Sand and Sun

Here is what we were doing just 60 days ago:

Now we are back to this:

Autumn was nice to me this year. It was more like a west coast sort of fall, but with the colors of Michigan--the perfect combination.
Matt took some time off for his birthday (and to get away from internal medicine), and mother nature gave him some 80 degree weather for a gift. This is in the beginning of October; the trees are vibrant and so is the sunny sky. The stage was set for the perfect vacation.

This is on our drive up north to Traverse City, Michigan.

We got a hotel deal as one of their fall packages (because normally by then the tourism goes down).
After getting a good night's sleep, we went over to their National Park dunes by Lake Michigan.
Look how steep this sucker is.
Gotta love a hike that you can do barefoot the whole way.

I tried to get the four of them together, but Michael wasn't cooperating...

...so I just got these three goons. They got to ditch school for this. Lucky dogs.

A view of an inlet of L.M.

It's a good thing Alex was wearing red this time so we didn't repeat the Arches incident.

What are dads for, right?

Once we got to the view of the Lake, we found a little drop off to jump from. It was only like 6 feet up, but when you are standing up there, it looks a lot higher and your brain really doesn't like being talked into landing on sand as opposed to water. It really isn't that cushy of an impact.

Here is Matt with his basketball player form. We weren't trying for any kind of form, but the pictures sort of captured our athletic capabilities in the way we jumped.

Then me and my dumb cheerleader-esque jump. I thought I was done with that venture.

Bekah is ever the graceful one. But really, she could get a job in physical comeday because falling down comes to her so naturally.
She opted for the 2 footer and basically ran down. I think she cleared an inch at this point.

And Alex wins for true athleticism.

After the hike, we drove back through this:

We stopped and got some Moomer's ice cream--supposedly voted best in America by Good Morning America. It was really good. They need help on their chocolate milk, though. Not much better than Hershey's syrup.

Then we went for a swim at the hotel pool. Michael loves water. He also loves balls. He would not get in the pool because of this ball. For some reason it totally freaked him out. I have no idea--because it is pink? Who knows?
He's glaring at me because I put it near him for the picture.

After swimming, Matt got some presents, because it was his birthday. Don't worry he got cake at home. Then we went out to eat. We picked a place that we got a discount at from the hotel package thingy. I told the server it was Matt's birthday and they gave him a free dessert, a free mug, and a $10 gift certificate. Plus, we had the hotel discount. He seriously scored there. So if you ever want to go to Traverse City on your birthday, go to The Blue Tractor restaurant.

The next morning we walked up and down the Cherry Capital main street. We got some really good pie (and I'm not a pie person), and we found an awesome store.

Why was it awesome? Free samples! They had samples of so much stuff, that you could eat lunch there. And everything was amazingly good. So we got our fill before hitting the road for home. It was the perfect end to the perfect vacation.