First day of school, and beach day, and soccer, and softball......

The three lower school kids ready for day 1

After a half first day of school, a beach day is a necessary thing!

The upper school is calling

The three smallest started school on the Tuesday before Labor Day with a half day. It was a cloudy questionable morning but the afternoon was GORGEOUS and several families met up at the beach near our house for a few last hours of summer.

The next day, the upper school needed students to beckon the hallways, so off went our 7th grader.  The first day was chapel and service projects so she brought work gloves and old tennies to school and brought her school stuff the next day!

These last few weeks have been crazy with practices and getting back into a routine.  All four are playing soccer, Anika is playing softball, the older three are all in piano, Maria is in Spanish Immersion school - which means her teacher only speaks in Spanish, Anika is in the upper school which begins at 7:50 and she moves from room to room, Anika plays soccer on the boys team because there weren't enough boys or girls to make a team, so they made a co-ed team, Matt is reffing soccer, Matt is coaching the 7 - 8th grade boys soccer team.  Did I mention life is a bit crazy?!?

Another night with the Whitecaps

The kids read a bunch more this summer and got us to the Whitecaps game for free.  We went the night before school started.  I don't win any mom of the year awards for putting my kids to bed at 11 PM the night before the first day of school, but we had a great time. Aunt Kathy joined us and we had plenty of entertainment between innings. We decided next year we want to try to get there REALLY early one game and see if we can get the kids in one of the between inning games. Who knows.  It ended in a Whitecaps walk off home run which was rather exciting!

We stopped at the Dollar Store before going and bought all of our game snacks there - good times!

Cousin time

We took the trolley around town and by the beach

If you come to visit, we will take you to the beach, its glorious!

We had some more cousin time! We had a full day of fun starting with a parade, YMCA family day, trolley rides, beach, and ice cream.  Of course we ate and had fun and played games, but that is the high lights.

Thanks for coming guys!

Sailing

heading out to sea

and back to Muskegon

our 36 feet of entertainment

We have some reverse snow birds at our church.  They live in South Carolina but summer on Lake Michigan in this beauty called Blessed.  It has two queen size beds below, a kitchen, a bathroom and provides oh so much fun.  

It was plenty windy for sailing and we had a great time. Matt, Anika and Brandon all took turns steering and found it wasn't as easy as it looks!  The kids were quite sure we were going to tip - the response from the captain - 'the rail isn't even in the water yet!'  See the silver rail by the kids' knees?  On the way back to Muskegon, they did get wet up to their waists, but the rail never was in the water - but you do tip quite a bit. 

We grilled chicken and enjoyed some fruit and salad together once back on land.

It was quite the experience!