We stayed at Saginaw Valley State University again this year -- you can't beat the price and the accommodations are great since we get an apartment with a full kitchen and 2 bedrooms for a little over $200 for a week. Drew does much better when he has his own room -- no more driving around until 11 pm!
When we got to Uncle Jack's on the 3rd, he and Betty made a delicious fish dinner for us and we got to watch the Bay City fireworks from his back yard. They're probably 10 or so miles away, but Michigan is pretty flat so we could see them pretty well, except for the stuff right near the ground.
On July 4th, we all gathered at Uncle Jack's for our annual reunion. We had a pretty big crowd even though we didn't get any West Virginia attendees this year. Between Jack and Betty's extended families, we had plenty of kids running around, and they all had lots of fun. The kids had pools, a seesaw, a trampoline and a ton of toys to play with in the house and the yard.
Of course, eating is a major part of the day. This year Uncle Jack made beer-can chickens (along with lots of drumsticks for the kids), plus we had green beans, corn, scalloped potatoes, jello fluff, and several salads (I'm sure I'm forgetting something). Plus for dessert, we had a yummy chocolate pudding dessert (sort of like dirt cake), banana pudding and grilled banana splits (the bananas were grilled not the ice cream). Carole wound up doing most of the dishes afterward (hmmm - where was Andy?) and everyone was exhausted by the end of the day.
We did manage to get our family photo. Every year, it's like pulling teeth to get everyone to stand together for the photo, but they're all happy to have the picture once we're done.
On Thursday, July 5th, the men had their annual golf outing--Adam's only golf game for the year. He did pretty well this time too, and said he could understand how people get addicted to the game. Meanwhile, Heidi, Carole and I took the kids to the movies. Most of us saw Ratatouille, but Carole and Alex went to see the Transformers movie since they had already seen Ratatouille. After the movie, Heidi, Carole and I tried to do some shopping in Midland, but the weather wasn't exactly cooperating. Still we had a good time walking around and checking out the stores. Dinner was ham, kale, mac & cheese, salad and rolls (thank you Heidi, I used your blog for reminders).
On Friday, July 6th, we headed to Zehnders Splash Village in Frankenmuth for a morning of slipping and sliding. Adam, Drew, Hailey and I went last year and we were all looking forward to going again. Drew has been talking about it all year. We really thought that he would go down the big green and blue slides this year (they're the bigger, faster slides), but he hasn't lost his fear, although he did go down the yellow slide over and over again. I think the difference to him is being enclosed - the green and blue slides are tubes, but the yellow slide is open. Anyway, everybody had a good time (Avery had some issues with the noise at first, but she got over it). At 2pm, it was time for us to go, and we had to say goodbye to Scott, Heidi, Quinn, Avery and Kaleigh. They had their big 1 hour drive home to Saline.
The rest of us headed over to Tom and Joan's to visit and to have lunch/dinner (there was some confusion about which meal we were going to have). Their house is as lovely as ever, and the kids really enjoyed watching Carole try to catch frogs in the pond (a little country for the Jersey girl, isn't it?). Unfortunately, Adam, Drew and I had to cut our visit a little short, because we headed into dangerous meltdown territory and decided to head out before things got worse. We headed back to our apartment, then Adam made one last trip to Meijer to stock up on Ruby Red Squirt.
On Saturday, July 7th, we headed home. We had a fairly uneventful trip, other than our portable DVD emergency. Apparently, our car adapter received a fatal injury which rendered the DVD player useless. I do have to say that Adam almost lost it over this turn of events (almost, more than Drew), but we managed to find a Radio Shack in Akron (we were actually headed to Wal-Mart to buy a whole new player) and fixed the problem for around $30. We love the DVD player.
We avoided the PA turnpike and took the scenic West Virginia route through Morgantown. We tried this route 2 years ago in the midst of horrendous thunderstorms, but we had beautiful weather on this trip so it didn't take us much longer than our normal route.
We had a great trip, if a tad ambitious. It was so good to get home and sleep in our own beds!
1 comment:
Thanks for the recap! What a lovely picture of us at the waterpark!!! Yeah. :)
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