Up North

I think we are officially Michiganders now. We finally took our first family trip up north, as they say here. People just go up north. There are quite a few options that fall in this "up north" category, but we traveled all the way up to the tip of the mitten to stay at our friends' cottage in Cheboygan. Also fun to say. We could not have asked for a more perfect weekend. The drive was easy, the weather was absolutely gorgeous and all 11 children in our care returned home tired and happy. We went up there with two other families, each of them with four kids, so we were quite the crew. The Lowers were so gracious in sharing their and their inlaws cottage. It was a perfect setup!

 

This is literally 10 minutes after our car pulled into the cottage. The kids jumped out of the car and ran straight to the water. It was freezing, but they didn't seem to care.

Annie

It wasn't a terrible view from the cottage. Both docks were ours for the kids to run wildly down.

Mae :)

Mae and Evie. With their mutual love of wild hair, they are perfect friends.

Daddy and Annie watching the sunset the first night.

Kate joined in as it got darker.

 

The next day, we took the ferry over to Mackinac. 11 kids, two strollers, 3 pounds of fudge and 1,000 rocks thrown into Lake Michigan later, we had hit the end of a very fun day.

There is a lot of fudge on Mackinac, and it is all delicious. We made the kids wait until near the end of the day to have some, and they talked about it all.day.long.

This picture doesn't show even a tiny part of it, but Mackinac is gorgeous.

We took over the monument for the kids to eat lunch. I think we need more kids...oh wait...

All of them.

Sam, Annie, Andrew, Evie, Mae, Kate, Jillian, Dane, Charlotte, John and Nora!

 The hotel on Mission Point has a huge yard and all these lovely Adirondack chairs to rest weary legs.

The closest we'll get to a maternity shot. We moved on to find another spot to throw rocks into the lake. Here, the kids decided wading in would be fun, too. A few wet kids later, we continued on.

This guy was making fudge so we all stopped to watch, and I got made fun of as a pregnant lady asking questions about the fudge process :)

The next day we spent back at the cottage just hanging out and enjoying the beautiful day.

And Evie took in some freezing cold water.

Nora

Kate and Annie hanging out.

Charlotte.

Jillian

 

On our final morning, Matt took Annie and Kate to see the sunrise.

Evie and I sat (slept) this part out.

Annie and Kate loved it.