First Day of School Outing!

This year's first day of school was spent with a little math, and a lot of lake, sand, and water!

We have a long-standing tradition that the first day of school deserves an outing or field trip of some sort, so this year we went to Headlands Beach State Park on Lake Erie.  It was a hot summer Monday at the end of August, so it was the perfect choice.  Who wants to be inside on a gorgeous summer day anyway?

A beautiful setting for the afternoon.

Building sand castles.

A walk, and sometimes run, down the beach.

And lots of water time!

It was hard to get LittleJ out of the water!

Ahhhhhh.... {big smile, happy sigh}

A wonderful day at the lake, and wonderful start to our new school year.

Lake Michigan, How we love you!

This summer we took a couple mini-trips, but we also included our regular trip to Lake Michigan.  

When we head to the lake, we go to Warren Dunes State Park.  They have nice campground facilities and great sand dunes.    

This year, however, we were setting up our campsite in the rain.  Not so nice, but we managed.  We set up expecting to get more rain than we knew our tents would like, so that's the reason for the tarps.

Both tents received the tarp treatment by those of us who aren't afraid of a little rain,
while some (who shall remain nameless) chose to stay dry.  

It wasn't raining hard, but enough to make things wet and dreary.

OK, so what's to love about Lake Michigan?

Well, once the rain had passed and we accepted the cooler than normal temperatures, we enjoyed the things we came here for.

The camping and family bonding time.

The beach, the water, the sunshine, the relaxing.....ahhhh.

The sand dunes.

We were very glad it warmed up enough to enjoy the dunes and the beach.  The water though, was absolutely freezing, so not a lot of swimming happened.  

We did collect some great rocks for next year's wedding reception though!  WaHOOO!