Home Again

Wow! It has been a very busy two weeks. I will try and catch you up without making it too long.

Our trip started with an 18 hour drive to Mackinaw City. When we arrived my wish was granted.... cooler weather. It was 50 degrees and raining. Maybe next time I should be more specific with my wishes. For those of you that have had the pleasure of visiting Mackinaw you know there is not a whole lot to do indoors everything is outdoors. We started our day with lunch at the Dixie Saloon. We were not that impressed with the food but it is a neat place near the lake.

I did not notice until now this picture is very dark sorry.

After lunch we tried to fill some time shopping in the many souvenir type shops. I wonder what people thought about the crazy lady taking pictures in all the shops

You see how amused Taylor is with this adventure. You know 14 year olds are not impressed with many things their parents do or say.

The rain finally stopped so we tried to visit some of the lighthouses where it was still a chilly 55 degrees.

Now it was time for a trip to the lake where it was really cold with the wind coming off the water. The water was freezing. I could not even put my foot in. Taylor decided he would make a bet with Jason on who could go out the farthest in the freezing cold water. Of course Jason could not turn down a bet.

Taylor ventured into the water first

then Jason. By the looks of his arms maybe he thought he could just fly over the water and that would count.

So as you can see Taylor emerged the victor. Jason should know a 14 year old will go out as far as it takes to win $20.00

It started to rain again so we decided to take the kids to the indoor water park at the hotel.

Jason really enjoyed himself at the water park. The 18 hour drive must have caught up with him.

I am so glad Jason doesn't have a blog, I would be scared of what pictures he may post of me after he sees this.

After a busy, cold, rainy day we retreated back to our room to try and catch up on some sleep.

Well this is already very long and we are only on day ONE. I will sign off for now and post more tomorrow about our week in the Upper Peninsula with Jason's family.

Take care.

Michelle

Packed And Ready To Roll

The car is packed, the house is clean, the dog sitter has her instructions, we have a case full of DVD's, and three I-pods full of the kids chosen music so I guess we are ready to hit the road again. We are leaving around 4:00 today after Jason and I get off of work. We are planning to drive through the night and arrive in Mackinaw City around noon on Thursday. It is not easy to drive all night after working all day but we are hoping the kids will be doing alot of sleeping.

We typically make really great time when we drive through the night so we are hoping for the same on this trip. We will stay in Mackinaw until Friday and then on to the big town of Ishpeming, Michigan to visit Jason's family. I will try and update on Friday with some photos of beautiful Mackinaw City and the Mackinaw Bridge.



Take care and have a great week.

Michelle

Home Sweet Home

We are home from the beach. We had a great week in Panama City but are glad to be home. You are about to see more pictures of the Ring family than you ever cared to see. Sorry, I just can't help myself. We started the week off with beautiful weather and crystal clear water. The kids had a great time paying in the sand

catching jellyfish (notice the little 5 year old boy in the background more on this later)



flying kites



and never fear we didn't go a week without a baseball game they even managed to get a full baseball game in on the beach.



On Monday it rained almost the entire day so the kids/teens spent part of the day trying to complete a 500 piece very difficult puzzle. By 2:00 the teens had seen enough of the rain and the puzzle and decided to head to Hooters. They said they got ripped off because their waitress was OLD she was like 40 years old. Better alert the morgue she will be killing over any minute now at that age. So anyway they were then back to completing the puzzle (which they did accomplish after 2 days). I spent the day shopping at the new Pier outdoor mall. It is a great mall with some very interesting stores.





We awoke Tuesday morning walked out on the balcony and this is what we saw.....




no, the beach did not grow lush green grass overnight it was SEAWEED and it was BAD!!!!



We have been going to Panama City for over 15 years and I have never seen the seaweed like this . It was fascinating. When you would step on it it was like being in quicksand you would actually sink down into it about a foot.


So needless to say our next few days were spent at the pool hearing mom look dad look and seeing at least 1000 tricks a day :)












The teen boys spent a lot of time in the hot tub during the seaweed attack. Notice the little boy in the background again. Every time I went to take a picture of the boys this little boy was in the background. Finally in this picture I said excuse me would you move over just a little so I can get a picture to which all the boys replied he is fine just take the picture. The litttle boy informed me his name was "Chipper Jones the best player in Major League Baseball and he was friends with all of these guys". Well come to find out "Chipper" had a really hot sister who also brought along really hot friends. Who said these boys weren't smart?





Well....... I guess their plan worked notice the hot girls in the hot tub and who is front and center none other than "Chipper" . At least they have a good story to tell when they get home they were hanging out in the hot tub with Chipper Jones and a bunch of hot girls.



We went to a great local restaurant in Panama City called the Boathouse. The food was excellent and it also had a great atmosphere.



After dinner it was off to ride go-carts and play putt-putt. The older boys left us and headed to teen night at Club LaVela.

We also found time to visit the arcade across the street from our condo and of course Chandler immediately found the only baseball game in the arcade. He must have been having baseball withdrawals.

Later that night the older boys decided to walk across the street to Wendys. The inside was closed so only the drive through was open. Being teens they decided to walk through the drive through after ordering and waiting in line for 10 minutes they were informed they could not serve walkers in the drive through. After much thought and debate they decided to ask someone in a car to place their order for them. Order placed, food in hand, now back to the condo to enjoy the food. Oh wait not so fast here comes the rain storm, paper bags do not hold up well when wet. Next thing you know there is food all over the street and we are watching from the balcony laughing . There were not to many dull moments on this trip. If you look closely you can see the boys making their way to Wendys.

