West Side Tour

Yesterday, we took a trip to the west side of the state. We'd planned to visit Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Van Heukelum in the afternoon; Aunt Mary, Uncle Justin, and Rebecca in the late afternoon; and then head to the Saugatuck for dinner and beach time in the evening. But we got a call early in the morning that Great Grandma was sick in bed and wasn't up for visitors. We decided to head out to the lakeshore anyway since we really didn't feel like working around the house. We went to Saugatuck first and were pretty disappointed with it. We'll go back again sometime, but probably without Carson or when he is much older. Its not the place for kids, that's for sure. We barely saw any kids at all. There were tons of people out and about... and absolutely no place to park. So we left Saugatuck and headed to Holland State Park. It had started to rain pretty well when we were just leaving Saugatuck and it continued to rain while we drove through Holland and into the state park. We didn't get out, just looked around, it was just raining too much.

Just when we had made the decision to head home since it didn't seem like the rain was going to let up, we got a call from Great Grandpa asking us if we'd stop by. Great Grandma had heard we were in the area and decided to get up and wanted us to stop by. So we headed over there right about 4:00 or so. Aunt Julie, Uncle Jason, Anna, and Joel were on the west side visiting their friends, so they also stopped in to the farm while we were there. We all had a nice visit for a couple of hours. Aunt Mary, Uncle Justin, and Rebecca were headed to a local baseball game in the evening, so we didn't get a chance to see them, unfortunately. Instead, we went to dinner at Russ' with Aunt Julie, Uncle Jason, Anna, and Joel. After Russ', we headed over to an elementary school playground in Jenison for a little bit until we started getting rained on again. On our ride from the restaurant to the playground, Carson was in the backseat yelling "Do-el" (Joel) every few seconds... for the entire 10 minute ride. He was just so excited to get some extra playtime in with his cousins!

Even though our beach trip was a bust, the overall trip was a nice one. It was very nice to see everyone and get some good, quality visiting and playtime in. :)