Trip to Michigan...Part 1

My nephew Joseph

Who wants to read a blog post that starts with Part 1?? That is definetely not an encouraging title, but our week long trip to Michigan definetely deserves 2 parts considering the events we participated in!

Right before we left for Michigan we joined the mini van club. L.D. was not a huge fan in the beginning, but I won him over. I LOVE our mini van, and that could probably be a blog post all on its own. But, I was truly looking forward to this 11 hour drive knowing that everyone had their own personal space (even Bella had her own seat) and we had a DVD player built in. Life was good! The ride up was not nearly as blissful as I imagined and Elle was not happy with her rear facing seat after about the 5 hour mark. The biggest highlight of the trip up was that we only stopped 2 times and Clare had no potty accidents...pretty impressive!

We went to Blissfield to my parents home for the first half of our trip and it was the first summer trip we have ever made to Blissfield. They have a cute little pond and lots of space to run around. We LOVED being there! Clare played outside so hard and was dirty the entire trip. I loved seeing her play in the dirt, try to fish, eat outside and pretend she was a farmer in the barns. We set up Elle's exersaucer outside and that is where we spent the majority of our time.

One of the reasons we headed home when we did was for my high school friend Rachel's wedding. I have a very unique group of high school girlfriends that are still very close. We all drove in from different parts of the US (minus Michele who JUST had a baby) to celebrate Rachel's big day and it was so much fun being together. They definetely had a super memorable wedding day with the power outage during the ceremony and the tornado sirens going off. Thankfully Rachel handled it like a champ!! During the tornado warnings, my poor parents were watching the girls and had the girls stocked up with snacks hiding out in the mudroom.

On Memorial Day my parents had about 40 family friends, plus our immediate family over for dinner. It was a huge highlight of our trip to just spend time with people we love but don't get much time to see. I also got to meet my newest newphew, Joseph on Memorial Day! He is so so sweet! The day before we left my high school friend Hayley came over with her little boy Roman, which meant so much to me that she would drive an hour just so our babies could meet and we could spend some time together. LD even got to squeeze in a trip to see our neice Kara play softball...we seriously did it all!

It was one of the very best trips we have ever had! I wish we could spend a lot more time at "the farm" as my parents call it. It's such a peaceful place and so much fun to watch Clare just be a kid!!

Next is Part 2...which is also wedding #2!