We're back!

And I have a ton of pictures to commemorate this trip to Cheland. Scroll through 'em quick and get on with your day or study each one for possible hidden pictures and/or secret messages. I just wanted to share as many pictures as I could possibly share with the fun family we spent our week with.

And who did we spend our week with?! All of these people plus a few more that didn't get into this picture. This shot represents the several families from my mom's side who come together in Cheland each year. I think we had the highest attendance this year that we've ever had. There were even a few who made it all the way from New York!




And what did we do?

Hands down favorite kid activity was swimming in the pool. Thanks to our two weeks of swimming lessons, these kids were SO ready for pool play!




We spent time on Grandad's boat, riding along on slow "toodles"...



...focusing on our captain skills...



...and riding with Daddy and all the cousins on the innertube behind the boat. I don't know why I don't have pictures of that- I'll have to dig some up.



Josiah practiced his "bird" sign at the park from the top of the little slide.

Bob and the big boys and I joined the other boy cousins for our first trip to the local water park. This was really fun to do with our new swimmers. I'm so thankful we were able to leave the "littles" with Grammy and Grandad for the afternoon so we could make this the special big boy outing that it was.


When it got too hot, we played inside...


...and sat out on the patio as the evenings became cooler.

Since we were able to stay for almost the entire week this year, there was lots of time to tell the "Interrupting Cow Joke" over and over again.


We ate LOTS of yummy food and were excited to add a new menu to our list of easy Cheland dinners to make for a zillion people: BYOST or Bring Your Own Salad Thingies. By Wednesday night, we were out of ideas for feeding all of us. We had great success by sharing the remaining contents of our fridges to form an enormous salad bar. There was even leftover meat to share with people who have to have that kind of stuff.

And ice cream, too, of course!

While most of our activities had plenty of the sun and water elements we love to enjoy at Lake Cheland, mostly we sat back and watched these little people play and play and play together.


Thankfully, we only have a couple months to wait until we can go back for another little visit with some of our favorite people at our favorite vacation spot.