We had an uneventful flight from LA to Chicago, quickly found our luggage and car rental, and started the early morning drive to my parents house. At 3am we drove into the driveway and proceeded to wake up everyone in the house. What a party!! Eventually Andy and I made our way out to the fifth wheel in the driveway and attempted to catch a few zzzz's. After a wonderful homemade breakfast and some quality time with Mom and Laura, Andy and I decided to take a motorcycle ride out to the Holland Pier, one of my favorite places in West Michigan. Later that evening we had the pleasure of joining with our extended family to celebrate Grandpa and Grandma Ver Hulst's 50th anniversary. It was so nice to see everyone again! We had a lot of fun laughing as G&G's brothers and sisters gathered to take family pictures. Talk about craziness!!
The next day Andy, Kaitlin, and I drove out to visit the Teichmans. Andy's cousin, Jordan, had a little league game on Friday night so after a delightful dinner a bunch of us loaded chairs into the back of our vehicles and made our way over to the ball field. The game was quite exciting--Jordan was on the pitcher's mound!! Sadly the weather did not understand the fact that we came to watch the boys play and not the lightning in the sky so after one weather delay they decided to call the game a bit early as raindrops began falling from the sky.
Jordan on the pitcher's mound...we are so excited and proud of him!!
After the game we returned to Andy's aunt and uncle's house for a birthday celebration-Jordan's 12th! Later that night, while a few of us were sitting around sharing life stories, the sky put on a beautiful show for us. Conversations were suddenly halted as we all stared out the window and muttered amazed oooh's and aaah's and the spectacular lightning that seemed to snake across the sky. After a couple of minutes his aunt suggested that we turn off all of the lights, light a candle, and sit out on the porch for a better view of the show. Wow!!!
The next morning we woke up and discovered that not only did the storm produce a lot of really cool lightning, it also brought a lot of rain. Sadly for some, the rain damaged a lot of property. Thankfully for Andy's family the water was concentrated in their back yard-so much so that Jordan was riding around in a paddle boat in the backyard. Andy and I were even treated to a ride!!
Andy and Jordan out for a late morning paddle boat ride.
The "lake" in the back yard. They definitely made lemonade out of lemons in this case!
Inspired by the paddle boat ride, we decided to see what had become of the gravel pit back behind his grandparent's farmland. Overnight the gravel pit had overflowed it's banks and was definitely deep enough and big enough to take the jet ski out! We had so much fun!!
Jet skiing in the middle of a bunch of farmland-how crazy is that?!?!
Later that evening we returned to Mom Teichman's house for a few hours. While there we had the pleasure of going of for dinner with just the four of us followed by a thrilling movie at the nearby theater.
After church on Sunday we returned to my parent's house for a Father's Day celebration. Not only were we able to celebrate with our immediate family but with Grandpa and Grandma Kleis, Uncle Steve, and Mitch and Jolene! The food was great and the fellowship was wonderful. A couple hours later after our family took their leave, Mitch, Jolene, Andy, and I climbed in the car and made our way down to the beach. Because it was such a nice day it seemed like everyone and their father had the same idea as us so we decided to visit a lesser known section of the Lake Michigan coastline, a nice little road end beach. This place is special because it requires a bit of work to experience the beauty of the lake. A couple hundred stairs later we made it up, over, and down the other side of the sand dune and found ourselves at the water's edge. Although the temperature outside was quite high, the water apparently had not received the "warm up" memo. Oh well, we didn't have our suits along anyway.
Later that night Andy and I packed our bags once again and made our way to his mom's house. We had fun just hanging out on Sunday night. On Monday we decided to have an adventure in Saugatuck. Although Andy worked in Saugatuck for a couple of years and drove past the dune rides place on a regular basis, we never actually stopped to find out what it was all about. The ride turned out to be so much fun!! It was like a roller coaster on sand!
We stopped about halfway through the dune ride excursion to take pictures of Lake Michigan, ourselves, and the trails.
The four of us with Lake Michigan in the distance.
After the ride we decided to drop in on Andy's former boss. I think we kind of freaked the new front desk girl out though because Andy kept asking her questions about things that had changed/stayed the same and where we might find the people we knew from past years. Eventually we caught up with the owners at their new restaurant in town. Before heading out of town we decided to hit the pool at Suites of Saugatuck. Swimming was so much fun and we shared a lot of laughs when we looked at our feet near the end of our swim time--they were blue!! Not blue because we were cold, blue like the bottom of the pool! It looked as if we had walked through blue sidewalk chalk. The blue didn't come off very easily either which is good and bad at the same time I suppose. (Good because it didn't let off on the ground, bad because even after scrubbing the blue remained in a lighter form)
The next day Andy had to say goodbye and make his way to the airport. Now he is in Colorado and I am here in Michigan visiting with friends and family on my own. We have both had some adventures on our own in the last week or so. More on that at a later date...
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