guess who's got the cherry!

next stop, cherry festival.  in actuality i avoid cherry fest like i would a pack of swarming bees.  it's just not really my thing anymore.  i would rather enjoy a quieter, cleaner, less congested traverse city in the summer time.  but it's hard to avoid the cherry fest when your niece is the cherry princess for her first grade class!
after getting home from our excursion in tennessee at 8pm on a saturday night i worked like a mad woman to get us ready for our trip to traverse the next morning at 7am.  we unpacked, washed all our clothes and repacked for another 8 days of fun in the sun!  we were up there in time to surprise everyone at church in the morning.

it was so wonderful to be reunited with family, where do i even begin?!  the first few days there were spent with miles & austin,  seth & chels, lil plus all the little ones.  a few days later we were joined by dave, megan & mark, nate & anna and all the children.  in total with everyone here we were 14 adults and 18 children {hard to believe there are still 3 more adults + 4 children that were not present}!  it was total chaos at times but totally wonderful and natural.  we all just seem to fall into sync when we get together.  it was our heavenly father's plan at its best.    

after several days of practically no sleep, the days just seemed to blend together. to begin the week though, we went to the cherry pie eating contest... everything else that follows is in no particular order; we enjoyed beautiful lake michigan {several times}, stayed up into the wee hours of the night playing nerts and the classic ellsworth bowl game {similar to catch phrase}, ate lots of delicious food {got my bubba's fix; and move over moomers, there is a new kid in town. sugarkissed the new frozen yogurt place has won my heart}, we treated ourselves to multiple boston coolers, i held a baby {thanks austin, for sharing adelaide with me last week!} and cheered on the participants {one of which was a float crafted by my handy brother seth, that carried princess jenna}  at the junior royal parade.  the guys + chelsea played basketball a few times and some of us did some shopping. we even had a birthday celebration just for jon- fireworks included {more to come about the birthday boy later}.  again there was so much fun to be had by all that i slacked on getting pictures of everyone...

the pictures show northern michigan at its summer time best.  i'm so grateful to be able to call this home and have such wonderful family to go along with it.  as the week ended we were not ready to back to our "home"{the apartment in lansing that held all our belongings}... home is where the heart is, and ours is definitely with family.