I will leave you with one last story from our trip. For those of you that do not have teens yet this is what you have to look forward to. One night around 3:00am Jason thought he heard the door open a few minutes later he got up to check well sure enough the room that the 5 teen boys should be in is empty. Jason being the calm, rational dad that he is decided to let them have their fun but pay for it later. He set a trap on the inside of the door of coolers, beach pails, beach chairs, etc.. so when they came home and opened the door they would know they had been busted. Needless to say had I have heard the door my reaction would have been MUCH different. But his worked perfectly. When they arrived home and realized they had been caught they had to spend the rest of the night worrying about what we were going to say. I would just loved to have heard that conversation. They did however devise a great story of a girl texting them to come and help her because she found a cat on the beach with rabies and they needed to call animal control. Are you kidding me how do they come up with these stories? So as you can see we had a fun and eventful week at the beach. We are now home unpacked and ready to start a new week. We will however be leaving again on Wednesday after work to go to Mackinaw Island and then on to the Upper Peninsula to visit Jason's family. I will try and post again before we leave.

Take care and enjoy your kids while they are happy digging in the sand not rescuing cats from the sand. :)

Michelle

A Week Without Blogging Equals Alot Of Baseball

Wow it has been a week since I last updated and I was suppose to be doing better. I guess I better try harder.

We have had a week full of baseball. Taylor played in a tournament last week-end where they played 7 games. They won some and lost some not to much to talk about there. He either pitched or played short stop for every game. Taylor has been pitching and playing 3rd base since he was 9 years old through out little league, travel ball, and middle school but now the high school coach has now decided that he will be the starting short stop. This is taking a little getting use to for Taylor but he is doing a great job. This picture is from the game they had last night.

Chandler played in the Jones County Invitational Tournament this week-end. We started out with the 8:00 game Friday night winning 23-3 in 5 innings. We drove the hour back home only to return for the 10:00 game Saturday morning. We started the day in the rain on a field that was in horrible condition but won in spite of it all by 10 runs in 5 innings.

That win allowed us a two hour break before our next game so we headed to Jocks and Jills for lunch.

You can see the boys were giving Dalton some advice on how to play baseball. For those of you that don't follow little league baseball our league Warner Robins Little League won the Little League World Series last year and Dalton hit the walk off home run. I don't think he needs any advice on how to play. Dalton is a great ball player and super sweet kid. So after lunch it was back to baseball where we set up camp and spent the next 10 hours.

Chandler played three more games and won each game by 10 runs in 5 innings. Then at

9:30 pm after 12 hours of baseball it was finally time for the championship games. There were 12 teams in the tournament but in the end in the championship game it was Warner Robins Red v/s Warner Robins Blue. ( I guess that says alot for our league when out of 12 teams our two

all-star teams are in the championship. ) Well you can just about guess the final score....... 10 runs after 5 innings 18-8. The boys were excited to win another tournament.

It is great to be part of a league when at the end of the game everyone can join together for a prayer and walk away friends.

Chandler after the tournament with his best friend Tanner.

So that sums up our week-end of baseball.

On Monday night we DID NOT have any games or practices so I did something crazy... I cooked yes an entire meal I almost forgot how it has been so long. While I was cooking Chandler came in from swimming and said "mom what are we having for supper?" when I told him he very innocently said " mom the last time you cooked I was doing homework" . School got out for the summer on May 30th so that tells you how long it has been. Baseball is finally winding down and I must admit I can't wait. I am ready for a little break. We are headed to the beach for a week on Saturday. I can not wait. We are going with about 6 other families who all have children also so it should be alot of fun. I will try and update again before we leave.

Talk to you soon.

Michelle

Happy Father's Day !!

O.K. I am trying really hard to figure out this blogging. I can not seem to get my page set up the way I want it. So for now it will just have to stay the way it is.

We spent our Father's Day where we spend the majority of our time this time of year, at the baseball field. Chandler was selected for the all-star team and they played in their first tournament this week-end. They had three games on Saturday and two on Sunday.

At 2:00 on Sunday the team was in their huddle and ready to play in semi-championship game despite the 92 degree heat. Chandler was the number 4 batter throughout the tournament and started off Sunday with a line drive to the outfield that resulted in a triple. After that it was time for a much deserved Powerade break.

Before the game when explaining to Chandler that they had to win against the Valdosta Batmen to play in the Championship he informed me that " we are going to fly them back down to their home town without a trophy" . Well I guess he was right we won in 5 innings 15-4. The day was complete when Warner Robins beat Macon in 5 innings by the score of 12-2. According to our official score keeper. You know you spend a lot of time at the ball field when your 9 year old is capable of keeping the official book.

After a busy week-end of baseball we ended the night with dinner at my parents house to celebrate Father's Day.

After eating dinner I looked around to realize this was an exhausting weekend for everyone. Chandler's five games had tired him out but didn't keep him from holding on to that glove. I just love this picture. Taylor also had 5 games of high school baseball this weekend which obviously left him needing a little nap.

I will post again tomorrow and hopefully try and figure out how to arrange pictures on this blog.

Have a great day!

Michelle

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