Door County Weekend

On Friday we grabbed the kids from school and headed north with our friends Lucho and Sarah, and their kids Stephen, Andrew, and Isabella aka Lucy and Elaine's extra brothers and sister. We stopped at a hotel in Green Bay where we spent the night but not before spending several quality hours in the pool. My kids think every time we get in the car, we are heading to a pool so we try to fulfill that wish as much as possible. The whole 4-hour trip, Elaine kept saying, "Are we getting to the pool? Because I brought my floaties and my goggles," which doesn't sound that hilarious when you read it, but when you hear it in her 3-year-old chainsmoker voice it is, so we kept repeating it all weekend. Stephen had broken his toe and was on crutches/wheelchair, but the other kids had a great time in the pool.

After they finally got out and showered off, the adults decided to talk, the boys decided to watch TV, Lucy and Isabella were reading American Girl books, and Elaine got out the Gideon Bible to read to Catty. I asked her, "Are you going to read your favorite verse: 'When I am afraid, I will trust in You?'" She said, "No, I'm going to read this one to her: 'When I am at school, my parents come and pick me up.'" I'm assuming that one's in the unauthorized version. And speaking of Gideon Bibles, I found out at Barry Trowbridge's funeral, that his dad worked for the Gideons and whenever Barry stayed in a hotel, he would take the Bible out of the drawer and put it on top of the nightstand, in hopes that someone would pick it up and read it. So we have started doing that too.

In the morning, we headed up the rest of the way to Door County. First we stopped at Dairy View, which sells ice cream (duh) and pizza, and you can find out all sorts of fun facts about cows, plus get to see them being milked.

Here are Stephen, Lucho, Lucy, and Isabella outside...

I included this picture of Sarah and Andrew because I think it's a cute mother/son moment. I'm actually on the side, chatting with her, but I cropped myself out because for whatever reason my teeth look frighteningly large. Now I wonder if they truly are that large and that's something I've missed noticing all my life and no one has remarked on it out of kindness and/or fear. Hmmm. Always good to find something new to be paranoid about, I guess. But here are Andrew and Sarah...


Here are all the kids by the model of Cookie the Cow...


The rest of the weekend we did the usual Door County things--ate, talked, visited Peninsula Park, ate, went to an apple orchard w/ hay maze/playground, ate, played games, ate, etc. etc. We didn't even do much picture taking--as you can see by the clothes, all of these were taken on the same day. I love this one of daddies and daughters...


It's not often that you can find two whole families where everybody loves everybody else and gets along great. Lucho said, "Isn't it great how our kids never fight together!" We were all sad when they left for home on Sunday afternoon, and Elaine cried, but she snapped out of it when we said we'd go for ice cream before they left (regardless of the fact that we'd just finished a huge brunch). We went back on Monday morning. We're all planning to come back for a much longer time next summer.

Here we are together (do my teeth look overly prominent?)...


We're very thankful for a safe trip, a happy time, and such good friends!