Epic vacation cont...Daddy joins the fun

Friday night Ben made it over to meet us in Green Bay. Alex was very happy to see his daddy!

Saturday the 22nd we headed to the New London area for a picnic with some old friends we hadn't seen in a while. There were lots of kids there and even more toys and even more food so it was a great day!
Sunday we went back over to New London and stopped by our friend Roger's house! We hadn't seen him in a long time and he'd never met Alex before. It was so nice to see him again!
Then over to Paul and Karrie's for a cookout with all of Ben's brothers. It was nice to have everyone in one place when it wasn't Christmas! Brendan came over with Tony so Alex had all kinds of big kids to play with, he was in heaven!

 

 

 

Epic vacation cont.....Bay Beach!

Friday July 21st Amy, Joy, Maddie, Alex and I went to Bay Beach amusement park in Green Bay! For those of you who don't know Bay Beach has been there forever, it has a lot of kiddie rides and then some "big kid" stuff (bumper cars, scrambler, tilt-a-whirl, ferris wheel) and it's super cheap - 25 -50 cents a ride. We spent a whole afternoon for $5 and the kids had a blast. 

 

Our epic vacation!

Alex and I rode back to Wisconsin with Matt and Amy on July 15th. It was a good day to spend in the car because it was way too hot to do anything outside! When we rolled into Green Bay all the bank signs said 103! Sunday we went over to Joy, Doug and Maddie's house to play - we greatly appreciated being able to visit with them in their air conditioning that day. Monday Alex and I headed over to New London and spent the day with Uncle Paul, Aunt Karrie and the cousins. We had a great time, Alex sure loves his cousins!
Tuesday morning Alex and I decided it was just too hot in Green Bay and headed north to the lake for a couple days! We had such a wonderful time. It was really special to be there just the two of us. We spent all day tuesday down by the water and then wednesday morning I rode my bike into Minocqua w/ Alex in the trailer to the store to get some groceries. It was a bit cloudy so we went over to Rhinelander to visit Grandma Ruth and Lori. Alex LOVED feeding the fish at Grandma Ruth's and we had a great visit and stayed for supper.
Thursday was another great day to be down by the water so we swam a lot and filled in the time with the regular cottage activities like legos, coloring, reading and naps in the blue bedroom! 

Sand Lakes quiet area

We hiked a bit in the sand lakes quiet area. Alex was very tired and fell asleep on my back but woke up about every 10-15 minutes so he wasn't the happiest during this hike. The hike was pretty though and there were ripe wild blueberries. 

We did some hiking in a part of the dunes we hadn't been to before, very pretty day! 

Matt and Amy arrived at our house on July 6th and stayed for 9 days! We had a couple of great beach days right off the bat. 

"planes too loud"!

Sunday we went into town to see the Cherry Festival air show featuring the Blue Angels. It was really cool but very loud. Alex did pretty well, as long as he could see the planes he was good but they few times they buzzed over really fast and loud and he couldn't see them he was a little scared. There was an insane amount of people down there, we parked a long ways away and walked in so traffic wasn't an issue for us but just walking thru town in the crowd was tough. It was really hot, especially in that crowd so we promised Alex an ice cream treat on the way home - he had his first kiddie cone! He didn't want to hold the cone and eat it though, he wanted to use a spoon since that is the only way he's ever had ice cream. Eventually he figured out the cone was edible also and decided the whole thing was pretty fun! 

Obsess much?

Alex is obsessed with trains. I mean, really, obsessed! He got this train magazine out of my dad's recycle bin at his office months ago and he still will sit and look at it over and over.