Spontaneity At It's Finest

Last weekend our whole family hopped in the car at 2 a.m. to head to Holland, MI to a conference Kyle attended.  

He was supposed to go alone but asked me the night before if I was sure I "didn't want to come?"

One thing led to another.  Then a couple of switcheroos here and there (done surprisingly easily I might add) and we were off 6 hours later.

It was a regular good family car trip, where Caleb wanted to know "why?" about everything and Isaiah pointed out every water tower, every airplane, ever motorcycle and every windmill.  He also made sure to repeat his findings at least twenty-five times to make sure we were listening.

Once we arrived in Holland, we dropped off Kyle at his conference, headed to a park for 45 minutes, and drove another 45 to my friend's house.

Though she was having a garage sale wrapping up at the time, Khara graciously let us hang out with her and her kids, Jude and Laz.  

Laz is napping so he isn't in the picture, but he and Isaiah were two peas in a pod.  They wrestled, hopped up on couches and knocked over pillows with as much gusto as only a 2 and 3-year old can.

 Khara was my roomie in college for 2 1/2 years and we can pick up where we left off like nobody's business.  It was so incredibly good to see her, catch up and find even more connections in our current lives.

After hanging out with Khara and her lovely family, we headed back to our hotel that the conference put us up in.

It was crazy cool, crazy modern and crazy awful all at the same time.  See those white sheets?  I loaded them with beach towels before we ate our very un-modern, un-cool Little Ceaser's Hot-N-Ready pizza on the floor and watched cartoons.

I must admit, this shower was handy as Caleb and Isaiah spent about an hour "cleaning" it one night.  It was 4 times the size of our tub.

There happened to be a scrap metal place (or so it looked) nearby our hotel.  The kids raced to the 10 foot-tall window to watch the train take the scrap metal away.  Love this picture...

After a very restful night, we woke up and headed to the farmer's market 4 blocks away.  

The boys each got a homemade donut and Liv and I shared a homemade bagel.  

Caleb and Isaiah's favorite part besides the donuts, was the musicians.  Caleb kept wanting more and more money to throw into the guitar cases and overturned hats.  I finally had to cut him off, as I was getting low on change.

On the way back to the hotel from the farmer's market, we took a record breaking 10 million rest breaks.  You'd think it was 4 miles away instead of 4 blocks, but since I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere (besides in the shade) we happily took those 10 million.

Rest break 245,689.

Rest break 865,446.

And then.

And THEN!

We headed to the gorgeous beach of Lake Michigan.

Spirits soared for the next 3 hours as we lathered on sunscreen, piled up sandcastles, laid in the sand, and jumped waves while screaming our heads off.

If you hadn't already guessed it, Isaiah did most of the screaming his head off, but it was so much fun to jump the waves with him, I did a little screaming myself.

Caleb did most of the sandcastle-ing.  His little brain figured out the correct consistency of wet/dry sand and distance from the water to build a seriously strong sandcastle. 

We got to the beach at approximately 20 minutes past Livia's naptime but she did just fine and stayed awake until we rolled the stroller back to our car.  I didn't hear a single whine from her, though she used the sand as a pillow a few times.

Caleb hid something in this sand pile.  I think it was a feather, but he decided he was pretty clever for making it disappear.

Snack time consisted of oyster crackers and sand.

Sand angel!

When it was time to go, we packed up and headed through the 1/5 of a miles of sand to the sidewalk.  It was hard--way harder than I remembered.  And I must've looked pathetic holding Livia and practically pulling at a horizontal tilt to drag the 75-pounds of stroller and stuff through the sand, not to mention the sandy and wet boys acting like puppies behind me.  I had to have, because a sweet college girl ran up to me and asked if she could help me.  I gladly accepted.

Then I asked the boys where they wanted to go to lunch.  Out of all the gazillions of restaurants to choose from in Holland, they chose none other than...

Mickey D's!  The land of french fries and weird-looking kids wearing box hats.

That night we got to hang out with Kyle as his conference was having a cookout by the beach.

It was great food and fun, though I didn't take any pictures.

We took the opportunity to go to the beach again with daddy that evening after the cookout was over.

It.  Was.  Stunning.

Livie made a game of falling into the sand and giggling.  It was so soft and non-buggy.

Isaiah and Caleb made big waves with their feet while Kyle was whipping them around.

I sat back and relaxed.  It was so peaceful.

The next morning we woke up early and headed to Denny's for breakfast.  Though the kids were a bit whiney and we all went to the bathroom 3 times for Isaiah, only to go back without anything getting done because he was deathly afraid of the dryers, we all ate everything on our plates.  And there was quite a bit on their plates.

Success!!

After church in Grand Rapids, some more fellowship with Khara, and another McDonald's stop, we headed over to my brother where him, his wife, and her family were having a vacation 45 minutes south of Holland.  Chad and Christine live in Colorado, so when he told me where he was and to come down, I told him "OF COURSE!" after fainting dead on the spot, that is, for how completely random that was.

It was so good to see them and we built sandcastles with tunnels, waded in the 85 degree lake, and rode the jet ski.  Even Caleb drove!

So glad we decided to take this trip, though it was never in The Plans on our trusty calendar....
Might have to do it again.