Our Trip North, Odykirk Reunion & August Recap

So... I just realized I never posted this post, or another couple of posts, that have been sitting in my drafts folder waiting for pictures to be uploaded since the beginning of September - OOPS!  So here it is... written back in early September.

-----

August sure passed by us in the blink of an eye.  We were just so busy.  Work was pretty crazy for both Kevin and I with some long days, plus I had to do some traveling (luckily just (long) day trips).  Whenever work is crazy for us, it tends to translate into craziness at home, too.  Plus, we took a short vacation, saw lots of friends, and did lots of preparing for Carson to start Kindergarten in September.  Here's a quick recap of the highlights of our month.

We took a long weekend trip (Friday-Monday) up north.  We rented a cute little cabin in Honor, MI, which is up in Benzie County.  We explored Empire, Benzonia, Frankfort, Glen Arbor, Fishtown/Leland, and a little Traverse City.  It was such a great, relaxing weekend!

We drove up on Friday morning, explored Empire and the North Bar Lake area, and spent some time on a private beach on the Empire bluffs.  The water was seriously gorgeous - it looked like Caribbean water, it was so turquoise-y blue.  We had a lot of fun playing on the beach.  Then we went to Frankfort to explore a little and have dinner at Dinghy's - which was really good!  After dinner, we made a quick stop at the cabin and then headed over to Sara's cousin Dana's house in Traverse City.  We got to hang out with some of Sara's cousins and great-aunts and had a good bonfire.

We had an Odykirk family reunion on Saturday on the Platte River/Lake Michigan.  Quite a few Odykirks came out for it, which was great!  All six of the Odykirk siblings' families were represented.  We all tubed the Platte River - some did a 2-hour trip and some did a 1-hour trip.  We just did a 1-hour trip since we didn't think the kids would last for the 2-hour trip.  It was so fun and super relaxing!  After the tubing trip, we had a great picnic lunch at the park followed by lots of laughs and visiting, swimming, paddle-boarding, beach walking, and just relaxing.  The kids had so much fun, as did we!  Sara also did a quick photo session with her cousin Dana and her family.  Then we all headed back to Dana's house again for a late dinner and another bonfire, which was SO fun!!  We played some really fun games around the bonfire and had such a great time.

On Sunday, we explored the Sleeping Bear Dunes area with Nana, Papa, and Aunt Lindsay.  We did the Pierce Stocking scenic drive, walked on the dunes a bit, took lots of pictures, had a picnic lunch, and just enjoyed the beauty that is northern Michigan.  Then we hit the road to explore Glen Arbor, Glen Haven, and Fishtown/Leland.  We did some shopping, lots of walking, and had a good dinner in Fishtown.  It was another great day.

We got up and left on Monday morning, taking our time getting home with a few different stops to explore and see some things along the way.  It was such a great weekend.  We returned home feeling relaxed and recharged.  :)

Kevin's softball season on our church team ended.  I'm not sure what their record ended up being, but I don't think it was that great.  But they all had a lot of fun, which is what matters most.  Kevin got to know some guys from Faith quite well and really enjoyed his time on the team.  He's looking forward to being on the team again next year. too.  The team had a season-end BBQ one Sunday afternoon, which was fun to spend some time with the families, swimming, sunning, munching, and hanging out.

We got to spend some time with some old friends of ours, when we hosted the "Long Time No See BBQ" at our house.  We had five other families over, some of which we hadn't seen in several years.  So it was good to catch up and see one another!  Most of the guys were old car friends of Kevin's, and I had gotten to know their wives over the years, too.

We made a trip to the Detroit Children's Hospital for a pediatric surgical consult for the small tumors that Bristol was born with on her head.  They recommend having them removed, but we are not going to pursue that immediately.  We may explore it this winter, but we will see.  I want to talk to our pediatrician about it again.

We also had our Small Group Family Day at the lake, plus we had a couple of birthday parties for friends, which were a lot of fun!  We had most of Kevin's family over for lunch after church one afternoon and we met up with Aunt Mary, Rebecca and Abram for some fun at the MSU Children's Gardens one afternoon.

And, of course, we did lots of preparing for Carson to start Kindergarten in September.  We attended a couple of different open houses at his new school, did lots of school shopping, and made all the necessary arrangements for school to begin.  Its hard to believe our little man is growing up so fast.. can't we stop time for a bit?!  :)

So even though it was an insanely busy August, it was a really great month!  We had lots of fun together as a family, saw lots of old and new friends, made quite a bit of progress on different projects around the house and yard, and Sara's photography business continued to grow.  It was another very good month!

