July 6 - Ice cream, Fire Truck and Parks.

Nels helped Jon with moving and stacking wood in the morning.  I got to write in my journal for a bit. The kids colored, did sudoku and a little kindle time.  Jessica (Jon's daughter) fixed Kira's hair in two french braids.  Adorable!

After lunch, we went to see Grandma and Grandpa's camper at the campground.

We played banagrams.

Then we went to Wilson's for ice cream!!!  See how thrilled Sofie is...that's how I felt too!

I got caramel fudge brownie.  Two kids got oreo and two kids got strawberry.  Everyone loved it, especially the surprise jelly bean at the bottom of the cone.

Noah found his jelly bean.  😀

Here's me and Nels with our ice cream.

Then we walked over to the playground next door.  Grandpa walked with the boys and Grandma walked with the girls.

Donna said something like, "suck in your belly."  And Sofie thought she was supposed to show her belly.  😂

Jessica's boyfriend Max is a firefighter.  So he gave us a tour of the fire station and fire trucks.  So cool!  The kids got to sit in the seat and climb the ladder on the top of the truck.

They tried on the hat...

And listened intently as Max explained everything.

At one point, Max emptied some water out of the truck and created some great puddles for the kids to jump in.

I tried to get some action shots.

Noah was just so happy jumping in the puddles!!

There's Bob and Donna at the top of the truck.

And there's Isak.

I thought this huge yellow hose was cool.  Sofie and Kira did not want to take a picture with it.

After the tour, our little family got pizza from Door County Pizza Factory.  The kids played on the playground for a long time while we waited for the pizza.

Then we ate the pizza at the cottage and put the kids to bed!

July 5th - Boat Day

We were up and going around 7:30 a.m.  Jon -first cousin to Nels's dad- took us on his boat around 10:30 a.m.  It was awesome .  Everyone loved it.  

Before we went on the boat, we waited on the shore for a few minutes.  The kids loved throwing rocks.

Kira liked collecting rocks.

Nels got exactly twenty seconds to sit peacefully.  😀

Noah was so cute.  He actually liked the boat and kept saying, "fast boat."

Sofie, of course, loved it.

This picture reminds me, to get Noah on the boat I bribed him with a sucker.  So all the kids got a sucker at the beginning.

I fixed Kira's hair.  I think it's cute.

Isak boy loved every minute.  

Cousin Jon let each kid have a turn driving.  Isak went first.

Do you see that cool cube window house on the cliffs?

Kira drove second.

Sofie went third.  She was so proud of herself for going fast!

Nels's mom and dad came with us.

Noah drove the boat last with the help of his dad.

It was a lot of fun and I'm glad we got to do it together.

We bought sandwiches, Cheetos and bubble gum at the Pioneer Store.  I tried to teach Isak and Kira how to blow bubbles with the gum.  They didn't like the bubble gum.  But they were impressed with my bubble blowing skills.  😀

Then we relaxed at the cottage for an hour or so.  Then we played at Sandy Beach Bay.  The water was higher than normal so sadly there wasn't much beach.  But grandma swam with Isak and Kira in the water.  Sofie got in the water a little bit.  Then they dug in the patch of sand that was available.  Nels held Noah in the water for a while.  Isak and Grandma had a little water squirt gun fight.  I only took one picture because I was busy!

We cleaned up from the beach and in the parking lot we saw a huge turtle!
We had brauts for dinner.  We bought some ice cream from the Pioneer Store.  We also rented a movie from the store.  We popped popcorn and watched Mary Poppins Returns.  We put kids to bed as they needed.  Isak stayed up for the whole movie!  We were all in bed by 11 p.m.

Fourth of July

We decided to start our vacation early.  On the fourth of July, we spent six hours packing and cleaning. Nels deep cleaned the van.  We finally left around 1 p.m.  The kids immediately fell asleep! So we drove until they woke up.  We ate lunch at a Wendy's around 3:30 p.m.  Here's our cute kids in their red, white and blue outfits.  

Noah was the only one that got a new shirt this year.  I saw it at Walmart and thought it was so cute.  Thankfully, he likes it and was happy to wear it.

Nels and I even wore the right colors.

We shared a frosty.  Only three heads at a time.  haha.

We arrived at Door County at 6:45 p.m.  About fifteen minutes before we got there, Sofie threw up.  But it was just from car sickness and luckily I caught it in our emergency throw up bowl.  She was fine once she got out of the car.

We ate some dinner with Nels's parents at the cottage (they were spending the a few weeks in Door County).  Then we went to see the fireworks.  So fun!!  We brought the kids camping chairs.  And they thought that was fun to just sit in their chairs.  haha!

Kira loves her grandma.

And Isak loves his grandpa.

Noah snuggled with me for a minute.

Once it got dark, the fireworks shot up over the lake. Surprisingly, Noah loved it and kept saying, "more fireworks!'

It was great to see it through the eyes of a child--magical.

We got everyone to bed and asleep by 11:30 p.m.
Noah and Isak slept in the sailboat room.  Kira and Sofie shared the pink room on the opposite end of the cottage.  Nels and I slept on the double bed in the middle room.  No more pack and plays.  Sniff, sniff.  Babies are growing up.