Labor Day

This is our wonderful friend Mark Farrell. I've told many of you about him and how good he is to us. He makes sure we are taken care of, and we try to do the same for him.

We celebrated Labor Day a little differently this year. Our friend Mark Farrell joined us for a BBQ at noon. Never ones to let tradition go easily, we still had two parties. Our friends, the Herrmans, came over for an evening BBQ. It made the day a holiday and kept us from pining too much for home.

This wagon was our supreme yard sale find of the week. The kids love it, and so does the mom.

Around the House in Mason

We have some of the greatest neighbors. Next door our neighbors literally share their back yard with us. They are thrilled that Elyzabeth and Lolee like to play on their swingsets. Their 19-year-old son, Josh, came out and washed the slides down with soap and the hose so they could play on clean slides.
For everyone that I forced into looking at pictures of our house, you may recall that there is a sunporch. We recently acquired this little table at a yard sale for the purpose of using in that space. Elyzabeth and Lolee want to eat every meal on it, as well as all of their drawing and creating. It's a winner!


Hayes had his first haircut last Friday. I don't know that anyone else can even tell, since his dad couldn't, but it makes him seem so grown up to his mom.

Hayes loves to vacuum with Mama. He wouldn't stop hanging on my legs until I picked him up and let him help.


Hayes loves to play the piano. His phase has lasted longer than the girls' did, so we hope it lasts. (this picture is from today, about three hours ago)

Hayes Family Reunion--MI Style

One of our main reasons for going to Grand Haven, besides to see Lake Michigan, of course, was to visit Chalae's cousin Tyler and his family. Tyler finished law school at MSU last spring and took a job in Grand Rapids. Tyler, Line, Kaia and Canyon live just across the street from the lake in a beautiful home. We had a lot of fun visiting them.

A little twist of irony was that at almost the exact same time we were together, our families were together in Utah at the Hayes family reunion in Farmington. We took this picture just to prove it.

Site-seeing in Grand Haven

This is the Grand Haven lighthouse. We walked across what felt like miles of blistering-hot sand to get to the pier. The breeze off of the "ocean" was a refreshing change.

It was only slightly nerve-wracking walking along the pier with a 25-foot drop to the water with our children since the littlest two were on our backs.

Sunset over Lake Michigan

They would have spent all night in the stream, but we finally got them to remember that we were really there to see Lake Michigan.
After dinner we walked down to the Lake. Wow!! It really is like the ocean. That evening the tide was on it's way out, so we took a beautiful walk down the hard sands of the beach with noone but the seagulls for company--a good change from the campground:)

We found this really great place for ice cream called Quality Dairy. On Monday they have a special, a large cup full of icecream for only 75 cents. Hayes got really into his cone, as you can see. We all like icecream a little too much, and it will probably be a weekly tradition, since it has already happened several times.

We went camping on Lake Michigan during David's 4-day break a little over a week ago. Camping here is very different than in Utah. They pack you in--285 sites in a 200-square-foot area. It's crazy! For some reason, Hayes just sat in his little camp chair while we got set up. He liked watching everything going on around him.

Though he liked everything, the very first thing that happened was he tripped and fell in the dirt first thing out of the car. He stood up and the side of his face was covered in hives. For the rest of the trip he alternated body parts getting covered in hives. David made a trip to the store for some Benadryl because we couldn't just leave him like that.

The girls had a riot in this stream that ran right behind our campsite. Their umbrellas are their favorite toys, these days, it was not, nor did it, rain on us.