The Family Tour.

Our final day in The Big Push brought us to our first stop in The Family Tour.  Can you say "Yay!?" After what seemed like a really long day of travel (but in actuality was a rather short 5 hours considering) and amidst honking and cheers, we arrived at my sisters' house in Michigan.  We were all happy to exit the van and make our new temporary home here:



My sister and BIL's house in Clinton Township.















As with other stops along the way, the kids have been fascinated by this whole "backyard" idea.....the concept that they can just go out the door and play in the backyard for hours and hours has been wonderful!  We spent two full days in the backyard making all kinds of mischief and mayhem, including water balloons, sprinklers, playing with the hose and face painting:



Like myself, the girls have talked non-stop during the trip about scrap booking all of the pictures from the Manriquez Marvelous Adventure.  My sister is also a scrapper, and without children of her own, has managed to put together a scrapbook of each of my children documenting their major milestones each year.  Let me hear you say "Hooray!" because you know what? I may be a scrapper and love the art of it all, but even I don't have a book for any of my children. So I am happy that my sister is taking on this task for me.

Anyhoo, during the trip the girls have talked about what they would scrap and how they would document their memories. And during the 4 days here, they managed to create all of the pages for the trip through our stay here in Detroit. The only tasks left are to insert the photos (once I get them developed) and add the pages from the month on the east coast. And who was there to guide them through it all? Aunt Kimmy:

The girls are scrapping with Aunt Kimmy in the kitchen.

In addition to the mischief in the backyard, Kim and Carl also took us to a local state park close to their home. The park is on Lake St. Clair--which to tell you the truth, I had no idea Detroit was on a lake. But it is, and it is lovely. The lake itself is filled with water from the upper peninsula in Lake Superior, through Lake Huron into Lake St. Clair and then into the Detroit River and into Lake Erie. The park had lots of water activities, which my kids loved, including a water slide/pool, splash and sprinkler area and then, of course, the lake too.  This was the kids' first real swim in a lake and although tentative at first (mostly asking questions about the aquatic life joining them), they really enjoyed it!



Major difference between lake and ocean swimming? The "sand". In Michigan, it is really just ground up, really fine dirt.



Diego and his Nino are really close.

Although sad to be leaving my sister's house already, we are excited to be heading over to New York to see my mom and the rest of my family. And the good news? My sister and BIL will be headed to New York also in a couple of weeks for a big family reunion and BBQ at my mom's house. I can't wait!

Fun Facts From Today:

Number of times a child asked me "Are we there yet?" = 8 (drive from CHI to DET)

Miles driven CHI to DET = 309

Number of wrong turns = 0

Number of states traversed or visited to date =13

Total miles driven to date = 5,871

 

Conversations Overheard:

During a conversation in which we were all participating, the topic turned to something about "older boys" being allowed to do something.

Diego: "Only older boys can do that."

Mami: "Yes, an older boy can do that. And even grown up boys, like Uncle Carl."

Diego: "Not Uncle Carl! I didn't say bald boys! Just older ones."