Bay Beach! Friday July 16th

Friday morning we hit Bay Beach Amusement Park just as it was opening at 10. The idea being we would stay for a couple hours before it got too unbearably hot. It was hot, but there was a nice wind off the bay that made it tolerable so we ended up staying until almost 2:30. I know I say this every year but this place is so wonderful - we were there from 10am until 2:30pm riding rides and we bought lunch there and had to buy extra water because ours ran out and total we spent about $35. The best part aside from the low prices is that it is run by the Green Bay park and rec dept so it is very well maintained and staffed by perfectly normal high school and college kids unlike your average fair or midway rides.
This year Alex is finally tall enough to ride the bumper cars! He loved it, he kept saying over and over that it was "a blast!".
Maya is old enough now to go down the gunny sack slide with a grownup. She loved it and giggled so hard every time we went over one of the humps.
Alex is starting to out grow the kiddie rides though, I could tell he was a little bored on some of them. He was willing to go on the ferris wheel with me but by the time he decided the line was so long and not in the shade at all and he decided it was more worth it to stand in line for the bumper cars again.
Next year they are adding a roller coaster! We are so excited!
Later that day we got together was some great friends and swam in the pool, cooked out and had a nice long visit. I can't believe I was so lazy and did not even take one picture of the kids together!

Travel day - thursday July 15th

Left the cabin around 9am. Bit of a rough trips but the trip from Minocqua to Green Bay usually is for some reason. The kids expect it to be "short" since I say it's much shorter than our drive from home to the cabin but then about an hour into it they start to fall apart because they think we should be here.
We got here just a few minutes before Ben and Chewy, ran errands and cleaned up the pool so we could swim!
Everyone took long baths before bed, we'd been swimming so much I kind of lost track of when their last "real" baths were!

Wednesday July 14th

We had been hearing rumors for a day or so about storms and heavy rain all day on wednesday. So in the morning while it was still clear we took Abby (Matt and Amy's dog) and the kids and used up some energy on the Bearskin trail - the trailhead is only a little ways down the road. Alex, Amy and Abby went several miles. Maya must have walked over a mile herself. I made her turn around before everyone else because I knew I was going to end up carrying her part way back and I had left the sling in the car. We hunted for wild raspberries and blueberries and picked flowers and jogged.
The air was very strange and heavy and felt still but you could hear the wind roaring in the tops of the trees. Storms were blowing in while we were making lunch and the weather radio was blinking red and warning of all sorts of nastiness coming from the east. Thankfully all we ended up with was some heavy rain and minor thunder and lightening. You could hear the bulk of it going to our south.
We took nice long naps and snuggled and read extra time, then got out the legos and coloring books to play away the afternoon.
We baked cookies and made a good supper. The kids cleaned up their toys while I washed the dishes and then they helped dry all the dishes - who knew they would be that into drying dishes! We started to get out some games but the sun came out and we had to take advantage and spend some time on the dock in the sun for the first time that day. It was already around 7pm so I told Alex we would just go down for about half and hour and come up to bed......
Well..................it was so beautiful they wanted to swim and then the neighbors came out swimming so we went down and joined them, then some other neighbors with kids were just arriving and they all came out too and the sun was setting and the moon was rising and there was beer in the boathouse fridge and then my dad got there and another neighbor came out to visit and we stayed down much longer than half an hour!

Tuesday July 13th

Into town for dog food, new coloring books from the dollar store, new shoes from the clearance table at Andy's bike shop, playground fun at Torpy park, hours and hours of swimming and floating, walking the dog, more evening swimming and ended the day watching the eagle swoop down over Knust's boathouse looking for fish.

Monday July 12th

I made a big breakfast this morning and the kids ate a ton. Then we went in to the library for new books and the natural food store. Just as we were getting home Amy got here from Marquette. After lunch Maya napped and Amy and Alex went down to the lake. Maya and I joined them after nap and we played all afternoon with the neighbors until supper time. After supper it was so nice we came back down to the water and read books and swam some more until after 8. Popcorn and bed soon followed!