The Beach and the Lake

We felt so fortunate to be able to take two mini-vacations with our dear friends, the Browns and the Hisers, last month:

The Beach with the Browns
In early August, we had so much fun spending a day at the beach with the fabulous Brown family during their family vacation with Erik's family in Oostburg, WI, just about 30 minutes north of us.

The kids floated on rafts in chilly Lake Michigan, built sand castles, played football and pretended to be superheros all day long. And since both Charlie and John took afternoon naps after all that play, the grown ups got some quiet time to catch up and relax too! Erin and Erik are expecting Baby Number Three in three weeks, and we can hardly wait to meet their little one!

Superheros fighting bad guys!

The Lake with the Hisers

A month later, our dear friends Buffy and Dan invited us to spend the weekend with them at their family's lake house in Green Lake, WI, only 90 minutes from our front door. We had a blast tubing with the kids, watching the girls pretend to build bird nests out of mud and experimenting with letting the kids sleep in a bunk room together (lots of giggling and mysterious late night thumps).

Buffy and I have been friends since 7th grade! In fact, she was our grade school valedictorian and I was salutatorian. Though we went to different high schools and colleges, we stayed in touch through all these years and even attended each others weddings. Fast forward a couple of years, and now we're raising our kids together -- in fact, Ellie and Sophie helped Madeline and Charlie with their lemonade stand this summer!

Sophie, Will, Ellie, Charlie, Madeline and John. That's a lot of kids.

Dan and Rob are both fly fisherman

Madeline and Ellie gave us thumbs up (faster!) the whole ride