Road Trip 2007, part trois

Oh man, I've fallen off the blogging bandwagon for a bit here. Been too busy whooping it up and driving all over creation...

My stay in Grand Rapids with Anne and Jean was awesome, of course! The first day I was there, I headed to Jean's house and hung out with her and her kiddies - seriously about the cutest kids you've ever seen. We had lunch, where I was grilled by Jean's 6 year old son, Sam, about what I was going to eat on my sandwich so he could copy it - I'm THAT cool! - and played all kinds of fun things downstairs. Basketball, colouring with Alina, who's three, jumping rope, tickle fights, lots of spinny rides ("Just one more! Pleeease???")... TOTALLY fun!

I of course had my camera out and so decided to show Sam how to take photos. It turned into a photo shoot extraordinaire, with exclamations of, "AWESOOOOME!" and "YOU LOOK LIKE A MOVIE STAR!" after every photo. The random photo of Anne's ear I think is my favourite.

That afternoon, Anne and I went for a pedicure and a wee shopping spree, and can I just say, she is the best shopper EVER. She finds deals on cute stuff like nobody's business. She is my hero! I got a whole load of stuff for SO CHEAP. Sah-weet!

Wednesday was beach day. What a production! It was the most glorious beach day I've had in quite some time, let me tell you. Anne made a PIE for the day, THAT'S how fantastic it was. Well, I kinda helped to make the pie. And kinda screwed it up. Nothing a sieve full of blueberries, flour, and brown sugar can't fix, I tells ya. Heh. Heh. Oh man, I'm such a dork. It still tasted great... a little extra sugar never hurt anyone!

Anne has friends who have access to a private beach on Lake Michigan, so we pretended to be residents and took our beach umbrellas, chairs, cooler full of yummies, and all things beach related down the stairs to claim our very own piece of heaven. White sand, blue water, a lake so big it reminds you of the ocean, yet without any pesky shells or barnacles to cut your feet or salty water to make you all... er... salty. And the water was WARM! (Yes, Anne and Jean, it was WARM! ;-) ) We sunned, we slept, we swam, all afternoon long. Gloriousness, I tell you. Sheer gloriousness.

We grabbed pizza in town at a little diner and headed home for some more serious hanging out. After a lazy morning Thursday, I was off to tootle my way down to Cincinnati...