Summer Bucket List in Review

1.  Celebrate Bristol's 1st birthday.  Check!  We had a great party in our backyard with great weather with most of our family and a few friends. I still can't believe our peanut is 1, though!   

2.  Go strawberry picking.  We picked a few berries in a friend's yard, but we never actually went berry picking at a farm. 

3.  Tend the veggie garden, orchard, and berry patches.  Check!  The kids enjoyed helping out with harvesting and even some weeding.  

4.  Hit the beach - whenever, where ever.  :)  Check!  It was kind of a crummy summer for the beach, but we did go whenever we could when the weather would cooperate.  

5.  Go to story time at the library.  Check!  We only had the chance to do this once, but it was still a fun time.

6.  Get our pool up and running (aka clean) and ready for summer.  Swim in it as much as possible.  Maybe build a deck around one side of it?  Check!  Again, it wasn't the best summer for swimming, but we did swim in it a lot when the weather was nice and warm.  

7.  Go blueberry picking.  We did not do this. 

8.  Take a road trip up north at least once.  Check!  We traveled north to Honor where we rented a cabin, tubed the Platte River, and checked out the Sleeping Bear Dunes.  (Post to come soon about our trip!)

9.  Spend at least part of a day on one of the Big Lakes (Huron or Michigan).  Check!  We spent time on Lake Michigan a couple of different times this summer.  

10.  Go camping at least twice, if not more.  Sort of..  We did not go camping to a campground, but we did camp in the backyard, which was a lot of fun!  

11.  Visit a friend or family member that we have not seen in awhile.  Check!  We saw quite a few of our friends this summer that we had not seen in more than a year.  It was so great to re-connect in person!

12.  Meet up with west-side family in the Lansing area at least once.  Check!  We met up with Aunt Mary, Rebecca, and Abram at the MSU Childrens Gardens and had a lot of fun.  

13.  Visit a new (to us) zoo (Saginaw Children's?,  Toledo?, Fort Wayne?, Binder Park?, Boulder Ridge?)  We never made it to any of the zoos, unfortunately.  We had plans to go once, but the weather ended up not working out.  Bummer!  

14.  Visit a local park/playground that we have never been to before.  Check!  We've been to a few new ones - Clarkston's Depot Park, Holly's Crapo Park, plus lots of parks we've been to many times before.  

15.  Have fun watching Kevin and the Faith Lutheran softball team play every Monday night. Sort of..  The kids and I didn't make it to as many games as we'd like, but we did make it to some.  

16.  Attend at least one Silver Lake Ski Club ski show - maybe most/all of them if Kevin ends up joining the team.  Check!  We made it to one ski show... and Kevin did not end up joining the team this year. 

17.  See professional fireworks.  We did not go to any of the fireworks shows this year.  It just didn't end up working out with our schedules.  

18.  Do outdoor messy painting and finger painting.  Check!  A couple of times.  :)

19.  Cut down a couple of trees in our backyard.  Check!  We had 6 huge trees cut down in early June. 

20.  Visit a place in Michigan that we have never been (possibilities include Port Austin, East Tawas, South Haven, St. Joseph, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Charlevoix, Rifle River).  Check!  We went to Honor, the Platte River, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Frankfort, Empire, Glen Arbor, and Fishtown in August.  

21.  Tube the Platte River.  Check!  So fun and can't wait to do it again next year!

22.  Play with bubbles and sidewalk chalk outside.  Check!  We did this quite a bit.  

23.  FaceTime with friends and family that live out of state.  Check - although it only happened once.  

24.  Hike and bike as often as possible.  Check!  It didn't happen as often as we'd have liked, but we did hike or bike as often as possible.  

25.  Roast marshmallows over an open fire.  Check!  We did this many, many times.  Our new fire pit came in very handy this year.  :) 

26.  Visit Applewood Manor.  We didn't get to this.  We had plans to go two different times that fell through.  

27.  Attend at least one local festival (Hometown Days, Summer Happening, Back to the Bricks, Applefest, etc.).  Check!  We all went to Swartz Creek Hometown Days at the end of May.  

28.  Take a trip to either Cedar Point or Michigan's Adventure.  This didn't end up working out.  

29.  Continue growing photography business, pursuing branding, and developing website.  Check!  

30.  Attend a car show.  Check!  We went to a car show that was part of a benefit for one of the local fire departments.  

Bristol is 1!!

