Fall Fest, 2009

This weekend was the White Lake Area Fall Fest. It used to be called Oktoberfest, but apparently people were getting confused because it was actually in September (go figure... they must not know about Oktoberfest in Germany....). Anyhow, my mom came up for the day because Rick had to work, so we decided to check it out.

It was fun! Not too big, but really cool. There were some produce wagons with things like apples, green peppers, peaches, and plums. A local farm was there selling flowers, wreaths, squash, pumpkins and funny looking gourds and there was a HUGE selection of giant mum pots!!!

They also had a cider mill there (YUM!), and elephant ears!! We went through the Arts and Crafts stands and came across some really unique stuff... my mom bought me a birdhouse made out of a giant gourd, LOL!! I'll have to take a picture of that one!

The kids favorite thing (besides pizza and elephant ears!), was the hayride. Double JJ Ranch volunteered a tractor and hay wagon to take the kids on a short little hayride. The boys LOVED it! They wanted to go again!!







After the hayride, they got donuts and apple cider, and even posed for one more "brother picture" for me!!!

Budding Photographer...

So, I went to unload pictures from the memory card of the digital camera... imagine my surprise when I discovered there were almost 100 pictures on there!! I was thinking "hmmmm, I don't remember taking that many pictures." As I was looking through them, it occurred to me that Joshua had gotten ahold of the camera, lol.

There were pictures of Riley, Logan sleeping, the basement stairs, Rick on the phone, a scrape on his knee, a full dishwasher, the ceiling, the floor, tons of unsuspecting people (none of whom were even looking in the general vicinity of the camera, lol), and some random self portraits, that he took of himself, while sitting on the toilet.

Oh Lord, lol......







I can't wait to bring those up when he brings his first girlfriend home :)

For the Record...

I was done with my workout by 8:45am today! I was pretty proud of myself! It helped that Rick had to get up early and he wasn't laying in bed sleeping when I was up and about, but regardless, I got it done and out of the way early.

We'll see if that works again tomorrow :)

Oh, one more thing. "My Horizontal Life" by Chelsea Handler is H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S!!!!!

Ok, I'm off to finish re-finishing (lol) the console table my mom got me at a garage sale. I'm trying to make the scratches on top disappear...

Been Feeling Kinda Lazy....

Man, I feel like I've been fighting off a cold for a while now. I have a hard time sleeping, but I'm always tired, and I've been getting some pretty interesting headaches lately. The changing seasons are wreaking havoc on my sinuses, so I'm sure that's it, but seriously! I'm ready to start feeling good again!

It's taking some adjusting getting used to the whole "school year" routine again. I'm up with Joshua every morning to get him ready for school, but the minute he gets on the bus, I just want to go back to bed! Maybe I need to start working out in the mornings - get my energy up right away... I'm going to TRY that tomorrow, but honestly, I don't have much willpower, so I'll probably come up with some kind of excuse.

Sigh.

However, I start an aerobic class on the 30th, so maybe that will help get me back in the groove.

We've been busy working out in the yard lately. Fun stuff like yanking out bushes and removing stone so we can fix our fence. The house next to us is in foreclosure, so this weekend we went out there and thinned out the treeline between our property and theirs. Their yard was SO overgrown that it was making our yard look bad too! That just won't fly, lol. So, armed with a chainsaw, we spent the weekend clearing out trees that were on our property and stocking up on firewood, lol. It's not done yet, but it looks a ton better.

Joshua got signed up for Boy Scouts tonight. He read the paper they sent home from school about it and is CONVINCED that he's going to ride his bike through the mountains, learn to shoot a bow and arrow and cook smores over a campfire, thanks to the pictures that were on the paper, lol. He and Rick are BOTH super geeked about him being a "Wolf Cub"!! Rick maybe even more than Josh, lol! The first big "Pack Meeting" is on Monday, so we'll all be going to that as a family. I was a girl scout for quite a few years, so this is pretty fun for me too :)

Other than that, not a whole lot of excitement in our neck of the woods, but I'll take it! I like when things are quiet!

