We hopped the pond

Michael got accepted to present some research in London and he didn't have to twist my arm too hard to get me to tag along.  ;)  Neither of us had ever been to London and we were long overdue for a getaway without the kids so we were pretty excited to say the least.

My sweet mom came to take care of all of the kiddos and my dad was able to come for the weekend to give her some relief.  I'd say they deserve some sort of medal because it was no small feat to take care of those three for five days and they did awesome! 

So off we went but not without getting a little teary about leaving these sweet faces behind

 Our hotel was a five minute walk from Westminster Abbey

Big Ben

And Buckingham Palace

I was surprised this was as close as you could get to the guards with the funny hats.

We made our way to a few pubs and were sure to find some fish and chips (pretty plain if you ask me)

We saw Lion King which blew me away, and Wicked which was really great too

I couldn't get over this pretty view of our hotel each night

We also did our fair share of sight seeing.  The London Eye

Tower Bridge

Tower of London

And St. Paul's Cathedral where Princess Diana was married

Leaving a 6 month old did not come without it's disadvantages.  The pump and I made a few trips to the "water closets" around London.  :) 

The kids were more than well taken care of and I got so excited every time I got a picture from Mom  

We had an awesome time but couldn't wait to get home to these guys

Thanks for loving on the kids so well, DeeDee and Billy!  We are grateful.

Pure Michigan Vacation

At the end of September we got spoiled with a week and a half of fun with Nana and Papa.  Michael and Robert went on a bear hunt in the Upper Peninsula for the first few days and then Kellie and I drove with the kids up to Harbor Springs to meet them and spend a week at an unbelievable cabin in the woods.  It was on a beautiful golf course in the middle of some of the most amazing fall colors.  Kellie is quite the vrbo.com queen these days.  

Our trip started out with some of this

a fireside dinner

 followed by s'mores of course

And then the boys took off to do a little of this.  That's 275 lbs of black bear.

While we did some playing and building

before heading up North to this

where we did some snuggling

 and hot tubing.

  Nanny and Grandad made quite the road trip from Ardmore, OK to spend the week up there too

 Langley helped Nana make some pumpkin bread

she dug the sugar

She also helped Nana and Luke figure out his new Angry Bird's game by reading the directions for them

 We celebrated Nana's birthday with a from scratch red velvet cake made by sweet Nanny with three crazy kids running around to distract her.  It was a fun memory even though it didn't turn out exactly right.  

 We ventured out to a farm for lunch one day

Papa with a happy girl

Nanny and Grandad with their great grandkids.  Pretty special.

And the rest of the time was spent relaxing and playing quite a bit of golf. I didn't get any pictures of all of the golfers, but here's one of me and my love.  Kellie was the absolute best for keeping the kids so we could both play so often.  

It was a wonderful trip and such a sweet gift of time with Nanna, Papa, Nanny and Grandad! We are thankful.

Every bit of 2

Here are some pictures I took a couple of weekends ago to document Langley at two.  And boy oh boy is she every bit of two these days. It's a good thing she's cute.  :)

Hook 'Em and some backyard camping

Last weekend we geared up in our Horns garb (Thanks DeeDee) for the start of football season.  We don't get the Longhorn Network up here but still had fun supporting.  We get comments quite often about how you don't see too many Longhorns in these parts.  I'm sure glad to be one of them.  :) 

Our littlest cheerleader

That night we decided to do a little backyard camping as a way to cap off the summer.  

The night started off great...

Even Kirby cozied right in but Kendall and I took one for the team and slept inside.  In our beds. In the A/C.  :)  And the rest of the crew almost made it through the night.  Until about 4:30 when Luke woke Michael up and said he wasn't comfy.  So they came in to their cozy beds.  The benefit of the backyard, I guess.  It was a fun memory anyways. 

And then these were just some pics of the kids looking much too grown up:

Fair fun

The day we got back from Texas Michael had a light day so we headed out to the Hudsonville Fair to get our fill of rides, games, and fair food.   It didn't compare to the Texas State fair, of course, but it was  the perfect size for us now.  We'll go see Big Tex and have a corny dog someday soon. :) 

The kids had a ball

Especially this one ;)

 My little cowboy

 You can't tell, but Langley put her arm around Luke while we were sitting down watching a puppet show. :)   Love.

 This boy loved the rides..

wasn't one bit scared

Oh, and Luke won our very first goldfish, appropriately named "Goldfish," but I failed to get a picture of him since his stay with us only lasted 3 days.  Whoops.   It was a fun day.