Alex has been away all week ay CIY, but he’s back now. He missed a nice win by the softball team…we were up against the lead team in our division, incidentally the only team we had beaten all year. They had only lost once…to us. Now, they’ve lost twice…to us. We are their kryptonite, it seems. Anyway, Alex was away all week (and we never got an anxious call!) at the conference at Hope College in Holland, and he loved it. He said he had just an amazing week. The downside for him was that the Super Smash Bros. tournament at the library in town was Saturday, the day he was scheduled to get back, but he was going to miss it…again. But, we reached an arrangement with him that on Friday, the rest of us would go up to Michigan to spend the day at the beach, pick him up in the evening after the conference was over, and head back Friday night so he could participate in the tournament on Saturday. So that’s what we did…I took most of the day off on Friday and we headed up to the lake. We couldn’t find a place to park near the beach in South Haven so we headed to Holland instead, and it was a perfect beach day. The lake was cool enough to be refreshing and take a few minutes to get used to but no more than that, then it was awesome. And the water was so clear. And the beach wasn’t too awful crowded. And it was sunny and hot. The conference was done by 9-ish so we headed to the campus after dinner (we saw the huuuuge crowds of teen kids) and collected Alex, who talked and talked about what a great time he had. Beth and I are so glad. We were home late, and Beth and I were up early to do another day’s worth of garage sale. It was worth extending to sale another day because we made around $30 more, Alex made around $20 (some DS games went), and the girls made another few bucks each. Alex made it to the Smash Bros tournament, and afterwards said “we didn’t do very well, but we had fun” which is all we could hope for. Last night was the fireworks show in town…seems early…Beth and Nat didn’t want to go so I took Alex and Missy to the fairgrounds to watch the show. The fireworks display was kinda meh, if you ask me.