Visiting Alanna's

 After we packed up and left that amazing rental place, we had another special get together at Alanna's house. She only lives about an hour from the town we had been staying in, so it was a quick drive over to see her. She got to show off her new place and we all got one more day to spend together. Tavish was really excited to show Ledger where he lived and the two of them got to play at his house for the first time!

Some of the family that had come to the party yesterday were able to stop by for a grill out at Alanna's. There were a couple more of David's friends who stopped by and caught up. All in all, it was a really fun time seeing Alanna's digs and spending time with David's family and friends!

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Surprise Party

One of the real reasons we went on this trip was actually a secret... It had been a while since David had been able to visit the area, the place where he grew up. Well, his daughter Alanna had been plotting and planning behind the scenes, contacting a bunch of family and old friends of David's. She had set up a special get together with a dozen or more special people from David's childhood. She planned for all of them to join us at one of the world famous seafood places that David loves. Completely unaware of all this planning, David walked in to this very special surprise! He was absolutely beside himself with joy when he walked up and realized that he recognized each and every person at this huge table- and they were all there to see him! Alanna had also gathered up and framed a bunch of old pictures that she had them send her, and she gave it to him as a gift. He was in his glory as he got to catch up with everyone and just spend time with them again. All night he just kept repeating 'I cant believe it!' with a huge grin on his face! Great job, Alanna, you got him good!

Checking Out the Town

On our last morning there we realized he hadn't even been to town yet! It's pretty much just a touristy beach town with a couple restaurants and shops, but we wanted to check it out anyway. There was a candy shop that made their own taffy. It was cool to watch the taffy machines pull and twist the sugar concoctions into sweets. We went to a couple souvenir shops, and walked over to the ice cream store as well (do you sense a pattern?). We walked back to the house, letting the boys run down to the beach one last time before we headed back to pack up.

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Eats & Night Beach

 Tavish and Alanna only live about an hour away from here, so David went down to go see Tavish play soccer for his school team. While they were gone, the rest of us decided to go out to eat. There had been a couple restaurants we had seen in our travels around town that had caught our interest. We decided to go to one that made pizzas in a fire oven. It was really delicious! Afterwards we took our usual stop at one of the beaches and walked around for a while. Eventually we made it home and soon after David and Tavish returned from the game. Later that night the boys were getting pretty squirrelly, so I rounded them up and told them it was time for an adventure: we were going to the beach- at night! It was almost pitch black out, which is why it was such a fun adventure. The two of them were thrilled at the idea and quickly got their sandals on and we made a race for the beach. It was super cold and windy. We didn't last very long, but the strangeness of being on the beach in the dark was a lot of fun!

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Rest!

With all the fun and frivolity, we were getting pretty exhausted. Fortunately, we had a slow and quiet afternoon planned. The boys played games and watched videos while the boring adults got a much needed moment of rest. Diana and I took full advantage and cozied up in that big old fluffy bed of ours! Now its a real vacation!

Beach Rocks!

 A short walk down the road from the house we stayed in was the beach. It even had some pretty cool rock formations and stuff. Recently Diana had been developing her new hobby: Barbies! Part of that hobby is taking photos of them that make them look like they are real. She smuggled a couple Barbies into her luggage so she could get some fun pictures of them on the beach and anywhere else cool we came across. It brings her so much delight! She felt really awkward to bring them out and pose them, but most places she took them out people would stop and tell her it was really cool!

After the photo shoot, we took a little adventure climbing around the rocks and enjoying the view!

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That Famous Lighthouse

 It was really weird to see this lighthouse- I can distinctly remember making this as a puzzle with my grandpa growing up! And now here we are, right next to it! It's considered one of the most famous lighthouses on the whole East coast. It's on an island just a few hundred yards off the coast and we drove down to see it. It was really neat to see it for real from the little park on the mainland. We got some great pictures, which seams to be what everyone was doing- even a wedding party had come to get their wedding pictures done there!

After taking it all in, David surprised us with a little ice cream! There was a little shop just a couple blocks away and he treated us to some waffle cones and brownies. We sure had some happy tummies on this trip!

