Our picnic at Lake Michigan

I actually managed to get them all looking at me at the same time! Amazing feat for sure!
I'm not usually one for just scenic photographs. I usually try to put a person in the foreground and use the scenery as background, but this was a beautiful time of evening at the bridge. I was wanting to stick around to see the sunset become more vivid, but it was going to be midnight as it was before we arrived at my parents so I didn't stick around.
I told them it was cold, and I would not get dry clothes out of the suitcase for them if they were fussing about being wet when we got back in the car...it didn't deter them one bit! All of us love playing along the lakeshore of Lake Michigan at the foot The Bridge.
I didn't even try to get Sarah to stand up and look at me for this shot...She was loving playing in the water more than anyone else!

The Mackinaw Bridge is the halfway point between our house and my parents' so we usually make that a stopping place when we travel. When the weather permits, we pack a picnic so the kids can get out of the car and play, and we can save some money, too. We managed a stop at dinner time when I took the kids down last weekend, but it was rather chilly so we didn't stay too long. No one ate much because they knew they had limited time and chose to spend it playing along the lakeshore...or in Sarah's case, chasing the birds. She LOVES birds and had a great time with all the seagulls that were hovering around us waiting for us to feed them. We have learned from experience that you should not feed the couple of birds around you lest you get swarmed by a gazillion more that appear out of nowhere once you start feeding them. I was telling my kids about the ol' Hitchcock film, "The Birds." Somehow they weren't as freaked out about it as I was even just telling them about the movie!

On a sweet note...we did arrive at my parents around midnight. Sarah had not taken a nap at all in the car so I expected her to sleep quite soundly once she gave in to sleep. And she must have for those 3 hours from 9-12 because she was WIDE AWAKE when we went into my parents' house. She made a bee-line for the toy room and wanted to see the dog, too. We all tried to head to bed since I had a long drive the next day, but Sarah was very much awake. She kept calling for me, and then she'd call for Hannah, then I'd hear her playing with the stuffed animal in her bed, then she'd call me some more. I finally went in and "laid down the law" one last time and gave her some definitive and "measurable" incentives to stop calling for "Mamma or Ya-Ya (Hannah)" I went back to bed and after just a few minutes I heard "Snuggle me, please." She obeyed the letter of the law, but not the spirit--she didn't call Mamma or Hannah, but still got her point across. And I, being the great disciplinarian that I am, gave in and went in to snuggle with her. I couldn't resist, knowing I wouldn't get any sort of hugs or snuggling in for 2 whole weeks! :-)