Biking Barefoot

Our favorite adventure beach, though, is still Magoon Creek.  The boys and I headed up for just a quiet and beautiful day to investigate whether or not there was much beach at Magoon this summer.  We were thrilled to see that there is and there were plenty of rocks to pick at.  We combed for pretty rocks and beach glass, checked out the farmhouse foundation, picnicked and climbed trees.  Before we met Grandma and Grandpa for ice cream, they played at Rocket Ship Park. It's too bad Luke didn't have any ice cream.  LOL  

Carolyn and I took the boys to a new "adventure beach" in Manistee at Lake Michigan Rec Area and THEY LOVED IT. Joseph said that his favorite place in the world is Manistee. :)  I had moments of wanting to leave my children on the side of the road - complaining, seat-kicking, the usuals - but we had a super time tromping through the woods and finding ourselves on this glorious beach!  They splashed in the waves, dug in the sand, and climbed exposed tree roots on the dune.  They got to be adventurous KIDS for a day and it was perfect.

Woot!!!  The first time we made it up to the farm was for the 4th!  It was hotter than SNOT and I had a terrible cold and got zero sleep, but it sure was nice to plunge into the pond and float like cheerios in a bowl of milk. 

Yesterday we did less than nothing because the three of us have been battling colds (why does Matt always get left out of the colds??) and I let them binge on dumb shows on Netflix and stay inside all day.  Luke was crying today that he wanted to GO somewhere, and we all felt much better, so this afternoon we had a little bit of time to go to the beach.  There was a bit of chop on the water, so Levi had to practice maneuvering that with his kayak, but quickly figured out that waves are FUN (when there's no rip current)! Thanks to a very high lake level this year, there is very little beach at our favorite places.  It's hard to see from this picture, but I'm sitting RIGHT next to where the steps end on the side of the dune...and it pitches straight down to the water.  So everyone there is just kind of perched on the side of the dune, whereas there is normally quite a bit of sand between the steps and the water!

Today was just bloomin' HOT.  Like 95 and 400% humidity.  Matt actually went running and took the boys for a short jaunt, and I went for a long walk, but UGH.  Here's me for most of the remainder of the day: The Koets invited us to swim even though they just returned from an epically long vacation...but we're not going to turn THAT down! Luke wins the Brave Kid award today by far - after a few minutes of swimming, he came out and asked if I would take off his life jacket. He had started swimming more in the deep end without a life jacket during swimming lessons with Mrs. D.  He flirted with swimming a litttttle bit in the deep end to practice, but today he was all IN with cannonballs off the diving board, diving clear to the bottom of the deep end to retrieve diving toys, swimming underwater...a few times he made me very nervous but I bit my lip and watched him do his thing!

Well, summer finally showed up and was dressed to the nines with lots of heat and humidity.  I had a cold and was pretty beat from a busy week, but I did promise the boys that we could check out the HFD trucks with the hoses on at a nearby park. They were actually spraying over the playground itself, which was a whole new level of "awesmazing" as Levi would put it