Saugatuck 2014-Day 1

This year, we took a little family vacation to Saugatuck, MI. We wanted to go somewhere that was within a few hours driving distance, and we had been to Saugatuck when Judah was a wee one. We had really liked it and talked about going back someday, so this seemed like a perfect location for a short family vacation this year! Saugatuck is a cute artsy town with lots of shops and beaches nearby. It really is a fun place to visit. We stayed for three nights and four days, and we had a wonderful time. We spent three of the four days at the beach, which the kids loooooved. We decided to stay in downtown Saugatuck, so we could literally walk out of our flat and walk to any of the shops around town. This came in very handy. Eric would walk to get us coffee every morning, we could walk to eat dinner out in the evenings, get ice cream, walk along the river, etc. We pretty much walked everywhere except for the beach, which was less than 10 minutes away (car ride).

Our first day on our way to Saugatuck, we stopped in New Buffalo, MI at the New Buffalo City beach. It was lunchtime, so we decided to stop, eat, and spend some time at the beach there. We let the kids play for a while, and then we got back in the car for the hour or so ride to Saugatuck. It was a great beach day. Judah tripped and scraped his knee shortly after we got there, and it took him a while to calm down from that, but other than that, everyone had a great time. Here are some pictures from day 1. :) I am separating the days of our vacation, because I have way too many pictures for one blog post....imagine that. How many pictures can one person take on a four day vacation, you ask? You don't want to know...:)

Judah running up and down the pier, pre-fall.

ready to play

Deciding how he feels about sand

The water was a little cold for Asher

Good thing Eden is a good sport!

Wet but happy

Eden throwing wet sand, of course. :)

After the beach, we headed to Saugatuck, unpacked our things at our rental place, walked around town, and finished the day off eating at a local pizza place. We walked around a bit more after dinner, and then headed back to our place for bedtime. It would suffice to say that the kiddos were very ready for bed. It was a full day of fun!

Chillin' at our rental

There was a little garden of flowers that we walked by, so I stopped to take some pictures.

We walked by this yellow wall (a side of a store, really), and I just loved the color as a background for a picture, so I had the kids flash me a quick smile. I will come back to the yellow wall in a later post...

This is where Eric got our coffee in the mornings

There were a few of these riding toys around town, and the kids loved them. Judah pretended that he was riding some kind of shooting space ship.

One of the things I really liked about Saugatuck was that there is a lot of color around. I took this picture as an example of the colorful places all around town.

Dinner!

I call this picture "We are tired and ready for bed"

Buuuut, we'll give mom one more smile.