Playing catch up here still... I actually wrote this post the week after Bristol's birthday party, but never posted it because I never had time to add the pictures.  I haven't changed it at all, just added pics, so sorry if its (quite) outdated.  :) 

-------

Our baby girl is now a 1-year old, as hard as that is to believe!  This past year has flown by.  Bristol is growing into a spunky lil' miss and we all just love her to pieces and consider her a great blessing to our family.  

Bristol is still a little peanut.  She weighs 17 pounds, which puts her in the 3rd percentile for weight, and is 28 inches tall, which puts her between 5-10th percentile for height.  But she is very healthy, proportionate, and is developing quite well, so there are no concerns with her size.  She seems to be taking after her cousin, Anna, in size.  :). She was also quite sick a few weeks before turning one, with roseola and another virus, so she lost weight during that time, which hasn't helped her stats much.  Not to mention, since she has been walking, she does not stop moving.  :) 

Bristol is very active.  She just walks and walks and walks.  She's quite steady, but still is a little slow and unsure when walking through the grass outside.  She's also a climber and will climb on anything she can.  We have to keep a very close eye on her.  And she thinks it is hilarious when she does something she knows she isn't supposed to do... Until you tell her no, them she sticks out her bottom lip and screams for a few seconds... Then moves on to something else.  She has quite the little personality - haha!  

Other than walking around, some of Bristol's other favorite things to do are to play ball (both kicking and pushing it back and forth), play pat-a-cake and this little piggy, to play peek-a-boo, to get into her brother's Legos to help him build, to play Duplos, to put things into and out of larger boxes, to listen to music and to dance.  She loves to dance and usually stops whatever she is doing to shake her little booty when she hears music that she likes.  

Bristol absolutely loves books.  She will bring book after book from her shelf to have read to her.  Her favorites are touch-and-feel and lift-the-flap books, but any will do.  She also loves, loves, love to eat!  She is like a bottomless pit!    Seriously!  No one can ever believe how much she eats for as little as she is.  Her favorites right now are carrots, peas, pot roast, grilled chicken, sausage, raspberries (especially when she gets to help pick them in our yard, which is another favorite past-time of hers right now), watermelon, or any kind of fruit, really. But she is a pretty good eater and will eat most everything... Though you do have to be strategic in what you put on her plate and when.  If you get any of her favorites on her plate before something she thinks is just so-so, she will refuse to eat anything but her favorites.  We cannot even put fruit on the dinner table for the rest of us until Bristol is ready for it.  She knows what she wants, that is for certain.  :)

Bristol is such a cuddler and is so loving.  She loves to give and get hugs and kisses and often just wants to be held and cuddle for awhile.  She is such a little sweetheart.  

Bristol is quite social and blabs a lot, but doesn't have that many words, really, at least when compared to Carson at 1-year.  Though she understands just about everything you say to or ask her.  She says mama, dada, nigh-nigh (goodnight), nom-noms (food), Cahr (Carson), gum-uh (grandma), dat (that), bah (ball), and nana pretty regularly now.  This last week she has really been trying to say new words, too.  i've noticed she is repeating things more and more.  But even though she doesn't have so many words yet, she has her (effective) ways to get her point across.  We can tell that she is quite smart, though.  And she has quite a good memory.. For instance, if you ask her where her paci is, she generally will be able to go find it where she left it, even if its been quite long time.  

Bristol also loves the water.  She got a water table for her birthday and it is her favorite thing to do outside these days.  She also really enjoyed the lake and loves floating around in the pool!  I think we've got another fish on our hands.  :) 

I could keep going on and on, but I think that's enough for now.  Bottom line is that Bristol brings us so much joy, laughs, and smiles. We can't imagine our lives without her and thank God for her (and her brother) each day.  We are very much looking forward to seeing her grow and blossom during the next year and throughout the rest of her life.  

May Flowers

April showers bring May flowers is how the saying goes... But we were still having a lot of showers and cold temps in May this year.  Everything seems to be running a solid two weeks behind schedule.  Normally I'd be planting annual flowers and the veggie garden by the end of May, but we were still getting frosts... So I held off a couple of weeks until early June.  

Regardless of the cold, rainy weather, we still managed to have a really fun month! 

Carson went to a friend's 5th birthday party at Galaxy Lanes and had a blast with his buddies.  We had our monthly Small Group family day/night at Geoff and Tracie's house where we had a delicious dinner, drinks, backyard playtime, and a backyard fire.  It was a lot of fun - we just love our Small Group and seriously couldn't ask for better friends to have in our group! 

We made a quick trip west to go to Tulip Time in Holland where we met up with most of the Holleboom family.  We got to watch klompen dancers, shop, visit/play, and have a great lunch at AlpenRose restaurant. 

