Special Friends

Our friends Bryan and Cindy along with their kids Courtney and Caleb came to visit us for a few days. They were our neighbors in Ripon and moved about 2 years before we did. We hadn't seen each other in about 3 years. It was incredibly wonderful to catch up with them, relive fun memories, and spend really great time together on some outings. To add to the party, our friends Marc and Lynn along with their kids Kaitlyn and Michael from Ripon were in Michigan at the same time! These pictures aren't in any great order, but represent some of the fun we had. Of course, we had great laughs over some good food! We also went on a sand dune ride, saw the sunset over Lake Michigan, went go-carting, hit the Blanford Nature Center, and toured the Calvin campus. We are all exhausted after staying up late and getting up early, but we wouldn't trade those hours to talk and laugh for anything! What a great joy it was to visit with such special friends!

Wedding Time

We were delighted to be able to attend the wedding of Ben and Jane (Ben goes to seminary with Matt) on Saturday. It was a beautiful day and we wish our friends God's richest blessings on their new life together.

It was fun to get dressed up for such a special occasion.

Anna got to wear a special locket her Papi gave her on her first Valentine's Day. She was quite thrilled with it!

A Senior Moment

Matt, Anna, and I were invited to join the senior group from our church at their outing this evening. One couple graciously opened their home to us. They have a beautiful cottage on Lake Michigan in Holland. The weather, the company, and the food were all wonderful.

Anna found someone to go down a long set of steep steps to the beach before dinner.


After dinner, we sang a few songs. Anna was very helpful to Matt while he was trying to accompany our singing on his guitar. She talked Papi into going back down to the beach for a little while before we went home. We had a great evening!

Camping

It's time to catch up on our activities! A couple of weeks ago we took a few days off and went camping. After packing clothes, finding all our camping gear and getting together some food, we headed to Hoffmaster State Park. The weather was great, the campground was really nice, and we had a great time. Anna was so excited to go camping and we were really impressed with how well she did. We decided we would like to be a camping family!

Anna relaxing in the tent.



Overall, we didn't spend all that much time on the beach, but we sure had fun while we were there. (Based on all the sand that came home with us in our stuff and Anna's hair, though, you'd think we never left the beach!)

Matt built an island for his sand castle.

We did a few meals over the fire.


Anna has been asking to help us with everything lately! Really nice--most of the time.


A huge thunderstorm early Wednesday morning gave us good reason to leave a little early. Thankfully, Matt had looked at weather reports before we left and was expecting it. We had most of our stuff in the car already, so when we got up we just had a wet tent to pack up. Anna was pretty sad to leave, but we told her we'd try to get out another time this summer and go camping again!

Weekend Celebrations

We had lots to celebrate this weekend. Matt had his 40th birthday Friday the 3rd. We had a wonderful day together.



Anna is always so helpful with opening presents. After we did that, we headed out for a special breakfast at one of our favorite morning spots. We headed out to Grandma at the Lake in the late afternoon for more celebrating. Matt got a card with some cash in it. As soon as Matt opened the card, Anna snatched the money out! She knows what's important!

After going out for supper, we had a special birthday dessert at Grandma's house.


We celebrated David and Jolynn's 8th anniversary, too!

They did fireworks that night over the lake. We took the fishing boat out to enjoy them. Since it gets dark so late here, Anna was getting pretty tired before we even set out. She ended falling asleep about 5 minutes before the fireworks started and slept through the whole show.

We slept overnight at the lake so that we could have another special birthday breakfast. Grandma's birthday is today. Anna had fun helping decorating the cake. (We actually ate some of the cake last night after fireworks, but saved the candle-lighting and birthday singing until this morning.)




This afternoon we went to a 4th of July parade in East Grand Rapids. It was a nice parade, but Anna didn't really get to watch too much of it. She was too busy picking up tons of candy!

If we're not too tired tonight, we may head back to East GR to watch fireworks over Reed's Lake. What a wonderful time we've had celebrating David's and Jolynn's anniversary, and birthdays for Matt, Grandma and our great country!