It makes me want to find that old puzzle again!
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Beach Boys

 Even though it was a bit cold at the end of September, that didn't stop us from hanging out at the beach! Not exactly in our bathing suits or anything, but we did spend a bit of time walking the beach. Ledger was all about looking for different creatures, while Diana was all about finding cool shells. The view was just incredible! We stopped a few times through out the week to check out the beach. It was something that seemed to restore Diana and Ledger, getting their feet in the sand and exploring!
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Fish Food

One of the best features of being in New England is the seafood! Since this is where David grew up, he knew all the best places to get some delicious food. This place was really good, the start of a string of fantastic seafood adventures all week! The place was pretty busy so we had to find two different tables to eat at. Ledger, of course, decided to sit with his favorite auntie and uncle. We didn't mind at all, that meant that he wouldn't be picking off little bits and pieces from our plates!
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Coastal Elite

Wow! What a beautiful place we get to stay in! Mom and David came to pick us up at the airport and brought us back to the amazing old house they rented for our visit. Mom, David, Barbara and James had already made themselves cozy at the house, so we found our bedroom and showed Ledger the room he and Tavish were going to share. We unpacked and came down to the living room to catch up with everyone. Eventually we all settled in and had a nice relaxing time.

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Off to New England

For years David would always tell us stories about where he grew up. He would tell us about all the crazy adventures and tales about growing up on the coast of Maine. We always told him that it would be great sometime if we all got to go visit there and see it all together. Well, it's finally happening! All summer we made plans with Diana's family to go out and spend a week in David's hometown and see all the sights.

David and Mom drove out a week early to make their way across New England and get the rental house ready for us. I had gotten a few days off of work, Ledger took some time off school, and we hoped on a plane headed for Maine! None of us had ever been to that state before, so it was pretty exciting (also exciting because of the aforementioned skipping work and school...)

Adam's Dad

 Whenever Adam comes home to visit he stays with his dad and we always see him when we stop by. Now, Adam's dad is really cool. He is retired now, but he spent his career as a philosophy professor at Calvin College. He's published half a dozen books, and he's a young at heart. Every time we go over there we joke that we should hang out with him while Adam's gone in California. Well, Aaron and I decided to do just that! I had been texting with him on Facebook and suggested that we should go out for dinner sometime. He took me up on it and the three of us met up at a restaurant by his place and enjoyed a meal together. It was kind of weird at first, having dinner with a friend's dad, but Greg is so cool that the weirdness melted away quickly. We talked with him about what we are both up to these days, and chatted with him about his earlier life, before Adam was even born. It was really interesting and a lot of fun!

I never did tell Adam that we were doing it, so I guess he will have to hear it from his dad that he spent the evening with us...

Being A Butthead

So there's this funny YouTube channel that Ledger likes to watch. It's called Chadtronic, and its this guy who watches crazy commercials and comments on them. He's pretty funny; funny enough that Diana and I enjoy watching it too. There was one commercial that he watched about these crazy toys that for some reason are butt themed. Stupid and gross, I know. But also hilarious! The guy on the video kept laughing at this product, called 'Buttheads', and we were laughing right along. We probably watched that part 10-15 times, laughing each time at how ridiculous it was. Well, me being me, I looked them up online and saw that they were a real thing and actually for sale. Me being me, I of course bought one right away! I didn't tell Diana or Ledger, I just waited for it to arrive and had Ledger open the package. He roared with laughter when he realized what it was! I got him the robot one where you pull down his hand and it makes fart noises. We got a lot of laughs from this thing! Ok, I guess the internet isn't totally useless...

Annual Handprint

 School's starting? Well, lets take out the wood board! Every year since preschool, Ledger has dipped his hand in paint and put his handprint on this board. Each year he picks a different color and this year he went with white paint. It's been fun to see his hand get bigger and bigger as it goes up the board. This year was his 7th print! He's got 7 more until it's complete.

