Up north, one week later

Maybe it's because Mondays are so shitty, but I'm dreamin' of vacation here and wondering why it always takes me so long to pull pictures off the damn digital camera to enjoy. Our trip up north last weekend may have been rainy and cold, but it was very fun. There's not a ton to do in the small Michigan thumb towns, but we managed to entertain ourselves in both a child-friendly and adult way. Wow, that sounds like we had strippers, but I assure you there was no such nonsense. Instead, we rollicked across the countryside with the kids, visitng apple orchards and country stores, holiday festivals and antiques stores. We did also manage to put our kids down from time to time and found something to talk about other than how cute they are, how much they sleep or eat and how smart they are getting. Oh, and we drank some beer.

Our traveling companions:

A fine retail experience at the Dollar Store/Ice Cream Parlor/Thrift Store (Courtney still can't believe the dress I got for Clementine for a mere 50 cents, and I don't think the disbelief is the good kind):

Searching for a good family shot that we never can seem to get:

Some bedtime reading that is apparently very disturbing...you can just see it in her eyes (no joke: I'm across the room reading a Nancy Drew book):

And lots and lots of fall:

It's an amazing place, and we're so lucky the judge and his wife let us use it whenever we want. While my heart belongs to Lake Michigan, it's nice to hop in the car and be on Lake Huron in just a few short hours.

On an unrelated, non-vacation topic, I was just sorting through old and new photos and found these two taken in the same chair almost exactly one year (to the day) apart. I know I used to want to sock people really hard in the shoulder every time I had to hear a comment like "Enjoy these times, they go so fast," but I am speechless in the face of such tangible proof of just how true that is.