great wolf lodge [in a million pictures]

The Gootes took us to Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City this weekend. 

We met at their house on Friday morning where we were greeted with donuts.

Elise was pretty excited.

We got there, swam a little, then headed into Traverse City.

This old building used to be a sanitarium - and now it's a huge area that's being redone into little shops, restaurants, and condos.  Very cute.  And a little creepy. 

Seriously a fish.

This would probably make you laugh out loud. 

She was having SO much fun. 

We played a little mini-golf.

She was this excited every single time she got the ball in the hole. 

Sometimes she just threw it in there. 

The pools were SO warm and fun.

I was taking pictures of Elise and looked over and saw Nick.  

All by himself.  Playing in the kiddie pool. 

At 8pm every night they have story time in the lobby.  

We had SUCH a fun weekend.  Thank you SO MUCH Gootes.  

Here's Elise after we dragged her out of the pool when we had to leave and bribed her with McDonalds. 

phone dump

Random phone dump.  Some of these are kind of old. 

I was feeling awesome one day so I spent an entire nap time making homemade finger paint.  I colored the weird cornstarch/water mixture all different colors and she played with it for almost fifteen minutes.  Worth it? 

These are from our trip out to Grand Haven for the Coast Guard Festival a few weekends ago.  So fun. 

A fun trip to the splash pad.  

My curly-haired sweetheart on the boat.

She's so big now she says she needs to eat breakfast up on the tall stools.  

Last week I only needed a couple things at the store so I let her take her stroller in.  With Rapunzel.  She thought she was hot stuff. 

Fancy Pants.

My mom's fridge broke a couple weeks ago and had to be repaired.  

Last Friday when we were there Elise remembered and talked about for 5 straight minutes.  I caught the tail end with my phone...she remembers everything it's so hilarious. 

elise goes to binder park zoo

Elise is one lucky busy girl. 
Yesterday G&G Goote took her to Binder Park Zoo. 
This zoo is awesome.  They have giraffes!

Check out the tongues!

How cool is this??

She had a little run-in with some goats.  So funny. 


Grandpa kept sending me all these pictures from his phone.
It's pretty safe to say she had tons of fun. 

auntie winnie was here

(and Uncle Ken too.) 

 They were so nice to all the little kids.  
They ate lots of pretend ice cream cones and cupcakes.

Sweetheart girls.

Elise decided she was going to sit right by Uncle Ken for awhile.  
I wonder what she was telling him about.  

She was hard at work for awhile moving all these little chairs onto the tube.

Emily and William. 

Sweet family.  We spent a lot of time in the hot tub because it was freezing.  I meant it was 65.  Which is freezing for August.

Seriously the cutest baby ever.

Whew!  Elise has been busy.  The day after this G&G Goote took her to Binder Park Zoo.  I'm working on that post next. :-)

Guess who's here?

This is a total phone post while I'm laying in bed.  Nick reminded me I hadn't posted in almost two weeks... We've been busy!

Emily, Joe, and their sweet kids are in Michigan.  

Elise is so excited to play with her cousins. 

Little William is so cute. 

Eli, Elise, and Caroline play so nice.  

Elise just loves to have friends.