Should we be concerned about this??

 

Almost forgot about these - beach day in Elk Rapids

Alex and I met Brandon, Jessica and Tessa in Elk Rapids at the beach a couple weeks ago. It was a gorgeous afternoon and we had fun picking rocks and playing in the sand! Thank you to Brandon for digging some nice big holes to play in! 

3 kids won't smile all at once

But you can sometimes catch them one at a time! 

Storms at the dunes

 

 

Sand angels?

Maddie is a smart girl...if you make snow angels, why not sand angels? The favorite game of the climb was for Alex and Maddie to take turns "falling" and helping eachother up. It should also be mentioned that Maddie picked out Alex's clothes for the day :) 

To the dunes!

 

The Martins come to Traverse city!

Doug, Joy and Maddie came to visit us! We spent a great day at the beach friday where Carter and Johanna met us and then we went downtown friday night to hear the live music. The kids had a blast! 

Happy 2nd birthday Alex!

On friday the 11th Alex turned 2 years old. I can't believe how time flies and what a big boy we have now. Friday night we opened his "big" gift, a train table from us and Ben put it together. It is a huge hit!
Saturday we had a little party for him, dinner and cake and a few friends over along with Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma Ruth coming to visit. He got tons of really cool gifts, many of them trains and accessories for his table along with some great Thomas stuff which he is really into! Thanks everybody!
For those who haven't seen him in a while, Alex has grown taller again and talks pretty constantly. His words are getting easier and easier to understand every day. 

And finally the end....

Alex LOVES to kayak! He held onto the paddle almost the whole time and "helped". He listened well and sat very still. We went along the edge of the island and across the channel and back before he got tired and said he was done.
We packed up tuesday night and made plans to come home. Terri and Lori decided to ride along and come see our house and town.
Alex fell on one of the beds in the big bedroom while we were packing up and getting ready and smashed his mouth on the metal headboard. He just split the inside of his lip but it looked terrible, tons of blood and screaming :(
It was a very rainy day so we couldn't stop many of the places we had talked about stopping on the way over here. We even had to ditch our picnic plans and eat lunch at the Big Boy in Manistique. We did stop at a very cool pottery place near Petoskey though and they had a frog pond that Alex liked.
Thursday was a very nice day so we got to do some sightseeing while they were here, Lori and Teri got the one day quick tour of the area!
We are having a bit of "vacation hangover" here today. Mom and Lori and Teri left this morning and Alex has been alternating between asking where they are to asking to go for a car ride and then being just really happy to play with his toys in between.

We didn't even get a full sunset this night before the first storm blew in from the left side of this picture! "It's a'licious!" is what Alex had to say about Grandma's leftover ice cream cake!
He even got his toes in the right spots!