Weekend in Traverse City

Four adults and two children in car seats along with lots of luggage packed into a Rendezvous...that was the scene Friday morning as Cory, Joshua and I headed up to Traverse City for the weekend with Shawn, Erin and Owen. We arrived around noon after hitting an 45 minute emergency detour on 131 (a tanker truck had tipped over in the median earlier that morning and was leaking ethanol). We spent the afternoon walking around downtown shopping in all the neat little shops and then preceded to the hotel to all take a nap (adults included)! Dinner and sitting in the hot tub concluded our first day. Then came the worst part of our vacation...Joshua has never slept in our room, nor has he spent the night in his pack-n-play so this combined with a new environment made for a very crappy nights sleep for all of us! It really bites when your toddler wakes up at 4 am and peeks over the side of his pack-n-play, sees you and starts to giggle and thinks it's time to get up and play!!! Saturday morning we headed to some of the Cherry Festival activities going on around town and walked throug the zoo in Clinch Park. Our poor little sleeper fell fast asleep in his stroller for a 45 minute nap as we walked around. We ate lunch and hit the outlet mall on our way out of town. With two overly tired children we piled back in the car for a two hour ride home. We thought both kids would sleep on the way home, but only Owen decided to do this, Joshua never closed his eyes! How in the world can a kid who slept so poorly the night before and only took a 45 minute nap stay awake for a 2 hour car ride?!?!?! As Shawn predicted on the way up to Traverse City, "you all know we are going to go home from this vacation more tired than we left" and boy was he right!!!

Packed in!
Taking a break from the detour at a park.
Eating a snowcone at the Cherry Festival
Watching Oscar the black bear.
Joshua wants to pet the coyote at the zoo.