Oh, I forgot to add... on Sunday, my family had a Golf Scramble, and I DID NOT SUCK, even though it was only my second time ever going "real golfing", LOL! It was fun, and I'm looking forward to next year! It's the time of year when I get to see my family a lot... Pumpkin Carving, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, all really close together! I'm super family-oriented, so it's nice for me to see them a lot this time of year!

Have a great week... I'm off to listen to "My Horizontal Life" by Chelsea Handler. It looked really funny and I could do with some funny tonight! Thank you, book on CD from the library and MP3 player!

Adios Summer, Hola School Year!

Another summer vacation is gone. Wow, was it FUN being home with the kids! We were able to do SO much more stuff than we could when I was working. Plus, Rick ended up working just about 7 days a week, every single week, so it was good that the kids were still able to enjoy summer with mom!!

Time to get back into the "Back To School Groove"... Joshua is now in second grade! He was a little apprehensive this morning, but when we left him at his table in Mrs. Morningstar's class, he was fine. Logan, however, is going to have to get used to entertaining himself, without the help of his big brother. When we got home from dropping Josh off to school, Logan started to cry. He so desperately wants to go to school too, poor guy! I'm sure in a couple of days, he'll be fine, and enjoying not having anyone to bother him :)

Here are some pics from this morning:

His breakfast choice was a bagel with peanut butter and a big bowl of blueberries :)


Getting ready to go:


Showing off his new backpack:


I'll try to get some more pics when he gets off the bus this afternoon!!

Ludington State Park

Rick has been working crazy hours this summer - usually 7 days a week. We haven't been able to do much this summer as a family, which was bumming both of us out. Things are starting to slow down for him so he's been able to have a few days off that weren't because of rain. Yesterday, we decided to take the kids hiking at Ludington State Park.

When we told the kids yesterday morning, they were SO excited! I packed up a cooler for us, tracked down the bug spray, and we were on our way by about 11:30am.





We took the scenic route north through Pentwater so Rick could get his mopeds out so he could rent them over the phone if anyone called (that's what he does when he's not at the store). We drove around Bass Lake (SO PRETTY!), and decided to take the kids to the lookout at Consumers Energy. Just south of Ludington, there's a huge water reservoir where they make electricity. It's like 400 ft deep or something crazy like that. You can walk up the hill and look out at the reservoir and also Lake Michigan. My camera batteries died halfway up the hill, so I didn't get pictures at the top, but I did get some on the way up.













After that, we drove up to Ludington State Park - one of my favorite places to go hiking. We used to go there when I was little and I've been wanting to take the boys for the longest time. It was gorgeous. Warmer than we thought it was going to be though, but that was ok. I wanted to look for a geocache out by the lighthouse, so we decided on the Lighthouse Trail.









When we got about halfway on the trail, I remembered that the last part of that trail, across the sand, is particularly wicked. It was hot and walking in the sand was really hard on all of us, but Joshua did it himself, and Logan tried REALLY hard to make it before Rick had to put him up on his shoulders. Eventually we made it to the Big Sable Lighthouse. It was SO pretty - I should have taken a picture, but I was just so glad to be done walking for a while that I didn't even think about it, lol.

You can climb to the top of the Big Sable Lighthouse for $2.00 for adults and $1.00 for kids, so we decided that would be really fun. After a 5 minute video on the history of the lighthouse, which was REALLY cool, and a demonstration from a volunteer about how light is magnified with a lamp, we climbed the 130 steps to the top of the tower.



It was GORGEOUS up top!!! I've never been to the top of a lighthouse before and was so impressed!! The kids LOVED it!





After we got to the bottom, Joshua and Logan wanted to play on a HUGE tree stump, which was another great photo opportunity.





We decided to take the Lighthouse Road back instead of walking through all that sand again. It was hot, but it was hardpacked, so we were good with that! Right as we were about to get to the Coast Guard Trail to take that back to the truck we saw this:



Unfortunately, it was getting late, so we weren't able to check out the shipwreck, but we're definitely going to see what it's all about next time we're out there. On the way back to the truck, Eagle Eye Joshua spotted some wildlife!!





There is actually a deer laying in the grass in the last one, but you can't see it in the picture. After we made it back to the truck, we went to Dairy Queen for some well deserved ice cream and then we had to boogie back into Whitehall for Joshua's open house at school. But, it was an awesome day and we had a great time together.