Rollins Family vacation 2011

Growing up my family summer vacations always involved camping and/or a trip to Portland to visit our cousins. Both of which we loved and looked forward to every year. Josh's family though was big into going places and seeing things like historical sites. Unfortunately, neither camping or site seeing is big on my excitement list these days. Don't get me wrong, I love beautiful scenery, but driving for hours just to see some old buildings is not my kind of seeing things. My husband knows this about me and after dragging me all over Philadelphia in the freezing cold two years ago I think he figured a Sally family vacation was in order.

So, what is a Sally vacation? Um, pretty much the beach. It's beautiful to look at. It's relaxing. and the kids love it. You pretty much can't go wrong. So we hopped in the car and took a little 2 1/2 hour drive to Lake Michigan.

On Monday evening after we checked into our hotel we decided to scope out the beach and let the kids run around for a while. The water was way too cold for me to set foot in, but it didn't stop the kids. By the way, these pictures were all taken with Josh's phone since mine is still getting fixed. His phone apparently has a much better camera than mine!


The next morning we discovered that the hotel did not in fact offer a free continental breakfast like we thought. (Since when does Holiday Inn not have a plate of waffles for you to eat in the morning?) So we ended up at the golden arches for hot cakes, which I was not thrilled about, but the kids were in heaven.


After breakfast we headed off for the main event of our little vacation which was a day at Michigan's Adventure. It was a fun little amusement park/ water park that was very reasonably priced for that sort of thing. The kids had an absolute blast. James was game for any ride that he was tall enough for and can't wait to be tall enough for the other ones. Macy was seriously ticked that she couldn't ride the big rides and Samm didn't want to ride anything but the kiddy rides. Josh made her go on one big roller coaster and all we heard about for two days after was how freaky it was. And of course these are the only two pictures we got of our entire day there.


This little car ride and the carousel were the only two things I was allowed to ride and even then there was a big sign strongly cautioning that I didn't. Good thing I didn't go into labor from all the excitement!


Wednesday was supposed to be my big relaxing day at the beach, but when we left the hotel it was so cold and windy that we decided to stop and buy kites just so we would have something to do at the beach since swimming was definitely out.



The girls were pretty excited about flying kites, but it was so windy that James refused because he was worried that he would blow away. Instead he buried his feet in the sand.


After the five minutes of kite flying excitement was over Mom got to have a turn.


Then I bundled up in a blanket while the kids played on the playground and cried because sand was blowing in their eyes.


After 10 minutes Josh and I were done with the beach so we gave the kids the option of staying and having sand in their eyes or driving back home where the weather was unusually hot and going to to lake by our house. They had a little sibling huddle to talk it over.

And in the end they decided to go back home where they would actually be able to get in the water. Josh and I were very happy about their decision, but I was a little depressed at how ugly our beach suddenly seemed. Oh well. The kids were happy, Josh was with us, and we had a fantastic time!