The perfect end to summer

As depressing as it is to actually write it, "summer" in my eyes, is officially over because the girls have started school.

Gone are the days of sleeping in till 10....having nowhere to go and nothing to do, and just being lazy. It was wonderful, and I miss it. I miss it bad.

But, I couldn't have chosen a better way to end it. With my family. All of us together up north in St. Ignas. (minus Micah who is a workin fella now..missed you Micah!) It's like heaven on earth, my family...and I'm always alittle sick (a "good"sick) when we have to say our goodbyes. But for the little bit of time we had together, we had fun.

Chris and I and the girls arrived when others were on Mackinac Island, so we waited....








And then finally...together. We owned the pool, and any non-family who showed up hoping to swim, took one look and quickly made a u-turn.

Watching the kids lovin on each other...everyone so filled with joy, it gives me happy thoughts of this years Thanksgiving, and of "the lodge" at Christmas, where we will all get to be together again..it's my heaven. Oh how I love these people so!

And I often wonder how a man doesn't grow hair on his ankles....






Oh wait...being that it's this person explains a lot...I love you Billy!








The reason we all made this trip was to see our parents off to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island...a gift we gave them for their 50th wedding anniversary.










Forgive me all you black socks with black shoes and shorts wearers....you do know this is a fashion faux pas right? She had tourist written all over her, and I couldn't help but take a picture.

You don't see broods like this too often....and when you do, it's pretty rare that they get a long and love each other as much as we do. It's perfect.






And speaking of perfect..the very next day I watched three perfect beauties start school;










Did ya know? I have a middle schooler now;





6th grade, a whole new world...and I so much wanted to walk her in, and hold her hand and say,
"hey, I can stay with you all day if you want me to...because I really want to" but I opted to take a picture from the van instead;


(side note: I did end up chasing her in, but it was a sixth-sense-mothers-instinct sorta thing.... there was a literal SEA of kids and she somehow found me, arms wide up in the air in frustration saying "NO CLUE WHERE I AM GOING"...so I nonchalantly helped her and then slithered out like a navy seal)






There she goes, my big girl......this was two posts in one, but it all went together.....a perfect end, to a perfect beginning.

Let's go to Kentucky!

Again, we are a blessed family, to have a husband/daddy who has such a great job. On top of being able to travel with him to fun places and staying in hotels along the way, he is at the same time, accumulating points which add up to free nights.

One year we spent a whole week in Florida for free! Glorious!

He had informed me that he had 8 free nights...anywhere..I of course pushed for Florida, (because it is my very very favorite place to visit on earth) but he said "let's just spend a few nights in Kentucky!" I sorta pouted at the suggestion, but in the end, I don't know why I doubted him. We always end up having a perfect time..and he always ends up having little surprises up his sleeve.

First stop: Mammoth Cave. A bit creepy, tight spaces, heights, thought Darby might trip and roll into the depths of the cave at one point, but really exciting and beautiful.







After spending the day touring the cave and hiking the trails in the area, we made the drive to Louisville where we were very excited to see this place:



And I chose not to edit out that truck on purpose. Because there is always some sort of crazy story with our family...You see, that morning, major flooding had occurred in Louisville. Roads were closed off, cars completely underwater, I guess you could say the city was going through a crisis at the moment.

But we had one thing mind: to get IN to that track. Churchill Downs is open every day. You can come on go as you please, no problem. But this day was a strange day with the weather behaving as it had been. After what seemed like hours of driving through mazes of roads that were not flooded to get to the parking lot, our family happily climbed out of the van, cameras in hand, to the entrance gate.....only to be met by "mean lady worker in white truck" to tell us that because of the flooding, no one is allowed in today.

What? Your going to tell us we can't come in there? Ha. "Ok, ok ma'am" And we got back into our van and thought for now, we'd just snap some pictures outside the fence.

We saw her truck drive by us after this picture was taken and Chris said, "we're going in" Sophie was all over it, Crisilee was refusing, but we pressured her into coming anyway. (noooo, we don't corrupt our kids...)

Feeling like navy seals, we drove back to the same gate, tip-toed out...and ran like crazy up the ramp and into the arena.

We checked out a baseball "Bats" game downtown that same evening;







And our last day was spent in downtown Louisville. There was a historic part of the town where we stumbled upon this hotel and were told we were more then welcome to take a look around inside;






But we couldn't stay away from this part;









We roamed the "fun" part of the downtown after that...and imagined the nightlife was probably most exciting.









We ended our day walking the riverfront, only to stumble upon this hidden gem;











Oh, who is this smokin hot babe? The one who makes this all possible..thank you my sweets! Never a dull moment with you leading the way throughout our life together!








Heading home...fun memories made yet again.





Oh life is good. I am so much the lucky one.