Our hike

We went to the Saugatuck state park the other day with Marcy and Milaya.  Ross stayed home with Blake and had some bonding time :)  Let me just say... it was quite a hike!!! We started out thinking that we wanted to take a somewhat longer trail so that we could get a little workout in but not something to hard for the kids.  As we started walking Tanner and Milaya were SO SLOW!! they kept stopping to do snow angels about every 5 steps...so much for the workout!  After we got them moving a little, we had a pretty good pace going and we thought that it would be fun to hike to the beach and see the water and all of the ice!  We were doing really good and having so much fun, just playing and goofing around and we were sure that we weren't to far from the water....boy were we wrong! After a while we stopped and had to make a decision...do we keep going and will the kids be able to make it back???? or do we turn around??? well... we decided to keep going!!! When we finally got there I was sooo glad that we decided to keep going.. it was BEAUTIFUL!!!!  The kids loved it too!! although they were a little dissapointed that they couldn't go swimming! hahaha!  Here is when it went from really great to really....not so great!  The wind by the water was so much stronger and so much colder and the kids suddenly were DONE!! to make a long story short...Marcy and I ended up carrying the kids on our backs for most of the way back, while they were in total meltdown mode!!! they were so whipped!!! (so we got our workout afterall)  For a while i kinda felt like we were NEVER going to make it back to the car and we were going to have to be  rescued!!! Toward the end the kids got their second wind and we started having fun again...i'm so glad for that because I was worried that they would never want to come back!  Overall....this experience was sooo moving!  It was the most beautiful, peaceful place to be and it was such an accomplishment for all of us that it just felt sooo good! It was awesome to be in nature and enjoy God's creation!!! and spend some special time with Tanner and do something fun with just us :) To top it all off... after all of that hard work and fresh air...Tanner didn't fall asleep on the way home!! I thought for sure that he would! so we had a fun and early night with him that night :)  Looking back...it was a really good experience!  Oh i almost forgot we also had to have a couple of potty breaks for Tanner along the way!!! that's fun when he is all bundled up in his snow stuff!! hahahaha!!