vacation 2012 {on the water}

I'm finally catching up on vacation pictures, about one month later.

Every other year our summer vacation is spent in Michigan, with all of Dave's family.

We made the 18 hour drive straight through, only stopping for throw up, and feeding children.

We've taken our kids on lots of long trips in the car.  Last year we drove 18 hours to Destin, Fl.  And never before have either of them gotten car sick.  But for some reason, this trip, we found out they both get car sick.  3 stops, and a round of Dramamine later (all in our first 3 hours), we were smooth sailing the rest of the trip.

And sweet Gavin, he was next to perfect.  Silent for 99.9% of the drive.  I think he's going to be an overachiever.

We made it to the lake, got settled in to the third floor room.

Gavin's little crib fit perfectly into the big walk-in closet.  So with the door shut and his white noise on, he slept like a charm the whole week.

Our vacation consisted of mostly living in a swim suit for 6 days, no makeup, no blow-dryers or straightners on my part.  It's definitely my kind of vacation.

We logged a whole lot of hours on this lake.

Kayaking

Jet Skiing

Lots of tubing

 Dave got to try out the helmet cam.

This little guy got quite brave on the tube.

First it was no hands.

And then on his knees.

And Taylor graduated from the tube that's virtually impossible to fall off of (the big red one in the pictures) to this tube, all by herself.

We had one day of rain and then a few other showers/storms at times that came and went.

 

And this sweet boy had a grand ole time just sitting and watching everyone.

I'm so glad he wasn't crawling yet this week (he decided to start the day after we left the lake), because it would have been a lot harder to keep him confined and happy if so.

(maybe someday you won't have yucky gunky red eyes all the time - it's either tear duct issues or allergies, it's still not certain)

We decided it was time to try Taylor on skis.

 I didn't get any pictures once we started moving because I was too nervous to have something at my face.  She didn't get all the way up, but definitely got a good start.  It's the one thing we wished we could have spent more time doing.  But when you have 7 kids all wanting to do different things, it's hard to spend too much time teaching one of them for too long.

And of course the skiing stud got up for just a bit too.  I beg and beg him to ski because it's so fun to watch him.  He usually says no and complains he's too old, and that it's not that fun, and it's too much work.

But he did it for me.

Stay tuned for more of our vacation.