Our Big Trip Part Two: Michigan

Wow lots of pictures! Too many to choose from! After Indiana we headed up to Michigan for a reunion with the Maple side of the family. We all split the cost of renting a lodge-type place that was just a 20 minute walk to the beaches of Lake Michigan. We stayed up there for 3 days and we had such a great time. Everything could not have gone any better or smoother (kudos Maria!), which was such a relief after the disasters of our last reunion. Some of the awesome things we did: blueberry picking, beach, family talent show, beach, campfire, beach, ect. I loved the blueberry picking, they were sweet and delicious, unlike the ones you can buy in the store. All of the kids left with purple stained mouths and hands, plus we had ample blueberries to eat for the rest of the week. The beaches of Lake Michigan were so nice! The water was surprisingly warm, and it feels like you are on the ocean minus the salt (which is a good thing). It wasn't crowded and there was plenty of sand for kids to roll in. I would definately love to go back to swim there. Our Family Talent Show turned out to be a huge success. We did our own version of "thriller" as a Micheal Jackson tribute. Everyone came up with creative fun acts. I think we will be doing that again. We also learned how to make our own jewelry and the girls and I made a few different jewelry sets for ourselves. We took nice family portraits that I will be sharing once I can copy them from Katie's picasa. The following pictures are in a completely random order.

Here's the Thompson family doing their act for the talent show, can you tell what dance they're doing?
Here's the Price family's act, they lipsynced to "lime in the coconut"

Here's Mckayla in the sand:

Here's Katie and Amber who FINALLY got into the water:

Here's some random guy I saw in the water who I thought was incredibly sexy so I snapped a picture without his knowledge, then put it online without his knowledge, but you have to admit- he's pretty dang sexy!

This is my mom and her older sister Jo being lifeguards.

Here's my cousin Maria holding Kailey. Ps-she planned this whole thing plus had to move to another state the next week, so BIG KUDOS to Maria for such an awesome reunion!

Jake with our baby fish Jaxon. He has shown a natural ability to swim and a love for the water. He will already swim across our pool by himself (with a floatie on, but no one helping him) and our girls wouldn't do that until just this summer after they had taken swimming lessons!

This is my niece Megan. I caught her doing meditative sand angels.

Here's Jessica's hubby Luke with Jane and Kailey all in red:

Here's Jaxon devoring a smore by the campfire:

Here's our gathering at the campfire behind the lodge:

This is my uncle Larry reading a bedtime story to all of the kids. One of the grandparents read a bedtime story every night. I thought that was a brilliant idea.

Here's Gabriella, Eve, and Lyla in the lake.

After 3 full days at Lake Michigan we headed off for the last part of our trip. It was so fun to have everyone together again under happy circumstances! We had such a great time with everyone and it was actually a relaxing vacation because we just played together and hung out and didn't try to over plan on activities. So then we were off to............