Grand Haven, Michigan

We had a great summer vacation to Grand Haven, Michigan!  It was a perfect place for a vacation with 4 young kids! I have a feeling that more Lake Michigan trips are in our future. It really was like the ocean without the drive! We stayed at a really nice house, right by the lake. We spent a couple of days at our little beach by the house, and we spent a couple of days at the big beach in Grand Haven. We went without much of an agenda aside from the beach, but we found so much else to do and had so much fun that we stayed an extra night! Aside from going to the beach every day, we saw a minor league baseball game, rode the trolley, picked blueberries, went to the musical fountain show, went to SkyZone, shopped downtown (the kids loved the toy store!), visited a couple of local ice cream shops, found a neat playground, ate at Fricano's (local pizza) and a Japanese steakhouse, played lots of boardgames, grilled out / cooked a lot at home, and went to the Grand Haven kids' parade! I even found time to read an entire book.  Oh, and we stopped at the Albanese Candy Factory, Portillo's, and Fair Oaks Farm (just the gift shop) on the way home just to stretch out the trip! No one wanted our trip to be over!

The light show.  They do a different one every single night:

The little beach by our house which we had to ourselves sometimes, or shared with a few others a few times:

Grand Haven is famous for "Pronto Pups."  They are basically like a fried hotdog.  One local told us that they open for one day in January and the line is hours long.  I can't imagine how bitterly cold that line is!

We took a trolley tour of the city:

The kids LOVED the toy store, of course, and they each picked out a toy with their birthday money.

We found a really neat playground!

We picked blueberries, a first for our family!  We brought home a bunch to make pie!

Life does not get any better than this:

We brought games to play at our house:

Josh came SO CLOSE to catching a fly ball.  It literally bounced out of his hand.  Poor guy, he claims he was trying to protect Lucas ;)  

Lucas thought Aleah's glasses were hysterical!

Lucas was VERY PROTECTIVE of his drink!!!!

A great thing about Aleah is that if she is tired, she will find a way to go to sleep.  She didn't even ask; she just stopped playing, crawled under the blanket, and went to sleep.  She's a girl who knows what she wants!

We happened upon a parade just as it was beginning!  I joked that we were probably the only people at the parade who didn't know it was happening 5 minutes before it started!

We stopped at Albanese on the way home:

We were sad to leave our "cation" house, as Aleah called it.

Such a great trip!  So many memories!  Love our family!