Fourth of July at Lake Michigan

On July 4th weekend we headed to Long Beach, Indiana (near Michigan City) to meet my family for a holiday getaway.  We left at about 10:30 Friday morning and headed north.  As we neared Chicago we quickly realized that we weren't the only ones with the idea to take an extended weekend and ended up sitting in traffic around Chicago for over an hour.  A trip that was supposed to only be about 3 hours actually ended up taking around five. 

 Since there were seven of us and there are a limited number of hotels close to the lake, we decided to rent a cottage.  It had a lot of room for us to spread out in and allowed us to eat a lot of our meals at the house. 

Our home for the weekend

We didn't have many events planned, which is very unsual for me. We were mostly looking forward to relaxing and enjoying the lake and beautiful weather.  The temps were mostly in the low eighties, except for Saturday when it reached ninety.  We were about a block from the private beach and the house had a lot of outdoor living space of which we took full advantage. One evening we had a fire in the small firepit on the deck and Addy got to roast her very first marshmallow.  We also took advange of the grill on the back patio and Addy enjoyed relaxing in the backyard hammock.  In the mornings we headed to the beach for sand and water play.  Although the lake water was a bit chilly, most of us did manage to get at least out feet in.  Addy enjoyed collecting rocks on the beach and called it looking for "treasure."

Roasting Marshmallows

Mmm..S'mores!!

Papaw and his little buddy

Chillin' in the hammock

We headed to the outlet mall on Saturday, but didn't last long with the kids because of the ninety degree temps.  Ashley and I returned to the mall later in the evening on our own and were able to cover a lot more ground:) In the evenings we walked down to the beach to watch the fireworks shows over the lake.  The last evening of our stay we went down to the lake for the sunset and we were so glad we did.  It was beautiful and a great way to end our weekend.  We headed back to Illinois on Monday and Mom, Dad, Ashley also came over for a short visit before heading back to  southern Indiana. ''

Carter loves the beach!

Spotting sailboats

 Monday evening we headed to our small town 4th of July celebration.  Since this was our first 4th of July in the new house we weren't sure what type of celebration it would be.  We were surprised at how large of a celebration it was.  The whole town showed up to celebrate and the fireworks were great!  Addy and Carter really enjoyed them and also enjoyed spending the evening outside playing. We had a wonderful Independence Day weekend with family and enjoyed our time together relaxing!

Happy 4th of July