Door County

You know it's hard for me to keep the picture count down these days when it comes to vacations. So I'll at least try to keep the word count down for ya. Last week we traveled to Door County, Wisconsin for a big family trip in honor of my grandmother's (Gigi's) life. (Not that we sat around talking about that, but the whole premise of the trip was to celebrate together and do something fun, since, you know, funerals are not so fun.)


Farm visit with Alice and Pop Pop.


Demon pony! One of my all time favorite pictures, even though I was not there for this in person. (I was "back at the ranch" with June while she napped. Come to think of it, June slept through about 2/3 of this vacation.)


Going for the windblown look. June was obsessed with pulling up on the A.C. unit and then eventually fussing once she started to freeze. Get down. Repeat.
(P.S. We are not total slobs. The used towels and trash in the background were set out for the housekeeping people to pick up.)


The most amazing thing from the entire trip was that my mom taught Georgia to swim. No, seriously. For the first few days, Georgia was content to play on the pool steps. Somehow, on the last day of the trip, my mom convinced Georgia to hold her breath, jump in, paddle with her arms, and kick with her feet all at the same time. And then she proceeded to try it over, and over, and over again until I believe the chlorine had soaked through to her bones.






Spiral Staircase of Death.


Awww, look at those fake smiles. But there really were a lot of cuddly reading moments like this.




"We don't throw sand."


When you get there before most people have eaten their breakfast, you kind of get the whole beach to yourself.


Tell me that's not the cutest anyone has ever managed to look in a bike helmet?

And now the fun begins...death defying, stupid-person photography shot while on a moving bike!

So, I'm riding, holding the camera behind me to photograph Georgia, and you can see Beth and Alice (on the tag-along bike) and Lach and Sam (in another trailer) in the background.

I have always fancied myself someone who rides bikes a lot with my kids. In reality, this may have been my first time back on a bike since getting pregnant with Georgia. Bike trailers are one of those things that I love in theory, but in reality I find the idea of tooling around city streets with a toddler only inches away from traffic downright insane, and you know if I find it insane that Joe finds it NO WAY ARE YOU EVER DOING THAT NO WAY OVER MY DEAD BODY insane. So this was our first time, and a state park was the perfect location for it. As expected, Georgia thought it was thrilling for the first mile, and then began declaring that she wanted to get out and go home.  Well, we had about 9 more miles to go.  Hence, the copious quantities of snacks that she was allowed to consume in the trailer. That seemed to do the trick.

Real rough ride for that one, eh?


Popsicle break!




Jessica, this shot is for you, my fellow aficionado of extended arm self-portraiture. Here I am pretending that I am working really hard.






An early celebration of Georgia and June's birthdays. Wow. I could write an entirely separate post about how much Georgia is in love with this vacuum. I mean, does your vacuum hose double as a microphone when you want it to?  You don't know what you're missing.






An extremely accurate portrayal of June. Her expression has nothing to do with the lemon, and everything to do with "Angry Bunny".










Venturing off on our hike. Or as much of a "hike" as you can do with two year olds.






Beth, aka "Ranger Rick", caught some butterflies, some daddy long-legs, and a frog on this trek.


And of course no trip to Door County would be complete without cherry pie.