We finally got more drywall installed but ran into more problems than we thought with the sink cabinet. There was so much black mold that we had to take care of and it took forever! These are some shots of the progress of fixing it up. I am impressed we were able to do it with our limited experience and tools.
We kicked off our family summer challenge with some tie-dye! I was impressed with how well they turned out with just these little bottles from Walmart and it was fun to try something new with my girls. I played Hands Up Stands Up with the kids for the first time since elementary school and was surprised by how fun it was. We also did some morning yoga and Kaylee made rock art. I love that the summer challenge gets us doing things we wouldn't think to do otherwise!
We had heard a lot about the Brood X Cicadas which are supposed to be huge and loud and only come out every 17 years but we hadn't seen any in our area and I was a little disappointed. I saw a video of someone who posted a crazy amount of these cicadas at a metro park about 20 mins away from us so we went to check them out. It was SO gross (and also pretty cool) to see HUNDREDS of them on every tree and all their shed skins on the ground. They were pretty huge and EXTREMELY loud! I couldn't even believe how much noise they made and we all had a headache by the time we were done walking around. The girls had a lot of fun exploring and found some snail friends to play with too.
McKenna has been wanting to sleep on her floor a lot lately, claiming that she sleeps better on the floor than in her bed. I thought it was so cute when I went in one night and saw that she had given her doll a sleeping mask to match her :)
We go on family walks a lot (who would have thought I would enjoy that as a mom when I fought it so much as a kid!), especially on Sunday. I love catching these cute moments when we are just all happy to be together.
The girls haven't been able to help us with most of our work in the kitchen and have felt very left out. And it's been hard that they've had to spend so much time on their own while we work. But we finally had something they could help paint and Kaylee and Brooklyn were thrilled to feel like they could be a part of this big project!
Brooklyn asked if she could soak her foot in the tub one night and we decided to turn it into a full spa pampering! The girls tried face masks for the first time, we painted their nails, we made our own sugar scrub to try on our hands and lips and I even gave them a little foot clean and massage like they do when you get a pedicure. This kind of activity normally isn't my thing but it was actually really fun to feel like I was pampering my girls. They make everything more fun!
We decided to go on a family trip and explore Michigan! We broke the drive up into two parts so the first day, we left after school and drove to Ann Arbor to spend the night. All of our plans for that night didn't work out so we spent time walking through downtown and around the MSU campus. It was not the most fun night for the kids.
The next day we woke up and drove to a little ski town to do an alpine slide! I haven't been on one for years and it was just as much fun as I remembered. McKenna was a little nervous so it was good that she wasn't heavy enough to go by herself. Kaylee just barely made the cut so all of us were able to go down every time, with Brooklyn and McKenna riding with Richard or me. The people at the ticket counter told us people normally are able to go down 4 or 5 times in the hour time limit but we were the first ones on the ride and we snuck in for the last ride right before it shut down so we squeezed in 6! We felt pretty good that we got more than expected! This was one of the highlights of the trip.
We then drove the rest of the way to the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes right on the coast of Lake Michigan. I don't know what I expected but Michigan was actually really pretty! The first night we drove through a scenic drive and stopped along the way to look out over the lake. We decided to stop one more time even though the girls were sick of looking. I am so glad we stopped! This was the coolest dune we saw. It was SO steep and looked like it just dropped off straight into the water. But as you slowly walked down, you realized that you could make it all the way to the water. Climbing back up was SO hard! It was exhausting and you would slide back down with every step. Richard and Kaylee decided to climb all the way down and barely made it back up! The lake was gorgeous and clear, the nicest water I have ever seen in a lake by far.
We also briefly stopped by Dune Climb to check it out. McKenna and Brooklyn were so tired they didn't want to climb the whole thing so Kaylee and I went up to the top and explored.
We stayed in a little Airbnb which unfortunately was about 25 mins away from the dunes, which added so much driving to our trip. But it was a nice little place with a bedroom for Kaylee, Richard and I, and a pull out couch for McKenna and Brooklyn to share. It also had the cutest little pond that we could walk around.
The next day was our only full day at the sand dunes. Which of course meant that it was pouring rain most of the day! The kids woke up really early so we started the day back at the Dune Climb before the rain came. We were glad we went out so early because we got a lot of good hiking in. We kept climbing to the top of a dune and saying, oh we can't be too far from the lake. I bet when we climb the next one, we will be able to go to the water. But they just kept going and going! It was amazing. We also found an area where the sand went up really really steep on all sides and created a fun little bowl for the kids to play in.
Then the lightning and pouring rain started! It was much too cold and dangerous to be out on the dunes so we found the visitor's center and watched a video about how Sleeping Bear got it's name and how it started. They also had a little museum there so we spent as much time as we could. We were told there was another museum and a historical town that would be fun to look at so we drove way up the coast to get there. What we found was a rundown little village and a really boring museum that just had parts of ships. We did check out the blacksmith shop for a bit which was kind of fun but it was so freezing cold and the wind was blowing straight through the shop, all of us were shivering! We decided to just eat our picnic lunch in the car and see if the weather calmed down. We got very lucky and the rain stopped but we had planned on being out on the beach the rest of the day and it was freezing. We hadn't packed jackets since it was June and had been warm but we ended up buying sweatshirts for everyone so that we could do something other than sit in the car! We had a two hour window where the rain completely stopped and the sun came out. I was still pretty cold but the girls got brave and got into their swimsuits and even played in the water a little bit! There were a lot of rocks on the beach but they were bigger and the sand was pretty soft so it didn't hurt your feet like Lake Eerie did.
We left the beach when it started raining again but decided to go back to the amazing dune by the lake one last time before we headed out for dinner and home. It was a fun but tiring day!
The next day we took off and went home a slightly different way so we could stop in the German town of Frankenmuth. We had heard great things about it but of course it was pouring rain all day so we didn't want to be out walking around too much. But we did explore some of the huge shops, had the BEST breakfast (for lunch) food I have ever had, and got gigantic ice cream cones to top it off!
We also stopped at the world's largest Christmas store! We probably would have explored more of it but we were just ready to go home by then. We did spend about 30 mins just in the ornament section though! And that was basically just walking through, we didn't stop much.
Brooklyn's front tooth had been really loose for a few days but she wouldn't let me pull it out. On the drive home from Frankenmuth, she kept telling me it was hurting her so I turned around in the car and popped it right out!
One of the activities for the summer challenge was to write your own song. I didn't think that would be one we would get but McKenna sat down one day and wrote this song, pretty quickly, and I was so impressed! I told her there was no way I could write a song so she sat me down and walked me through all of the steps that it takes and her and I wrote a song together! I was very proud of her and I love that she found a new skill she had no idea she had. She wrote multiple other songs over the next couple weeks and it has been so fun to watch her grow!
