Vacation: Sunday

So, it’s been almost a month since we ventured to Brown County, IN, with Doug and Sara and their brood.  I can’t really begin to describe how much that vacation was anticipated, needed, and enjoyed.   We made some fabulous memories, and, sit tight, because you’re going to be reading about them all week!  (I was going to do just one post, but I had 99 pictures to share, and those were too many for a single post!)

So, here we go with Day 1 of our first (of many!) dual family summer vacation.

Fueling up with pancakes and syrup!  Gotta have good energy for the car ride!  (So thankful that we only had 4 hours to drive to get to our rental house.)
  We’re already an hour into our trip, but we’re only 20 miles from home…..having a gas card from work has its perks, but being able to utilize only certain gas stations is not one of them.  What’s a girl to do but play with her toes.

 
Mom always said no ball in the house; she never said anything about the car!

 
About half-way through the trip, Seth asked to watch a movie.  Poor Erin!  Now that she is forward facing, she was watching Seth’s movie, too, so we broke out a set of headphones for the little miss, too!

We arrived to our (gorgeous!!! huge!!! so perfect!!!) cabin only moments before a huge storm hit, so the first order of business was just to get all the stuff in the house, and then….relax!

It was still drizzling rain and thundering when the rest of our troop arrived, but Sara and I had no qualms about sending the little ones out to the back patio to explore.  We LOVED having this awesome (covered by the 2nd floor deck) patio for sidewalk chalk and bubbles, not to mention that it was right next to the swingset and firepit (where the big boys spent a lot of late afternoons).


Right off the patio was the rec room with a wet bar, and pool, ping pong, and air hockey tables, which the kids loved (air hockey especially!).
 

Once the rain fully let up, Uncle Doug and his boys decided to prep the hot tub for some grown up fun later that night.  And speaking of grown up fun, let me just publicly apologize to both Jim and Doug that I didn’t bother to take a picture of the fully awesome grill that they had to cook on all week.  Oops.

 
When Jim and I stayed in Brown County for our honeymoon, we discovered a local pizzeria, the Harvest Moon.  We were repeat guests on our 2005 trip, so it was the first place we stopped on this venture as well.  Erin was all about her pizza (and her plate)!

So, after some yummy pizza (both pepperoni and brownie – yes, brownie pizza!), we headed back to the house to get the kids settled (which was WAY easier than I anticipated): Seth and Tabitha in a room, Zeke and Micah in a room, and Erin in her pack ‘n play in our…wait for it….master bedroom walk in closet!

With baby monitors on, the adults retreated to the hot tub to congratulate ourselves on reaching the end of the first (and probably most stressful-due-to-travel) day of vacation.

Coming up, shopping for the girls and fishing for the boys!