped them in the chariot. We headed to bed around 10:00pm. We didn't fall asleep until much later though, because we could hear sounds from neighboring campers. A racoon was bothering the campers next to us. Lucy was delirious but couldn't fall asleep until I found her bottle.

We had two misfortunes that evening. Brad accidentally erased all our digital pictures, and Brett accidentally locked his keys in the car. Despite our efforts using hangers, a locksmith came to finish the job the next morning.

For breakfast, we had hearty pancakes and fruit and then all headed on a bike ride through the forest. The boys weren't happy when we decided to go around the six mile loop a second time. But, when we finished, they enjoyed playing in the lake for several hours with our friends the Lewis's. Sawyer spent most of his time trying to catch a fish with a net he found on the beach.

We brought our Baggo game and just enjoyed a low key afternoon.

The kids really enjoyed pet sitting our neighbors fish- SpongeBob.