We knew we wanted to get on the road pretty early this morning, so the kids finished their boxes of cereal and we packed up. We had a pretty terrible cell connection here. We'd called Dave three times from three different locations yesterday where the signal looked strong in the small city close by but each time about 2 minutes in the call was dropped. So this morning once I got anything close to 3G we called Dave. As we were finishing our tales of the last few days, I spotted a sign for u-pick raspberries, so we turned for a fun unexpected stop.
The raspberries were beautiful and so plentiful! We made it down one of the short rows and had 2 full quarts already! As we were walking back another lady picking gave us the scoop on the golden raspberries that are even sweeter, so we headed to those rows and topped off our packages with those. Delicious!
Right about halfway through our drive, we stopped at a children's museum. We stop at so many science museums, especially since most are free for us, that the kids welcome a stop at a place where they can just run and round and play. They played all kinds of different jobs like optometrists, veterinarians, dentists, doctors, orthodontists, pit crew, chef, and farmer just to name a few. They don't realize it, but they are still learning!!
Brayden was so excited to see one of his favorite exhibits in the kids museum - the air tubes!
After our standard 3 hours, the kids were finished so we headed on to our next park. They were all getting a little testy so I started dinner as soon as we were all set up. While they were eating the two kids next door come over and asked to play so they were all super quick to finish.
They all played ladder ball while I pulled out my laptop and started editing pictures - so rare for me before 10pm! At one point the mom commented on how well-behaved my kids were right along side hers who were bickering back and forth. While I appreciate her saying something encouraging mine to behave, what she doesn't realize is mine had been fighting with each other practically the entire day too!
The new kid crew walked down to the playground as I was finishing cleaning up and I joined them a little bit later. It was so nice to have some adult conversation with their mom as we watched them play and become fast friends. This just isn't normal for my super-shy kids!
We sat around their fire and watched the kids play. I learned a lot about the state parks in Michigan as this family were frequent campers as well. As I saw the sun dip into the trees, we headed with the majority of the other campers to the beach access to watch the sunset. The kids had a ball runing around the kid-made lake at the shore of Lake Huron.
We headed back to their fire for some s'mores and conversation and once all the kids were yawning we all headed to bed. My kids are quickly turning into night owls and sleeping in until 8am!
We were very fortunate to have 3G service at this park - exceptionally rare! So I made a point to let Dave know to be free at night. We were able to chat through skype until the wee hours of the morning to catch up on all those things you just can't do in a 2-minute phone conversation.
We areall very excited that our countdown had reached 5 days before we see him!
