We finally got a good camping trip in this summer! After a couple of weather related fails, the past week at Holland was beautiful. We headed up there on Monday and were set up at the State Park by about dinnertime, and even though it was a bit rainy, we all wanted to go to the beach if for no other reason then to put our feet into the lake. By Tuesday though, it was clear blue sunny sky, warm (water was a bit chilly but the kids didn't care) and an awesome beach day. I may have said this before but the canopy we bring to the beach makes going to the beach so much better. Just a bit of shade and we can stay for hours. The kids and I did some hiking and geocaching later on, and we even dropped in on an event at the park. From the description, there was going to be a gathering near the lighthouse to learn how to paint with watercolors, and we thought everyone could participate, adults included. Actually it was an event for little kids. Ours were maybe the oldest there. But they did paint the lighthouse in watercolor and we got to take them home. We did some shopping around downtown Holland and even went back to Dutch Village (just to the shops...not to go into the park). There is also a Delft factory just outside of town, apparently the only place outside the Netherlands where delftware can be made and called Delftware. It's not as high quality as the real Dutch stuff but worth getting a mug or ornament or something. We also went to the candle shop at Dutch Village to look at replacing our wedding candle, which neither Beth nor I can remember what happened to. We think it was ruined in a move years ago somehow. Anyway, we went ahead and bought a new one that we even like better than the original. And we caught the sunset at the beach, but I did not see a green flash. Oh yeah, we were also camping just down the lane a bit from a slightly older couple, who had a very retro looking camper that looked to Beth just like to one her family had when she was a kid. Turns out, it's not retro, it's old! She had restored it and remodeled it. They were both authors, he writes mostly westerns and has several published (like 75 of his books for sale on Amazon). I started reading one of his about the Earp brothers. We hit it off pretty well and hung out together by the campfire a couple evenings.  Friday I got up early and did a bunch of bike geocaching. We headed out later Friday afternoon, only going as far as Plainwell because Saturday was Beth's 30-year high school reunion. Friday everyone got together for a pre-reunion party at a bar/restaurant in Plainwell (terribly uncomfortable for me); we met up with Beth's friend Amy at a pizza place down the road after mingling at the bar for a while. While we were doing this we had dropped off the kids with Judy at the cottage, where they stayed overnight without us. Beth and I stayed at a motel by the airport (way too far away from the action). Ditto for the next night, the kids were with Judy while Beth and I went to the actual reunion, held in Plainwell at a conservation club. She seemed to have a good time. We stayed overnight without the kids a second night, then headed home today.

We are about to leave on our last camping trip of the summer, and I'm not sure this one is going to go any better than the last two. More on that later. Got the brakes done in the minivan last Tuesday. $819, ouch. Wednesday, Alex participated in a Smash Bros tournament at the library with his friend Riley. That is probably the one thing he's been looking forward to the most all summer. They did all right; lost their first game but they were ok with it, and made it to the quarterfinals though the loser's bracket. Friday we went to a wedding...yeah, Friday evening wedding, who does that?...for one of our friends' daughter. The reception was at Pottawatomie Park, which was really nice except after dusk the skeeters were out for blood. Alex and I just got chewed. We stayed until the couple had their first dance then I couldn't stay any more. Alex hadn't said anything about the bugs, but he was playing DS with Jacob so he may not have noticed. I ran a 5k for Habitat for Humanity Saturday morning, and won my age group (which means there weren't a lot of runners, only ~40). Yesterday was my birthday, but we didn't do anything (except go to a spaghetti dinner fundraiser) because we're getting ready for a camping trip, and Beth is sick. She went in to Medstat Sunday (yesterday) and the doctor said it was viral so she has no Z-pack like Alex got which made him all better by the next day. She has felt awful for a couple days, but we're still going camping. As of now.

County fair day today. We always take the kids to the dollar ride day because otherwise, you may as well just take a pile of money and set fire to it. But we've found that on dollar ride day we can get out for under $40...which is amazing that it doesn't seem outrageous. $16 to get us all in, then $20 for rides, and of course games. We headed over there after I got out of work and we had a quick dinner, then let the kids go. We met up with the Monsmas there so Alex and Missy could go on rides with their friends, of course Missy wasn't that interested in the rides so she went o go see the animals, which Alex didn't want to bother with. The hang-glider ride was there again which was a big hit, as was the funhouse thing, and we also rode the Ferris wheel which for some reason made Alex really anxious.

Welp, another camping fail. We were all set to spend 4 days at Spring Mill State Park starting last Thursday, but on Wednesday Alex's cough had gotten so bad Beth took him to the doctor and he had bronchitis. Plus, the forecast was for rain to heavy rain on each of the 4 days we were going to be there. So, by Wednesday night we had cancelled altogether. Nobody was really feeling like camping at that point anyway. Turned out to be ok for me, since I had signed up to play on a volleyball team for a quarterly celebration at work, forgetting that I wasn't going to be there, but since we cancelled I got to go and not get the admin that did all the scheduling really peeved at me. I did take Friday off, and to compensate for missing the camping trip, we went to Kalamazoo to go see the Air Zoo and have dinner at Red Robin. They had a touring Da Vinci exhibition (builds of his designs, e.g. the tank, helicopter, geared things, were pretty beat up) and another touring exhibit about tigers, which turned out to be what the kids liked the most.

It's been a weird week. After the Turkey Run debacle, we thought we'd have a nice getaway for July 4th, but not to be. More on that in a minute. I went ahead and took Monday and Tuesday off, even though we no longer had plans (due to the Turkey Run debacle), and since the 4th is on Saturday this year I had Friday off as well. A 2-day work week, nice. Missy had her actual birthday party on Wednesday, which was going with some friends to the Black Pine Animal Sanctuary (again). That place is so up her alley, she was just there a couple weeks ago and immediately changed all her plans for her birthday party to take her friends there instead of the Zoo, which we didn't mind because it was a lot cheaper. Tuesday we did some last minute shopping for fireworks at Tim and Katalee's shop, and made sure to spend a lot less than last year. Friday I finally got the truck in to the shop to have the power seat fixed; none of the buttons on it have worked in maybe a year, which means that Beth can't drive it. I finally got around to having that done because the brakes in the minivan need work too, and Beth will need to drive the truck for a bit. The power seat was $153 to get fixed, expect the brakes to be more. Now to July 4th. We thought it would be nice to get away for a bit, so (not early enough) we headed for Indiana Dunes for the day. It was a nice day, unusual this summer, but we headed out and upon arrival got stuck in a huge traffic jam miles from the entrance to the park. Seems everyone else had the same idea. We crawled, car lengths at a time, for almost a couple hours, only moving from the visitors center to the overpass to US-12, which ain't far. At that point, we could see the jam went on for the next couple miles at least, and at that point someone on a bike came riding the other way yelling at everyone that the parking lot was full, and they were only letting people in when someone else left. So the only progress we were making was when someone gave up and pulled out of the line. Which at that point is what we ourselves did. By that time it was almost 2:00. So, we headed down US-12 looking for something else to do. We decided to just head up the shoreline until we found another beach, which turned out to be New Buffalo. It wasn't easy to get in there either, but we did find a spot to park in town and walked quite a ways to the beach carrying a lot of stuff, but we made it, and had a pleasant few hours at the beach. Of course, the water was freezing with as bizarre as the weather has been this year. We made it back home in plenty of time to see the fireworks at the fairgrounds in Warsaw.

Today Missy had her actual birthday party. She loved the Black Pine Animal Sanctuary so much she decided to take some friends there instead of anything else. Which also meant I didn't go, since today's Wednesday. But she and her friends all loved it.