4th of July...

Jeff and I are finally back from our week away.  This is the third year that we've had both kids in camp for a month, yet it was our first year to actually take a vacation of sorts during that time.  This year we headed up to our place in Michigan for a week.  Jeff had to work off and on during our time there, but we still managed to pack in plenty of fun.  I took very few photos (except for the ton I took on the 4th, which you will see below), so you're just going to have to take my word for it.  For our time in Michigan, I'm going to have to turn the house upside down again to locate our waterproof camera, or I'm just going to have to break down and buy another one since we spend so much time in or near water.

Here's the basic run down of our trip...

Saturday... arrived at Crystal Mountain.  Nothing exciting that night... just got things settled and went out to dinner.

Sunday... grocery shopping... yippee!!  We also went and arranged an outing for Monday.  Oh... and we spent some time at the pool.

Monday... we went kayaking for the first time!  I wish I would have had a waterproof camera with me this day.  However, there were tons of people tubing on the river that day and it took quite a bit of my effort to avoid running them over.  I definitely need more practice!  But it was a lot of fun!

Tuesday... road trip for the day to Traverse City for lunch.  We also had some miscellaneous shopping to do... a trip to Home Depot, the sporting goods store, etc.  It was a really nice day.  That was also the night that the resort had their fireworks display.  I didn't even take my camera since I generally stink at taking fireworks shots.  We sat with friends who live on the street behind us.  After the fireworks, we went over to a neighbor's house and sat around their fire pit with other neighbors until well after midnight.

Wednesday... we had no clue what we were going to do on Wednesday.  We figured everything would be crowded, so we decided to stay home and work around the house.  Jeff hacked down weeds in the yard and I worked on our downstairs bedrooms.  Our neighbors who live behind us invited us to go with them and their two daughters to the fireworks display in Frankfort.  I'm so glad that they did!  It was such a nice night!  We got there around 8ish and found a place to set up our chairs on the beach...

Then, we walked down the street to the ice cream shop to get a treat.  I got a cup of Caramel Sea Salt.... soooooo good!  We went back to the beach to finish our ice cream, people watch, chat and wait for the show to begin....

Getting darker...

Love these lanterns...

Almost time!

And then the show began...

 It was an amazing show!

and it was so beautiful reflected off of the water...

 Like I said before, I normally stink at fireworks photos, but I got some decent ones this time...

Jeff thought these looked like something from the Harry Potter movies...

 wow...

Possibly my favorite shot of the night....

This one should have been, but it's not quite....

These fireworks were amazing... but my focus was off for the first few I fired off and I didn't get it right until this particular display was winding down. Oh well... I still think the reflection is extremely cool!

I'll stop there with our week since I do have a couple of photos to go with the last half of the week.