I always like to take a little time near the end of our vacations to put up a quick little recap of the important events. The biggest event of all, of course, happened on our flight out. It was my birthday! Not exactly how you want to spend the majority of the day, flying and driving, but in the end it was all worth it. We were up at four in the morning and flying out at six. A quick little layover in Chicago and a forty five minute puddle jump over to Flint and we were on the ground rolling after four hours of travel from Kansas to Michigan (sure as hell beats the twenty four hours it takes to drive it). Hopped in the car with the in-laws and drove for another five hours. It sounds awful having to drive that long, but it gives us time to catch up on everything that is going on, so it is a fair trade off. I got to see my family at the end of it and enjoy a nice birthday dinner followed up by the world famous chocolate chip cheesecake prepared by Mom.
Our nieces and nephew have grown so much in the six months since we were home last. Every time we come home that is always the same response. But it is great to see. The day after my birthday is Zoie's. For whatever reason she didn't want to have the greatest day for a birthday so she settled for second best I suppose. Andrea made her a princess dress for her birthday and she loves it (I'll post a few pictures when we get home). The three years since her birth have flown by. That's what happens when you only see them a few times a year. So we hung out at home for the day and had scrambled eggs for dinner (what the birthday kid wants, the birthday kid gets). She is like her Papa that way, loves her eggs. I got to skate on the ice with Garrett at his hockey practice. One might think that four and five year olds shouldn't be on the ice with sticks and pucks, but on the contrary, it is great for them. They pick up wonderful motor skills and hand eye coordination. Give it a year and a half and he will be skating better than me, which doesn't take much. We also got to watch him take part in a hockey jamboree. An ice rink was broken down into four smaller rinks and they played different teams from the area. It is by no means skilled hockey, but it gives the kids a chance to play the game. It is just like watching kids play soccer in that they all follow the puck, clump up together, fall, and whack away at it. In the end, every player got a participation medal (which was the coolest thing EVER!) and a hat for coming down and playing.
As the weekend rolled around, we headed out to the cabin. We attended the Red Wings Alumni game in St. Ignace of Friday and had a great time. Spent some time with the grandparents afterwards and spent the next day around the cabin. I got to play with the kids outside and pushed and pulled them around on their sled. We got the snowmobile and four wheeler out and putzed around the property for a while. Andrea got the four wheeler stuck in a snow bank, so that was funny. Dad and I took the machines out on the lake and marked some cribs for the summer time fishing. Cribs are designed to encourage a habitat for fish and algae to grow in the lake. They take some timber and bind it together and attach some cinder blocks to them so as the ice melts the cribs break through the ice and sink to the bottom. It is nice to have ice thick enough to run a truck out there if you wanted to mark the area for the upcoming summer.
The kids are fun but extremely exhausting to keep up with. I don't know how my sister and brother-in-law do it (props Shel and Al!). As the first part of the vacation wound down, we headed out to Andrea's parents house for the remainder of the trip. It is very relaxing in comparison to the energy we put forth keeping up with three kids. We've done quite a bit of visiting with family members and just overall hanging out. It is exactly what a vacation should be. It is good to go out and do stuff, but it is also great to have those days where you read a book for a while, watch some tv, eat, and then go to bed.
We head down to Detroit to fly back to Kansas tomorrow morning. The days go by quickly when you have nothing to do and the job and 'real life' await you back home. But that is what vacations are all about.
Escaping the real world, if only for a short time.
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