The Kole Chronicles: Kole Family Vacation 2010

This year marks the second year that we’ve taken a week long family vacation over the 4th of July up in Ludington at Scott’s parent’s cottage.

We started our vacation on Friday the 2nd - we were all packed and ready to head up to the cottage right when I got out of work.

Grandma and Grandpa were up there with us from Fri-Monday and then Gran and Grandma came up the next Friday morning and Grandpa came up on Friday evening….

Once we got there on Friday, just hung out and relaxed and the kiddos took a bath and got used to the cottage…

then on Saturday, Owen and Sydney played out on the deck

went fishing, fishing and oh yeah, did I mention fishing? Owen had this cute little Fisher Price fishing pole to play with and he would dip it in the dirt in the worm container and fling it out into the water. He was entertained for hours doing this

Here he is carrying the little pole and a container of worms – notice he is still in his jammies (no time to get dressed in the morning when there is fishing to do!) During his nap that afternoon, he slept almost 3 and a half hours! All that sunshine wore him right out!! After his nap, we headed out to the Dokter’s annual 4^th of July party and had a great time! Here’s a pic grandma took of herself and Owen @ the party…

On Sunday, we decided to take Owen to the parade…We went last year and he loved it so we were hoping for the same fun time this year…

Grandma and Grandpa watched Sydney, cuz we thought it might be a little hot and loud for her. Owen was so excited for the parade to start, he could hardly stand it! He whispers when he gets really excited, check out this video!

Once the parade started it was another story though! he was TERRIFIED. He was literally shaking and kept saying “ride in mommy’s car, ride in mommy’s car” because he just wanted to leave. After about 15 minutes we decided we had tortured him enough, so we decided to head to the state park to walk around and check out the dam. Owen had a lot more fun there!

The rest of the week was spent fishing some more, eating ice cream from the House of Flavors (someone loves their blue moon!),at first he just sat with it and wouldn’t eat it, I think he was amazed it was all his! then he wouldn’t eat it with his spoon, he would only eat it with his fingers for some reason….

we also made strawberry jam

went on lots of walks, went shopping downtown, played at the playground,

chewed on some toys…

ate lunch on the deck…

baked a birthday cake in celebration of someone’s 2^nd birthday (more on that in another post) (notice the stance here and the attire? crocs, diaper and a mickey shirt…now that’s cottage livin’ !) :)

went to the children’s museum (someone refused to do anything other than ride in this truck)… We went for lunch downtown, ran through the sprinkler, went to the beach (here’s syd in her getup for her first trip to the beach, she looks a little uneasy, but let me assure you, she had a great time! she fell asleep in the pontoon on the way there and back!)

you can kinda see her little ruffle-butt bikini in this pic…. Owen and papa enjoying some licorice (or lick-a-lish) on the way back home…

Here’s Syd at the beach another time hanging out with her baby doll…

Owen building a sand castle, papa and murph walking in the water in the background and Gran and Grandma floating in rafts way out in the water…

Owen floating and fishing with papa and gran

Syd and mama having a good time on the beach.. owen having a snack with Gran…

fishing!

we went out to eat at Barnhart’s on the way back to the cottage, and Sydney fell asleep with her hat coming off and situated in a somewhat frog-like position, it was too cute!!

the rest of our week consisted of playing on the sea doo (or the bombardier – for fun, we pronounce it redneck-like…bom-ba-deer…. :) one of the times we went out, it wouldn’t start after we lowered it, so we paddled toward shore…

… and grandpa threw us a rope to tow us in…

owen and papa also fished from the paddle boat, Owen helped grandpa drive his remote control boat…

Mr Murphy just chilled out ….

Sydney practiced her sitting skills with Gran…

We really lucked out with the weather this week, it was SUPER hot and we had mostly sunny weather though it was pretty windy for the first part of the week…but since it was so warm and humid, someone’s hair was WILD…

Here are some other random occurrences of the week:

owen got to sleep on a cot instead of his pack n play (he was getting to big for it and didn’t sleep well in it)
After he got comfortable with it after the second day or so, he would just let himself out of his room in the morning and after naptime, which kind of happened as an evolution – as at first when he started sleeping on the cot he’d still call for us when he woke up for a couple of days, then once he realized he could just get out on his own, he did! So scott did what any other parent would do :) , he decided to get a rope from the garage and tie his bedroom door shut by tying it to the doorknob to the closet doorknob in the hallway…during owen’s nap, scott showed me his solution to the problem and said “so, how do you like my parenting skills?” nice. all i have to say! :)
owen was eating goldfish crackers in the living room and scott and I were around the corner in the kitchen – all of a sudden owen runs in and says baby Sydney, fishy…I knew immediately what he had done – and sure enough, when I got in there she had a little goldfish tail sticking out of her mouth and was gnawing away at it, it was kinda broken up but I managed to get most of it fished (haha) out of her mouth! good thing those dissolve quick! little stinker owen has never tried to do anything like that before and we had a discussion about how baby sydney only eats milky!
Owen was such a good little helper and listener most of our vacation. Once time he and scott were outside and scott needed to get something so he told owen to sit on the little picnic table up on the deck and wait, I could see him from inside and there he said patiently with his hands folded in front of him waiting for his papa to come back!
scott and I both felt like owen seemed to have grown up even since we started vacation. When we were talking about it one night, we wondered if it was just because we were spending so much more time with him and really realized everything more than just during the little time we usually get to spend with him on evening or weekends or if he was really growing up that fast?!
Owen sent his froggy as an SOS…by the end of our vacation, Owen was having having a hard time falling asleep and would cry like crazy sobbing for mama when he had to go down…I would go in there and lay with him forever and he just wouldn’t fall asleep, we figured he was just getting homesick and needed his own bed, cuz it just kept getting worse and worse with each day, and Owen is usually one to EASILY go to bed (we decided to go home a day early - gran came up on Friday morning to spend the day and night and she took Owen, Syd, and me home Saturday afternoon). Anyway, during his nap on Saturday he would NOT go to bed, so I told him I was not going to lay with him anymore and that he couldn’t cry because he needed to go to sleep so he could go home. We were all on the deck enjoying a nice fish fry (er, bake) with some of the yummy fishies (or fish in non-kid speak) the guys caught, scott went inside to get something and came back out and asked if I had taken owen’s frog away from him – I said no (would never take that prized possession away from that little guy, would be too torturous) I asked why…he said well, because its in the hallway outside of his door! apparently he had shoved it under the door in an SOS attempt to get us to go in there, cuz he had poopy buns and wanted us to change him, but mama had told him he needed to go to bed and there wasn’t any crying allowed! what a little problem solver!!