We went to New Buffalo last week and stayed at the same house we stayed at last year at this time. It's in the old Grand Beach area a block from the beach. The water has receded now, so there is actually a beach there to hang out at!
The week started off great... awesome weather! A little cloudy at night, so not perfect for sunset viewing.
We made it!
The girls got mermaid tails and couldn't wait to try them out. We made them use life jackets at first to get used to them.
Morgan loves the hot tub
They upgraded our lookout!
Get out of the way, clouds!
We spent the next two days swimming, hanging at the beach, riding around on the golf cart, playing at the park and eating ice cream at Oink's. We saw 27 deer while we were there during the week. We kept track! We also tried 18 different flavors of ice cream at Oink's! (list below)
Playing at the park
Ice cream "sand"-ae
First dip in Lake Michigan
Chillaxin' at the pool
My butterfly mermaid
The girls claimed the lower level as their own - ha!
Even took the babies to the beach
Skipping rocks
They really wanted to try out snorkels, so I picked some up. Morgan loved snorkeling, Avery hated it.
Blue Moon ice cream
Ultimate Peanut Butter Brownie
Gotta stop here when you are at Oink's!
Always searching for the best rocks and sea glass
Relaxin' in the hot tub
She's SOOOO into bottle flipping right now
Daddy buried them in the sand
One of many of the deer we saw
So close to us!
Then, the storms came. At 4:33 AM Tuesday morning, the electricity went off. I woke up because it was eerily quiet. Apparently, there was a major flood of the substation a few towns over and the whole area was without power. Ugh. We were hoping it would just be off for a few hours, but no such luck. For a long time, the status website just said "Assessing Condition" with no update on when we'd get power back.
So, we went to the park and put together Legos. But, it was hot - there was a heat advisory and it was 105 with the heat index. We were getting a little steamy with no AC.
Luckily, Michigan City still had power. So, we went to Shoreline Brewery for lunch, which was really good. While there, we decided to look into getting a hotel room before they all sold out. We needed AC and WIFI! Matt's mom has Holiday Inn points and was able to book us a room nearby. Turns out the hotel did sell out for the night, so we were lucky! We went back to the rental house to pack up for the hotel. We also swam for a bit at the house before leaving. :)
After we got checked into the hotel, it only took about 5 minutes before the girls were going stir crazy. So, we went to the outlet mall. And of course, the girls had to do the "jumpy thing" as they call it.
We stayed at the hotel Tuesday night and introduced the girls to IHOP for dinner. :) More storms hit Tuesday night that slowed down the recovery process, so we still didn't have power by Wednesday morning. We kept the hotel room for another day just in case. We had breakfast at a really great local place called Sophia's Pancake House. The girls ranked this WAY better than IHOP. Ha!
Finally, the electric company updated the website and it said power was supposed to come on at 2:30 PM. We kept our fingers crossed!
We drove back to the rental house in the afternoon and when we got there, the power was on... but the front door to the house was WIDE open! Now, this front door is not easy to get open. It sticks really bad. So, we were a little freaked out that someone had come in while we were gone. We called the police to do a walkthrough and everything was fine. They literally showed up less than 5 minutes after I called. And they knew the owner of the house (who was in California during the week).
We got settled back in the rental house, visited Oink's for ice cream, played with Orbeez and swam.
Yellow cake batter
Oink's selfie
Oh, and this girl lost a tooth! So, the tooth fairy made a visit to the rental house! :)
Orbeez are so relaxing
Pool time!
On Thursday, we did more of the same...
This girl would live at the beach if she could!
Buried in the sand again!
Superman ice cream!
Another deer on our nightly golf cart ride
Family selfies... ha!
On Friday, we celebrated Matt's birthday.
The birthday boy
Sweet sisters!
This is the one second of the day they weren't fighting - ha!
Lunch and drinks at Stray Dog
Opening gifts with Daddy
Deer at the neighbor's house - he feeds them
Morgan accidentally took a picture of her shadow - ha!
Avery is becoming quite the little fish!
The waves were crazy this day, so I made her wear a life jacket!
Golf cart selfie
Before dinner the girls wanted to do the "jumpy thing" one more time, so we took a quick trip to Michigan City again.
We had the morning on Saturday to swim and pack up. We also went for a final rock/sea glass search on the beach.
Despite the hiccup in the middle with the power outage and having to pack up and relocate to a hotel for a bit, the trip was a lot of fun. It's crazy how much the girls have grown up the past year. We can sit at dinner and have conversations. Morgan has a story about everything or fun facts about bugs, animals, you name it (thanks to You Tube Kids). Avery is picking up quite the smart ass sense of humor (from her Dad, I think!). She comes up with some funny one-liners that surprise me! It's always nice to get away from everything and just relax with my favorite people! :)
Oh, and here are all the flavors we tried at Oink's. I think Strawberry Cheesecake was a favorite of everyone. I like the Lemon Cheesecake Bar a lot. The least favorite was probably the Apple Crisp.
No comments:
Post a Comment