Our first camping trip of 2008

We had a great time. On this beautiful day we hiked on some of the trails and came out onto the beach. It was gorgeous and completely deserted. The kids tore off their clothes, ran down the dunes and played in the ICE COLD water. BRRRRRR! How it is that kids don't mind that I will never know.

On our hike the kids couldn't resist crossing these fallen trees. Nicolas and Christian were able to walk across but Matthew and Gabey just wanted to scoot across at first.
Gabe has no fear and decided he could walk across too. It didn't work out so well. He fell in and then lost a Croc in the muck. Nick and Dad both tried to get it out with no success. I was incredibly irritated that I had to go in with my clothes on to get it out.



Yeah, the Croc has been found... no more tree walking - we're off on our hike.


We had to make it up this big dune and it was hard, especially for Lily. Poor dog, she was SO tired. It was even harder for her to come up the bigger dune on the other side to get back to camp! She was exhausted!Beautiful Lake Michigan - all to ourselves. Do you know how rare that is? It was glorious!





The next day our friends Al, Liz and Oak came out to visit. We had lunch and hung out at the beach.

Oak is just starting to learn how to walk :)





Here is his Daddy, Al, he's a GIANT!













This is the first time I had ever run on a trail. My girlfriend, Lyn, and her little Jilli and I ran down this path. I liked it so much I went back the next day :) It is much softer than running on concrete!

Meet Herbie

Herbie is Gabriel's pet froggy. They do everything together. Often Gabe will fall asleep holding hands with Herbie. We were sitting on the sofa when I noticed he'd fallen asleep so I had fun taking these pictures of Gabe and his buddy, Herbie.



I tried to get his head in his mouth but Gabe wouldn't open up... funny the things you can do to your kiddos when they are sleeping. I'll try to get a video of some of the rotten things Steve does to the kids when they are sleeping - seriously, he's so mean to them!

THE FACE I was looking through some old pictures earlier today and came across these of me and my dad. We've been making this silly face together for as long as I can remember - it's sort of a V. family joke :)

love you, Dad!

Field Trip!

The boys and I went to a friends house to play on their acreage. The kids loved trekking through their land, checking out the critters, playing in their stream and picking Spring flowers.

My girlfriend found this frog and one of the boys caught it.
The kids played with him for awhile before he escaped to the swamp. We think he was pretty scared of us and found a safe little shelter to hide in.


My friend, Carol, was 8 months pregnant with her 4th blessing and out catching critters - pretty good stuff!
We found these little mud piles all over the place. We were trying to figure out what they were when Carol told us they are made by crayfish (sp?) I wasn't sure what a crayfish was but apparently this is what they make.
But in no time at all she found a dead crayfish for us. It was funny that with 7 kids running around she was the one finding everything. Here is a crayfish. We tried to save him but he was pretty stinky!!!




Our friends own 7.5 acres - the boys loved playing out there.
Here we are picking "buttercups". They recently found out the proper term for these pretty yellow flowers that come out in May is "swamp marigold". They were all over the place and we picked a couple of pails of them.


This little girl would not stay out of that muddy swamp - she loved it as much as the boys. Here Gabriel is trying to tell her what to do and it doesn't look like she appreciated it.

Braden caught a grasshopper.

On the way back Carol found these tracks in the mud. We were able to identify them as deer tracks. This was a really fun field trip!

Visiting Grand Haven

Steve and I took the kiddos out to Grand Haven a few weeks ago. We wanted to watch the sunset and walk along the boardwalk. It was a fun way to spend one of the first really nice evenings of the Summer season.



Gabe loves to pose and show off his super hero moves. He has been doing that for 2 years and it still makes me laugh everytime I see him do it.



Matthew was getting really cold as our trip out to the lake was sort of spontaneous. Though it was nice out, the wind really did make it chilly. Matthew wanted to wear my hat because he was "SO COLD".





It was pretty interesting to see all of the Coast Guard memorials. Nicolas especially liked those.