Robb and I started off the weekend Friday night with a date night! We went out to dinner and did a little shopping.

On Saturday we stayed around home and got lots of random things done for the new house. At night we met up with my parents and Mindy, Kyle and Makenna at Red Robin for dinner.

Sunday we went to church and then spent the day at the cottage, it was a little on the chilly side but we had fun inside!

Monday we went to the Truck Parade in Holland like we did last year, can’t believe how little Gray was last year!

Gray covered his ears the whole time! It was pretty loud when those big rigs would blow their horns!

(oh my goodness, what happened to my baby? he’s getting so big!)

At the end of the parade all the trucks line up at the Civic Center to ohh and ahh over! Grayden loved playing in the wrecker with his friend Ryn!

When we had enough of that we went back to the cottage to take all the toys out of the water. We headed home to clean up our mess of a house and I snuck in a little nap!

Love these long weekends!!

Taking in the boats and dock at the lake today

I had to face my fear of heights and climb up the ladder into the loft at the cottage to get this shot!

Grayden picked something green and I picked something green :)

headed out for date night!

I just saw this on Pinterest and thought today would be a great day to start the challenge since its September 1 (oh my!) and there are 30 days in this month!

Oh my goodness, an extended-arm self-portrait brings me back to my high-school days :)

our fam ventured out to the hudsonville fair last week to watch the tractor/truck pulls like we do every year.  We walked through a few animal barns before heading into the grand stands.

Grayden thought the animals that faced the walls were in timeout! So funny!

Sadler made it through one pull and was terrified so my mom and I walked around with him for the night; Grayden and Mindy joined us shortly after!

we’ll be back again next year!

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Last Wednesday we made a trip to Battle Creek to visit Binder Park Zoo! It was such a blast, the boys did great and Grayden loved it!

On the way home I asked Grayden what his favorite part of the zoo was and he said “the animals!” haha! My favorite part was feeding the giraffes! They were so cool!

Funny story: On the way down there I realized my camera could be running low on batteries, it never gives me much warning so I always like to take an extra set along with me on important things, like trips to the zoo, but I didn’t have any! Robb was so kind to make a stop at Wal-Mart on the way so I could pick some up. Sadly they didn’t have the batteries I like ( lithium, they last so much longer) so I settled for the normal kind and hurried back to the car.

A half hour later I picked up my camera to delete some pictures to make room on the memory card only to find out I didn’t have the card in my camera!! I had left it in my computer at the cottage an hour away! I was so bummed but at this point there was nothing I could do, we were almost to the zoo and it was my own fault. I was disappointed but determined to have a great time and capture the memories in my head!

Robb so sweetly asked the ticket lady at the zoo where he could get a SD card and she directed him to another Wal-Mart just a few minutes away. Me and the boys watched the kangaroos and I fed Sadler while we waited for him to get back!

SO thankful to have these pictures!

turns out my batteries lasted the whole time!

Robb had a week of vacation time he had to use up in the next month so we planned a quick trip to my parents cottage on Hutchins lake!

Turns out it wasn’t much of a “vacation” per-se; we were really busy doing stuff for the house and just having 2 kids to entertain alone makes for a lot of work! But we also had lots of fun! We went to the zoo one day (more on that in another post) and spent lots of time outside, did some reading, took some boat rides and even watched a few movies!
Here are some pictures from our week!