Sara had to see an endodontist quite a few times for the never-ending root canal.  :)  It took one visit to the dentist and three visits to the endodontist to finish the root canal due to some complications, calcification, and infection.

We took a road trip to Schaumburg, Illinois and Sheboygan, Wisconsin - as you can see in my previous post.  

Carson graduated from preschool (how is he really getting this old?) with a very nice preschool graduation ceremony one evening and a picnic in the gym (because the weather was crummy) on the last day of school.  We are really going to miss Faith Lutheran Preschool and have been so blessed to have had Carson enrolled there these last two years.  

We made a trip up to Swartz Creek's Hometown Days, which is an annual little festival that has been going on for as long as I can remember.  Its a lot of fun, especially for the kids.  And its mostly nice to run into lots of old friends, too.  Carson had a blast on the rides this year.

We also kept busy with lots of other random things that aren't really worth a mention.  Sara Holleboom Photography was fairly busy, as well, with a few sessions and an event at Faith Lutheran Church with some visiting authors.  Its tough balancing family, my "day job" and SHP, but so far so good (I think).  :) 

A Trip to Sheboygan, WI (With a Detour to LegoLand)

For the last two years, we have been having annual family reunions with our Elsesser relation (Sara's maternal grandma's family). This year, one of Sara's mom's first cousins, Roger, was celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary with his wife, Sandy.  Sara's Grandma was one of 12 kids in the Elsesser family, and was one of the youngest (I think maybe 3rd or 4th youngest? I'm not totally sure).  So Sara's mom has LOTS of first cousins throughout a large range of ages.  So Roger and Sandy were married 50 years ago on May 18, 1963. Their kids decided to throw them a surprise 50th wedding anniversary party in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. So the rest of the Elsessers decided to forego the stand-alone reunion this year and just get together for the anniversary party.  Unfortunately, Roger suffered a pretty severe stroke just a few weeks before the party, so it ended up not being a surprise, but the party was still held. Roger was even able to get a day-pass from the hospital to come to the party for a couple of hours!  He looked good and was in great spirits!

But let me back up here a minute... We decided to leave on Wednesday morning and make a stop in Schaumburg, Illinois to take Carson to the LegoLand Discovery Center. Nana and Papa decided to join us. We all had fun watching Carson, totally in his glory, at LegoLand. It's pretty over-priced, in my opinion, but luckily I found some coupons for $5 off each ticket, which cut the price down to $17/person for admission. We did get some free Duplos in one of the exhibits and Carson scored a (free) quart sized bag stuffed full of Legos and Duplos (whatever he wanted to fill it with) for showing one of the guys his creation, which was pretty cool.  But seeing Carson's excitement, smiles, and pure joy made it all worth the price of admission.

Bristol actually had a lot of fun herself. She loved walking around, feeling things, looking at things, and building with the Duplos. She knows they go together and tries to stack them, but mostly just bangs them together to make noise. :)

Carson got to pick out a Lego set as a souvenir. He's really into Batman right now, so he picked a cool Batmobile set. He was very excited about that and could not wait to build it once we got home. He also got to build some Lego figures as a souvenir, too, which he thought was pretty fun. Because of the Batman Legos, he declared LegoLand better than Disney... But later on said Disney was more fun, he just wishes they had Batman Legos there. :)

On Thursday, we headed up to Sheboygan.  We first made a stop at the Kohler Design Studio to get some ideas for an upcoming bathroom remodel.  They had some really cool stuff to see.  Everyone enjoyed it, even the kids, surprisingly!

Then we headed over to the Blue Harbor Resort where we met up with Great Poppy, Marion, Aunt Sharon, Uncle Reno, Aunt Jeri, Uncle Mike, Mackenzey, Kristin, and Kyle. What a beautiful place! They have an indoor waterpark which was a lot of fun, too! We spent lots of time in there and ate at some really good restaurants, too. On Friday, lots of other Elsesser family cousins joined us at the Blue Harbor for the weekend, which was very cool.

Saturday was the 50th anniversary party for Roger and Sandy, which was so fun.  It was great to see everyone, meet even more cousins I've never met before, and just have a good time.  Carson and Mackenzey were the first ones on the dance floor and did not stop the entire time we were there!  It was so cute and hilarious!

It was a quick, busy trip, but was a lot of fun! Carson and Mackenzey had an absolute blast together, between the waterpark and dancing at the anniversary party! Bristol was a great little traveler and was so happy and easy-going the entire time. And it was nice to spend time with family and see (and meet) lots of extended family! We can't wait until the reunion next year!