lake Archives | Heavenly Homemakers

I’m not very good at taking down time. I love being productive with my time, working hard, feeding people, doing-doing-doing.

But getting away, taking turns cooking (and cleaning!), playing games, going on fun outings – I have found it so refreshing the past few days.

Branson is full of fun things to do. We took the kids to the fish hatchery (I’ll try to share pictures after I have a chance to upload more of them) and then did a little hiking (all free!). Our hike took us to a beautiful lake, where the kids had a blast skipping rocks. And hooray, the sun was shining bright that day! I LOVED being in the sun after months of winter cloudiness!

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We splurged and took the kids to The Price is Right Live show one evening. We all had SO much fun – even if none of us got called up to be on contestant’s row. :)

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I’ll share more about our adventures another day. (Hey, I’m still on vacation while I write this, after all.) :) Today, I’m thankful for a fun get away with extended family. I am well rested and ready to go again! That’s a good thing, because there is a lot of work waiting for us once we get home!!

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If you’re curious, you can see pics of our Family Vacation Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3!

Did you think I would EVER show you the pictures we took of our kids at the beach? Or did you forget about it all together? I’m just a tad bit behind, that’s all.

In fact, I feel so far behind on all the posts that I want to write and recipes and ideas I want to share I’m not sure I’ll ever catch up. Hopefully you’ll be patient with me and keep coming back each day to see if I’ve posted something new in the Simple Steps Toward Healthy Eating series and the Becoming a Better Help Meet series. Or to see if maybe I’ve finally posted a new High Five Recipe…or maybe a new recipe for Healthy Celebrations. Or to see if I’ve finally answered the questions you’ve sent me via email. Or the questions you’ve left in the comments section. I really haven’t forgotten about all of those things. I just have a very long list. At least I’ll never run out of material!! Thank you all so much for being patient with me!

Anyhoo…here are the final pictures of our trip to Michigan in July.

Our boys (with the exception of our oldest) had never been to a beach (ah, but they’ve seen their fair share of corn fields, yes they have). We really wanted to be sure and carve out some time to take them to Lake Michigan on our way home. We didn’t have tons of time and since we were traveling, we didn’t put the boys in swim gear. We just found a good (free) beach location and stopped for a little while to play in the water.

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I can’t even tell you how perfect the weather was that day, or how perfect the water felt, or how much fun our boys had just standing in the water and jumping small waves.

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I don’t think I stopped smiling and laughing at the kids the entire time we were there. The younger boys seriously squealed (in that manly way boys squeal of course) for an entire half hour. I’m sure the folks around us who are used to being around that much water thought we all must be loony. Yeah well…we’re used to corn fields, remember?

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Asa found some really cool rocks. And oh yeah…Malachi insists on wearing jeans almost daily. Even when it’s a hundred and fifty degrees outside. Today was no exception. I rolled his pant legs up, but…

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I think they started weighing him down a little bit.

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Here we all are taking an awesome boat ride in Lake Michigan. Just kidding. Here someone else is taking an awesome boat ride in Lake Michigan. We just watched and took a picture.

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And here’s a house Matt found for sale along the beach. We’re thinking of buying it. You know, because it’s totally within our budget to buy beach property in Michigan.

Yeah, just kidding. As nice as it was to be at the beach, I’m afraid if we moved we’d miss the corn fields too much.

Gratituesday: Play Time!

Family Vacation, Part 4 (finally!)