Stuff, mostly Traverse City

So,  we have had such an eventful last little while in our family.  Here are some assorted pictures, in no particular order, to give you an idea of what we have been up to.  In short, last week, we went to Traverse City, Michigan, and spent Thursday-Saturday up there. Then, this last Thursday, Stacey and I went on a cruise (as part of my mother's birthday gifts to Stacey, she got us this cruise).  So, here are some pictures of all this:

his is Stacey and the kids in front of the General Store up by a lighthouse up by Traverse City.  It was a pleasant little General Store.  We bought taffy, which you can see in Jacob's hand

Up by Traverse City there are some dunes, the Sleeping Bear Dunes.  They were pretty fun to play on. In climbing up them, Jacob was not a big fan of climbing up, but he loved going down.  When asked if he liked the dunes, he was a little conflicted.  But, if you split the quesiton, and asked if he liked going up, he would say emphatically, "No".  If you asked if he liked going down, he would yell, "Yes".  So, he likes the easy parts of things.  He takes after his father.

Here I am jumping into the sand on the dune.  It took a long time to fall.  That means either it was a long drop, or I fell very slowly (hat tip, Lewis Carroll).

On the way up to Traverse City, we stopped at a little zoo.  It was a small little zoo, but the perfect size to break up the trip into two pleasantly little segments, instead of one long drive.  Here is R and Stacey in a little car at the zoo.

Here are J and R rolling around in the sand at the dunes.

Here is R trying to touch a tortoise at the zoo.  It would have been so easy, if the tortoise had not been so darned fast.

Traverse City had a very pleasant place to get ice cream called Moomers.  It was very good ice cream, not too, too expensive, and it was adjacent to a dairy farm, where presumably the milk comes from.  They have an observation deck with picnic tables so you can eat your ice cream and watch the cows at the same time.  It was very pleasant, until, by watching the cows, you notice incidence of liquid coming from the cows that is not milk.

Here is Stacey and I on the cruise.  It was a large boat (can hold about 1500 passengers) that just goes up and down the Detroit River.  They have music, you eat dinner, you drink, and you watch the old people try to navigate the slightly tilted dance floor with a few glasses of liquor in them.  It was a delightful evening.  I would recommend it.

Here is the side of our boat, the Detroit Princes.  If you look right under the "E" in Princess, you can see Stacey.

Here is J, climbing up the Dunes.  It was very funny to watch him and R play around on them.

This is where we had dinner Friday night in Traverse City.  The sign did not lie, it was good food.  However, it did prompt me to wonder, at what point does a restaurant owner just throw up his arms and say, "our new marketing strategy is to paint our building an ugly pink."

We went up to a lighthouse that is about a half hour from Traverse City.  It was very pleasant.  This is our family up in the top of it.  You cant really see out, but, if you can guess from our being inside a lighthouse, outside the glass is water.

Here is Stacey, playing on the dune.