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First Day of 5th Grade

The days are long, but the summer is short. Another summer comes to an end as the first day of school arrives. This year our little guy starts 5th grade! Wow- he's the big kid on campus this year! His last year at his elementary school starts and he is excited to go back. Well, not really excited for the school part, but he's pumped to see his friends again, that's for sure! He was nervous about what class he would be in, but the good news came a week or two ago that he got the 'good' teacher (turns out there wasn't anything to be worried about- the 'bad' teacher didn't even come back this year!).

As is our tradition, Diana and I both walked to school with him on his first day, said our goodbyes, wishing him a great day, and went out for breakfast- just the two of us!

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Robo Crafts

 As the summer winds down and school's start is eminent, Ledger was getting a little bored. In order to stave off those dog days of summer, we invited Zeke over for the day! He stays with his grandma during the day, and she just lives down the street. He came over and the boys had a blast running around and drawing. We went downstairs to thumb through our pile of craft activities and found a pretty fun one: painting robots that look like stained glass. The boys were all for it, so we brought it up to the table and they both got busy painting. There were six of them so they each took three and started coloring. When they were done we hung them on the back slider and got to see the sunlight shine through them- they look great!

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Zoo-topia

For employee appreciation, my work gave out free passes to the Zoo. We finally found a day where we could go, and boy did we have a blast! I haven't been to the John Ball Park Zoo in Grand Rapids since I was about Ledger's age, so I was looking forward to it just as much as he was. The day was perfect, sunny but not too hot. We got there early in the afternoon and wandered the zoo path, seeing all the cool animals and checking everything out. They have made a ton of improvements and changes, but they kept the important parts: the penguins and monkeys!

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Fenced Off

We absolutely love our house and where we live. The neighbors? not as much... Soon after we moved in we realized that it didn't matter how nice we made out lawn, our view from the large front windows is pointing straight at our neighbors. I don't want to be disparaging against anyone, so lets just say it's not the best view. Well, we finally did something about it. Due to the odd shape of our plot of land, this side yard is actually considered a 'front yard' by the city. That means that we aren't allowed to build a 6 foot wall unless we get a variance from the city. Talking with a few people, I found out that the chances of them accepting our application for a variance is slim to none, so we didn't bother paying the huge fee to apply. I guess we are stuck with only a 4 foot fence. Still worth it, we decided. We had a guy come out and measure it out and made plans for them to come and build it. The day has finally arrived, and boy are they quick! They had the whole 80 foot fence up in about three hours- wow! We went to go check it out and, of course, Wiggins had to christen it...

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It's A Barbie World

Diana has always loved Barbies. Every once in a while she pulls out her old collection from when she was a kid and plays with them. She even lets Ledger join her on occasion, which he loves. Recently she has been wanting to get into them more. She sees all these people on social media posting pictures of beautiful and intricate photoshoots with their Barbies and she decided that she wants to do that too! She recently got a new fancy Barbie and now she's got the bug... For the past few weeks she has asked me to look for cheap Barbie stuff on Marketplace so she can grow her collection. Well, I just so happened to find a whopper! Ledger and I drove over to pick it up and surprise Diana with it: a giant 4 story Barbie house! We brought it in and she was beside herself with excitement! She was absolutely thrilled about it, saying 'I always wanted one of these when I was a kid- and now I've got one!' We rearranged the office so she can set up a whole Barbie area, and I'm pretty sure she hasn't come out of that room since...

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Adam's Meet Up

Adam always loves a good get together! A great friend since elementary school, Adam lives in California and isn't able to see all his Michigan friends as often as he would like. That's why he loves a good get together. Knowing he was going to be in town, he decided to invite a bunch of people to drop by and join him for drinks at a restaurant. Aaron and I, of course, took the bait and dropped in for the evening. A bunch of other old friends showed up too! Most years we have a little reunion of sorts for the ol' Kelloggsville gang, but we haven't been able to have once since the pandemic. This served as our alternate reunion this year. I picked up Aaron on the way and the two of us were the first to arrive (other than Adam, of course). Over the next hour a bunch of other former classmates rolled in; the drinks and nostalgia was flowing! I always love catching up with everyone. It's kind of weird, but I like to hang out with the people I went to middle school with, but our last reunion showed me that I don't have any interest in catching up with the people from my high school. Weird, huh? Maybe all the cool people from middle school went to the other high school...