We just returned from a week-long vacation to my parents' place on Lake Michigan. It was an awesome week. We bought a typical week's worth of groceries before leaving home, so I'm not really counting that in the $150 price tag for the trip. We weren't trying to be super-cheap, because the lodging was free, but that's how it went down. One nice restaurant meal (Brewster's!!), gas, and very little else.
It was 95 degrees for several days, so we didn't hit the beach every day. We went on two long bike rides (these were E's first-ever bike rides, and he did quite well being strapped into the seat and wearing a helmet---thanks, Alison!), played in the backyard, and hit the produce market. (BTW, if you're ever in Southwest Michigan, the Sawyer Garden Center is AWESOME! Love that place!)
On the beach, our $5 inflatable baby pool totally made the trip. Seriously. He could sit in a baby pool for hours, pouring water out of a watering can, splashing with sticks, plopping rocks into the water...you get the idea. It was wonderful to sit next to him with a book instead of chasing him everywhere. Though there was plenty of chasing at other times.
The lake was varied, as usual--a big-wave day for jumping; a crystal-clear, calm day for using the baby float, and the rest were perfectly in-between, providing a pleasant audio backdrop.
(current favorite pastime: screaming.)
We spent the lone rainy day at the Curious Kids Museum in St. Joseph, MI. It was small, but nice. And FREE because we are members of the Kohl Children's Museum at home. (We are so spoiled by our local museum that it makes anything small look, well, not so nice.) Will stopped back there on our way out of town while I was doing laundry, and then it was empty, and even had some reptiles in a hands-on exhibit---even more fun.
We got to spend a day with my parents toward the beginning of the week, and the highlight of the trip was the fireworks display on the 4th. I forgot how awesome it is up there on Independence Day; we haven't been there in 2 years. (Last year E was too little for it to be any fun, and the year before, I was nearing my due date and couldn't travel.) The little guy LOVED seeing the fireworks, which stretched up and down the miles of beach within view. I seriously don't ever want to go to a city fireworks display again---it was that awesome. E fell asleep on Daddy, while still chewing a graham cracker. (Mmmmm....S'Mores.)
The joke of the week was that since our vacation was so cheap, we could go buy ourselves an iPad. I think we both want one, but don't---it would be fun and cool, but we can't justify the cost. We CAN, however, justify the cost of a gas grill, which we just might buy for ourselves. We'll see! (We tell ourselves that we'll eat at home more, eat more veggies, it would heat faster than our charcoal grill, blah, blah, blah. We are SO good at justifying purchases, it's scary. We almost did that recently with a HOUSE, but that's another story altogether.)
But I digress. Our vacation was super-fun, relaxing, and after we added a room-darkening shade, E let us sleep an extra hour each morning. Beautiful.
