Vacation Fun

We took the boat to Grand Haven on Friday evening. We anchored for the night and enjoyed watching the musical fountain. On saturday Jeff's parents came to stay with us for a couple of nights. We took the dinghy to shore and Elyse had a ton of fun riding the rides at the carnival for Coast Guard festival. Even Andrew went on a ride - he was grinning from ear to ear the whole time - it was so cute! Unfortunately - I didn't bring my camera to shore - so no pics of the kids on the rides. Jeff and I took Andrew on the tour of the Mackinaw (the big ship as Andrew called it!). They were both very tired out when we got back to the boat and fell asleep together watching a movie. Andrew was cuddled up so cute next to Elyse that I had to take a picture.


The fireworks on Saturday night were amazing!!! We really had a front row seat as they were literally right over our boat. They were HUGE and LOUD!! Andrew wasn't scared at all but Elyse was a little bit. She was cuddled up with me and I had to keep my hands over her ears. They had some different things going off closer to the ground too - it almost looked like a bunch of glitter the way it sparkled - it was really cool!

We thought we would just stay put there for the night but after the fireworks were done the Coast Guard boat came around to all the boats anchored out and said that we had to move because a freighter was coming in to port? Now who schedules a freighter to come into the GH port the night of Coast Guard fireworks? It was not the best night weather wise - but there were still a ton of boats anchored out for the fireworks - many of which probably would have stayed where they were all night - if not for the freighter. So - we headed up to Spring Lake and anchored there for the night.

On Sunday we had a reservation at the municipal marina. It's such a fun place to stay. We can sit on the back of our boat and watch all the people go by, close to the ice cream shop etc. We plan to stay here for rest of the week. It is very windy - so hopefully the wind starts to lay down tonight. The kids had fun flying kites last night and today. Here are a few pics of the kite flying adventures.

Andrew runs to get his kite up in the air.


Elyse keeps a close eye on her kite . . .

but she didn't hold on tight enough and the kite got away from her. The handle was stuck in this tree and Jeff is trying to hook it with the boat hook taped to a stick - but he wasn't quite tall enough.
I think we were the evenings entertainment as everyone was watching us trying to get the kite back. Here is a picture of her kite flying high when it was stuck in the tree.

The kite eventually took a nose dive and we got the kite back and quite a bit of the string too. And then today - with all the wind - we found the handle with the rest of the string on the ground! Elyse was so happy! That's it for now.