Ali's Friend Birthday Party

Our girls are blessed in many ways! One of the biggest blessings is the awesome friends they have. Ali celebrated her 7th birthday with her closest friends this week with a peace sign/hippie chick theme. They started the party by having a water balloon fight, then hit a few pinatas for lots of candy, then La La Land facepainting came over and painted the girls faces. All the girls faces were so unique, detailed and cute!! Afterwards the girls enjoyed chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches and Ali opened her gifts.

Roosevelt Park Days

Roosevelt Park Days at the end of August is so great! I ran the 5K again this year in the morning and love it! It is such a nice and easy course and fun to run=) Then Ali and Kate were in the parade this year. Our neighbor Sue works for a Credit Union in Roosevelt Park and asked if the girls would want to ride on the float with her....of course they would!! Then later in the day we went downtown where they have the arts and crafts booths and a kids area of just inflatables, food, fishing and games. Lauren loved the snowcones and Ali and Kate loved being able to run around and jump in all the inflatables. They also caught a fish each with daddy=)

White River Campground

We have also been very blessed this summer to spend time with the Cooper and Shaffer families! We went to Hoffmaster camping earlier this summer with them and White River was our second trip together. Stephanie's friends the Webb's also went with us. We all had a great time and we all have girls so that was pretty neat=) Same time same place next year!!

Muskegon Children's Fountain

In July Muskegon opened a new children's fountain downtown. We went with the Cooper gals and had tons of fun! Muskegon has really done a lot with their downtown area and this was just one more added bonus=)

Craig's Cruisers

My college roommate Reagan was visiting from North Carolina and she found the time to meet us in Grand Rapids for a few hours at Craig's Cruisers! I just love her and miss her so much and really wished that she lived closer. It was a great few hours just re-connecting and letting our kids play for awhile=)

No training wheels and toothless

Ali FINALLY lost the one remaining front tooth right after being up north. That thing had been hanging around for about a month and we tried everything including bribes to get her to pull it out. We went to Hoffmaster one night to visit the Wahlberg's campsite and as Ali was in their camper playing she bumped her mouth on the bunkbeds and out it came=) Mike rewarded her with 3 Justin Bieber t-shirts! Really....3 of them!! Kate has also learned to successfully ride her bike without training wheels. She learned quick and she was off!! Of course she thinks that she is a speed demon now and while we were camping this last weekend she was trying to go faster than the older girls and wiped out on the gravel road and scrapped up her face as you see in the picture=)

Friendship

We have been very blessed this summer to spend a lot of time with the Conrad and Wahlberg families! Whether it has been camping, hanging out at the beach or each other's houses it has been so much fun! The few pictures that are posted are just of the kids...just love each and every one of them=)

Vacation Up North

We continued our annual tradition of going up north for the first week of August by camping at Jellystone in Indian River and then celebrating our anniversary up there as well. Jellystone is so much fun up there and by far our favorite place to camp. There is so much for the kids to do, we get to visit with Mike's side of the family all week and we get to see some of Mike's high school friends and their parents. There is a picture of Jason Perry and his family in here. Jason was Mike's childhood friend and the bestman in our wedding. We don't see them often enough and they came out for a night and hung out=) After camping, the girls stayed with grandma and grandpa and Mike and I got to spend our anniversary in Charlevoix, Harbor Springs and Petoskey this year.