a weekend away...

We decided to take a last minute weekend trip to our favorite place... Crystal Mountain Resort in Michigan.

We left mid-day on Thursday and got there just in time to have dinner and head to bed. We had to get a good night's sleep because we had a big day planned for Friday.

Friday morning we got up and drove out to the dune climb at Sleeping Bear Dunes. The kids love it there and insist that we go each time we're at Crystal Mountain.

Here they are climbing up the dune....
From this point... Alex and Jeff continued on across the dunes to get a view of Lake Michigan (they took photos with the point and shoot but I haven't downloaded them yet).

Clara took off running down the big dune...
I followed her a ways down. Then she climbed back up to the top so she could run down again.

Here she goes....
(apparently "jazz hands" are necessary for dune running)

she decided to take a running jump into the sand...


We then went back down to the bottom to wait for the boys...
Then, before long, here came the boy running down the dune....
After that we loaded up and headed for our next destination. We stopped at a little sandwich place for lunch along the way.

Then it was time to play in the Platte River...
This really is a nice place for the kids to play... nice little river with a gentle current that empties into Lake Michigan just a minute or two walk from where we set up shop. The rocks here are amazing... the kids could play with them all day. Lots and lots of perfect skipping stones, smooth rounded rocks, and the occasional fossil. They really didn't want to leave but we had a surprised planned for them later that night that we had to get ready for.

We went back to our cottage and got cleaned up for the surprise.

While we waited for it to be time for us to leave, the kids went frog hunting behind the cottage...




They didn't catch any, but they did spot a couple of them.

Hey... look at this....
... a "real" smile!

And more "real" smiles...
The trick? Having them recite tongue twisters! The downside... they we were rarely looking my direction when they were laughing.

One last set...
color

or

black and white?
That's as far as I've edited today... hopefully I'll get to the "surprise" photos tomorrow!