Grandpa Abbott's Birthday and Fireworks

Grandpa Abbott's birthday was June 25th, so after I got home from work and we got showered and packed we headed up north to celebrate. Scott had brought Cara up for a visit a couple of days earlier and I couldn't wait to get there to get a huge hug and kiss from her! Aunt Cyndi and Cara were busy decorating the house when we got there!

Cara waiting for dinner
Grandpa and his cards and presents
Time for cake and ice cream, yummy!
Make a wish Grandpa! Happy 65th!!
Later in the evening we had the family gathered outside for a fireworks show. Our Fort Wayne besties (Chris, Amy and Owen) came over to share in the fun! We wanted to celebrate Grandpa and have a fireworks show for Cyndi since she would be leaving right before the 4th of July!
Owen and Cara
Fireworks
Now Cara is wearing Owen's hat and they are enjoying the show

What a great evening with family and friends! Hope Grandpa had a wonderful 65th birthday!!

Gymnastics!

Cara started gymnastics this summer! So far she LOVES it! It is much more active than ballet classes which she seems to love!

Miss Heather helping her on the balance beam
Stretching on the mat
Trampoline fun!

Last day at Silver Lake and Father's Day!

Our final day for our little beach vacation started with heading to Lake Michigan for more beach time! We found a parking lot right by the lighthouse, although we had to hike yet another sand dune to get to the beach from there!


Scott and Cara immediately headed for the water, brrrr......super cold!
Grandpa, Scott and Cara building a sand castle
Grandma, Grandpa and Cara creating
Cara's little lake!
The wind started to pick up and it was chilly, so Daddy and Cara snuggled under a beach towel while we waited for Grandpa and Aunt Cyndi who went to climb up the lighthouse

Grandpa and Aunt Cyndi on top of the lighthouse
This is the view from our room. We had a walkout 1st floor room looking right into the beautiful Silver Lake and Sand Dunes!

Our view directly from our room
Kind of hard to see but this is the view from the rooftop pool
And the rooftop jacuzzi

So we packed up the cars and walked to some souvenir shops and found this fun go cart track! Everyone was ready to have some more fun! Cara chose Aunt Cyndi to be her driver!
In this picture you can see Aunt Cyndi with Cara, Mommy, Daddy and Grandpa!

They giggled the whole time!

The happy drivers after our laps! So much fun!!
And back to our favorite ice cream place for one last treat before our long drives home. What a fun Father's Day for Grandpa and Daddy!

We had a great little mini vacation! The weather was gorgeous, no rain, low humidity, and not too hot! The environment was super fun, so much to do. We could have easily stayed here a whole week and never get bored. And it was great to spend time with Aunt Cyndi before she heads back to Italy!

Silver Lake Day 3

Day 3 started with me planning a family photo session on the dunes. We had packed our good camera and tripod to try to take some good photos with the gorgeous natural scenery.


Our attempts at family pictures didn't go so great. It was very windy=hair in the face and the sand kept blowing up too, plus it was VERY sunny which made it hard not to squint

So after we attempted these for a while we stopped by Jack's house. Last year Jack took over Grandma and Grandpa Abbott's Chrysler 300 (in bad disrepair) in exchange for paint work on a couple of Grandpa A's cars. Jack owns a body shop near Grandma and Grandpa Abbott's house. And you would not believe it but there we were, hours away from home, in a convenience store/pizza shop and we ran into Jack. We offered to take us out on the dunes in his jeep if we wanted. So the next day we stopped by and took him up on his offer!
In his jeep on the dunes, miles and miles of sand and huge hills, little hills and pits of water all around
Cara and I enjoying our ride

Cara and Jack after the ride

We got back to the hotel for a snack and time to suit up and hop in a boat. We rented a pontoon for the afternoon to roam around the lake and hit the shores at the bottom of the sand dunes

Boating....
All the boating and swimming wore Cara out. She crawled on the back seat with Grandma and took a little rest while we cruised around the lake

We met Jack and his wife for dinner that night to thank them for taking us out on the dunes. Then after dinner we went exploring and found Lake Michigan!

Cara checking out the water, which was VERY COLD!
Grandma, Grandpa and Cara
Posing by the Sabel Point Lighthouse on Lake Michigan
Daddy and Cara walking down the beach

and finally back at the resort, we got ice cream cones and took them down to the waterfront to enjoy the sun setting! Another fun filled day has come and gone!

Beach vacation day 2

The next day we had a mission in mind, find the beach!! We had sand and waterfront at our hotel but not a real beach to walk into the water. So off we went...

And talked to the nice Park Ranger who talked about water beyond the dunes, so we thought we would walk up and check it out

We walked up to find miles and miles of sand dunes and WAY on the other side was lake Michigan, or down a few dunes was the other side of silver lake

Cara made a sand angel (so cute that she thought of it on her own)

Standing with Silver Lake in the background and the largest building you can see in the middle of the picture is our hotel

Walking and walking these huge dunes


We finally ended our dune walking and went to the State park campground beach on Silver Lake for an afternoon swim. No pictures of the adventure, must have left the camera in the car


We walked across the street from our hotel to the Sands Restaurant for dinner that evening

And we arrived back at the resort to find a beautiful sunset after dinner

Cara enjoyed playing in the sand and was oblivious to the gorgeous sun setting in front of her



What a beautiful end to a really fun day!