A Tale of Two Cities...

We're home! Yay home! I feel like writing a sonnet about how much I adore my sweet, sweet Asheville, but that will have to wait until later. And I might need to consult my poetry handbook first. It's been a while.

I have so much to write about, it is kind of overwhelming. I'll just wait for the pictures to upload and tell you about those, how's that?

Snacking.

Henry discovered Suzy's golf bag umbrella and thought it was the coolest thing ever. She took him out in the front yard and made it rain with a sprinkler.

Silly faces on the porch.

We went to this strange raft race in a neighboring town called Cheboygan. The rules were that you had to make your own raft, have 6 people on it and race down the river while simultaniously cooking a pot of chili. This was my favorite team, The Pirettes.

We took Henry to the playground to run off some steam and this was him taking a make believe picture of Kyle as Kyle snapped shots of him.

This picture was taken at the fish hatchery in Oden. We had fun feeding the different kinds of huge fish in the stocked ponds and walking on the trails and Kyle got this great picture of the little man with his Papa.

A few days after we got there, Kyle's cousin Stacy and her wee man, Drew, came to visit, too. The two boys had such a blast together. Here, they are throwing 800 metric tons of rocks off the front deck. After each time, they would shout "Sorry down there", just in case they had inadvertantly hit a snail. Cute? Maybe just a tad.


To my absolute delight, we made a special trip to Alanson to visit the coffee shop/bakery/yarn store. Does it get any better than that? Actually it must, because they didn't have the pattern for my Noro dream sweater that I was fully prepared to rationalize buying yarn for as a "vacation yarn purchase".

Henry takes a break from a very serious game of soccer with Drew and Uncle Jamie.

Flying!

The tiny town of Indian River has a Fourth of July parade that consists mostly of fire trucks flinging candy out the windows. Kyle's cousin Stacey (my fellow mama in arms) and I had let the kids chew gum as a special treat so they wouldn't gobble down all of the candy as it was flung at them. We realized at the same time that 5 minutes later that we both had somehow managed to end up with said gum chewed up and stuck to our thumbs. It was a true mama bonding moment.

Waiting for the big trucks to go by.

We borrowed the neighbor's super cool jet ski and Henry took a spin around the lake with his Daddy.


Henry helped to frost his Papa's 60th birthday cake. He's very helpful when it comes to chocolate frosting.
On the way back to the airport, we stopped at Waloon Lake to visit some old family friends. They had kids and grandkids up so we thought it would be fun to get the kids together to play before a long trip home. More lake time! How cute is Henry in his little life vest?

The other folks (who have grown up around lakes) convinced me to let Henry go tubing with their little girl Annie Green. I was scared out of my mind, but he really wanted to go and it seemed pretty difficult for them to fall off in the deep tube. We watched Annie Green and her brother Carson go around once and then Henry took a turn. I was pushing for him to go with Kyle, but he wanted Annie Green. And they had a blast.

Until a complete fluke sent them both tumbling into the lake and Kyle had to dive in and get them. Annie Green is on a swim team (at 5!!!) so she was fine, but Henry had trouble keeping on his back in his life vest. He was pretty freaked out. Kyle was exhausted from water skiing all day so he barely managed to keep Henry on his back and keep his own head up until the boat pulled around to get them. Scary much? By the time Henry got back into the boat he had stopped crying, but we were all a bit shaken for a while. And then it was time to get a travellin' on.

The best moment of the trip home? In Detroit Metro airport they have this huge underground tunnel that connects to two main sections of the airport. You get on the moving sidewalk and go through the tunnel, which is all light panels that change color and it looks kinda like you are under water. They also play this kind of ambient music as you go through so it is kind of being at a really chilled out rave or something. In the middle of rushing to make our connection we were going through the tunnel and racing along the moving sidewalk when Henry yelled out "Wait! Let's dance!". We momentarily turned the "Stand" lane on the moving sidewalk into Dance Party USA and had a little break in the stressed out dash for the plane. I love that kid more than anything on Earth, I swear to you. I actually had this touching 4th birthday post all planned out for last night and then I ended up zonked out in front of Heroes all night. Lame.

Okay, now for what you really want. Wool pictures...

The bum of Heather's crabby shorties.

Stitching in the front.

Sarah's hot pink and aqua monster shorties.

Billi's rose and leaf green sabertooth monster shorties.

Two shots of Shannon's deep olive multi stripe monster longies.

Lisa's teal and hot pink birthday monster longies.

Little red shroomie mushroom shorties.



Wooooooooool!

Phew! That was a long post. I know I left a million things out, but you get the gist. And Henry has been waiting patiently for his turn with the computer, so I am Audi 5000.