Hanging out with family in Michigan - 2024/05/24

When we last left off from our 2024 Summer road trip, we had just left the Sauerbeck Drive-In Movie Theater where we stayed the night and were driving to Michigan. Now we're in Michigan with family for the next couple weeks! 

The first opportunity she could, Grammy made her famous chicken nuggets for the kids. 

Aubrey came over with a volleyball she just bought to play with the kids! They love all the time she gives them. 

One of the things we wanted to make sure the kids didn't slack on this summer is exercise. T found a open gymnastics gym where the kids can bounce and play around for 2 hours every day while we go to a Planet Fitness right next door! 

This white trampoline is great! It's got extra bounce!

They're even learning new skills on the equipment! 

Alli can do a back handspring! And Ian can link flips together!

Ethan and Austin wanted to take the kids out one night after dinner. 

To a fun center! 

Riding go-karts together!

And they're even big enough now to drive themselves! 

Look at the concentration. 

Batting cages too? Oh yeah! 

They said he was getting a hold of some of them too!

Don and Amy had some missionaries from Spain staying with them, and one afternoon for lunch, Anthony made us a delicious meal inspired by food from Spain. 

There's Pinchos Morunos (meat skewers of pork), Pisto Manchego (veggies over rice and topped with a fried egg), plus a Tarta de Santiago (almond cake). 

Along with cheese, bread, and olives. There's olives he bought locally with pimento inside of them. And also a jar he brought from Spain that are stuffed with anchovies. 

Anthony is a fantastic cook. Everything was so good. I even had one of those anchovy olives. I didn't care for it (or the other olive for that matter), but I did try it. 

And I couldn't believe how moist the almond cake was with just almond flour, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, and powdered sugar. 

The kids have a special day planned with the cousins! They all piled into the car to go...

Down to Sandusky Ohio to visit one of the best roller coaster parks in the world! 

And now they're tall enough to ride every single coaster in the park! 

They had a great day together. 

I love making pizza, but I've never tried making it for this many people! 

I've got the 900F pizza oven set up on the edge of the garage to keep it out of the rain. 

And Rita and Theresa kept busy in the kitchen getting all the toppings onto the pizzas. They only take 90 seconds to cook, so they make them as fast as I can cook them! 

Theresa's creation with her favorite new topping, artichokes. 

18 pizzas later and it's time to make mine! Whew! 

Celebrating Ethan's birthday! 

Adriana got him those awesome glasses. 

Playing games together. 

Neighbors Todd and Becky and their daughter Anna invited us to their backyard to make s'mores. Ian loved making them and was very excited. 

Mmm, with biscoff cookies! Yum!  

Delicious! 

Ethan's friend Adriana has a couple nieces that are playing softball, and they took the kids to go watch. 

Doing gymnastics.

Celebrating with ice cream afterwards. 

That's some ice cream cone! 

Having people watch the kids means that Theresa and I get to go and hang out a lot more often! 

Going for a run through the neighborhood and to a local park. Getting stopped by a train. 

But it's a nice area to go running. 

With bunnies. 

And baby ducks too. 

We had a lot of fun at the local Chuck E Cheese. The kids and I found some games where we were able to get lots of tickets, and the kids won a ton of balls from the claw machine. Going back today, something seems different... The claw machine will pick up, but almost immediately drop any of the balls they go for. 

The jackpot prizes have been bonked too. I won 9 whole tickets for winning Tippin' Bloks (where previously it was 50). 

Ah, a worker is going around and modifying the settings of all the machines. 

Ian and I were winning Pop the Lock pretty consistently, and getting the bonus 50 tickets. The worker jumped in and modified some settings, and afterwards we couldn't win anymore. The speed had changed and the dots were too close together now to react fast enough. Booo! 

It's our last day in Michigan before we continue our summer travels. We got pizza for everyone for dinner before we go! 

And then it was off to the airport to head to the next spot on our summer travels!