photo album

Here are the rest of my trip pictures. Pardon that I have not done any editing. I usually try to make the photos the best they can be, but I am short on time, for all things, because I have to go to the dentist. (Gulp)

 Here is Kaden on the 4th. We had such  fun day, a small town parade, back yard grilling, and then culminating in fireworks. There was a drone taking pictures from the sky! I do have the video from the drone. I was able to find it online. It's kind of long and less spectacular than you might think. It was actually kind of distracting flying around as we watched the fireworks, which themselves were very good.


                                                                      the parade

The Beach.

I love the beach at Lake Michigan. We did all the obligatory burying in the sand, sand angels, and Malaika hiding from the sun.

The Beer Tour.

I may have mentioned that Kalamazoo is a big brewery town. This summer, there was a thing happening where you could get a passport book and have it stamped after visiting certain (not all) of the breweries. My kind and thoughtful daughter and son-in-law procured a passport for me, and whenever we found ourselves with a free evening, off we went in pursuit of the filling of these. I can't find my actual passport, but here are a few of my photo memories.

Here we are at Rupert's. And out friend here is the very one. He mostly just hung out on his bed, but would occasionally speak his chest rattling woof.

The Coaster is from a DIFFERENT place, the one pictured below outdoors. I got things mixed up and was ever so kindly corrected by Meghann. Thanks! So many dog-places. There was also the Old Dog, which I do know is where we heard Meghann's dad playing in his brass quintet.

Here are are chronicling shots of the various places.

I don't think I will remember every place we went. There are two shots from Olde Peninsula, and then the outside place pictured that had awesome tacos, (which I now know was Gonzo's), Bell's and the Beer exchange, which I don't think were even on the passports, another place in the downtown area that we only got tasters at, and another place we didn't expect to like but did....er, maybe Meghann can weigh in on the comments?

The line up of glasses is from the Beer Exchange. It is operated like a stock exchange, so that there is a board up with a list of beers, and whatever is selling well gets cheaper. It resets every ten or fifteen minutes. Here we tried the mead, which at Bells is heavenly. This one was so so. But as you can tell,  we had a fun time trying to fill up our books.

A few other things we did--

                         Here we are out to breakfast one day at a favorite place, Studio Grill.

This is a church that is literally a stone's throw from their house that has a TLM. They are few and far between all over the country and here they have one in their back yard. It;s not really their thing, but I was very happy.




They went climbing at a place called Airway, which also has Laser tag and an arcade, which we also did on another day. I have the laser tag pictures around someplace...

I did not climb. I took as many pictures as I could before my neck gave out from looking up. Kaden did a great job after conquering his initial fears. Malaika zoomed around up there like she was a born circus performer. There was a zip line at the end, which they all did several times.

Meghann, who also had to swallow some fear, but did it!

Malaika in her natural habitat.

Malaika, Kaden and Jeff

                           Here is Kaden, still getting the feel of it, staying close to his daddy.

                             
                                              Malaika, on the level above Kaden and Jeff

                 Malaika, on the zip line,in the background, going by Kaden and Jeff

Blurry, but this is what it looked like from the car, where I was resting my neck and warming up. The nights were still chilly in June!

Doing a little craft project on a rainy day--

--and playing outside on the sunny ones. This boy needs to be in motion!

Meghann's vegetable garden that we had fun with. I wonder what it looks like now...?

At the last little league game of the season--

                                         The master magician, doing his tricks for me

                            this is what getting a pedicure is like in the digital age, haha. :)

Their neighbors ( I have given them the Nicest Neighbors in the World award) allow us to swim in their pool. We were out there every day possible!

                                                       Again, this is Malaika in the sun.


Kaden is most definitely part fish.

Here, he snuggled up to me . I had to capture it. 

On June 22nd, (this picture may have been from that night),  all our phones went off at once, at 10:58 PM exactly, with  an "imminent extreme alert" that a tornado was spotted in the area, and we were told to take shelter. Well, let me tell you that my daughter is not one to miss her sleep, especially on a night before work. We had to coax her to the basement until the warning was lifted. And while down there she kept saying, in the twangiest twang, "here comes the tar-nade-a!" And she was back in bed two minutes before the time allotted. She is something else. Haha.

We went out to Jeff's dad's place in Battle Creek, a couple times during our time there. He has awesome tree-swing that goes out over a steep hill. Here is Kaden taking a ride on it.

Here is Tony taking Malaika for a ride on one of his motorcycles. Between this and the climbing, I guess you can tell what a daredevil she is. She also wants to skydive one day. Sheesh.

                                A few souvenirs--

                                                I have an awesome tank with this logo from Handmade Kalamazoo that I got at the Farmer's Market. Another favorite place. 

                                                                      Miss this place.

And this view with my car in the driveway.

what we did for (part of) our summer vacation, or, the saga of the shoes.

                                    Jeff, Kaden and Malaika, expertly posing at the base of one of the waterfalls.

This June and early July, Malaika and I were able to spend three glorious weeks in Michigan with Meghann and family.

Meghann, lover of waterfalls and also Adventure Planner Extraordinaire, did some research and combined those things into a lovely camping trip for us all to do together. So, exactly two days after our car made tire tracks in her driveway, we all piled in it and headed for Starved Rock State Park, located in Illinois, about four hours from said driveway.

That part of the country had been getting lots and lots of rain, so the waterfalls were flowing beautifully. However, that also meant the mud was flowing pretty well, too.

 This is a gazebo outside the office where we got our trail maps. The trails are situated near and along the Illinois River, which had gone over its' banks. A bit.

But we had driven four hours with a seven year old and all the camping gear, so dang it, we were going hiking.

                                                     While we were still clean.

I don't know if you can see just how far down that goes.


Far.

It was a particularly humid day. And for any of the down stairways, there were also many up ones.

Inhalers were used.

Here is one of the flooded areas of the trail.

And here is the result.This was day one of a two day hike, so that night, we tried to dry our shoes out by the campfire in the hopes of knocking the dried mud off the next day.


1. The heat from the fire melted Jeff's soles so his shoes fell apart the next day, held together only by a couple of Malaika's hair ties, and that only poorly.

2. We could not leave our shoes out all night, because of the raccoon that stole Grandma's dentures once. So they hung out in the car overnight. When we opened the car up in the morning, well, just conjure up the smell of slightly melted, pungent mud, sweaty foot smell...


That's all the humorous, sort of messy details, but here are some of the beautiful rewards.

  A natural sculpture of an alligator or horse, or something. Depending on which angle you look at it.

                                                        that's Kaden behind the water

                     the light was so beautiful. it was pretty slippery here, as you can see where the greenish areas are. there were a few butt-falls and slides.








here is Malaika.

Second day, we were lucky to be mostly on these board trails. Or Jeff would probably have lost his shoes completely.


I'm sad I forgot to take any photos of our campsite. But here are our shoes after a trip to the laundromat. Jeff had to throw his away and get new ones.

We did lots of other fun and wonderful things, which I hope to share with you soon!