Oh, why hello! I'm still here!

Hey there! I feel like we haven't talked in a while. I know I posted a few times last week, but truly those posts were written the previous week -- before I left for vacation. Didn't want the blog to go empty for so long and didn't want it too public that I was out of town. Hence, the fill in posts. Do you do that on your blog? It's weird. I feel way behind and disconnected to my little home here. So let me catch you up!

Can I tell you about my vacation? I hope this isn't like what people did in the 1950s when they invited the neighbors over for a photo slideshow of their trip. That must have been the invite everyone pretended got lost in the mail, right? So I will speed through a summary and get to the good stuff (pretty photos).

We went for a week to Suttons Bay, a small city north of Traverse City, Michigan. I've been a lot of places for great vacations, and this one was prehaps my favorite ever. Why? Easy. The people. Not the people of Suttons Bay, but the people we traveled with. The people we actually shacked up with. Yup, we stayed in one house with 17 people -- three other couples and our collective nine children under the age of 5.

Our big, messy, wonderful group. :)

Chaotic, sure. But guys, listen to me: if you have friends like this, DO THIS. Go on vacation together. It was so lovely. We sat around, ate food, talked, played games, watched one another's kids, played in the water, drank wine and just truly relaxed and enjoyed being together. On the last day, we started talking about next year. It makes me so happy to know these people, to share this time in our lives, and to give our kids the gift of having such great friends and memories.

OK, enough. Time for pretty pictures. I took so many (new lenses, yadda yadda) but here are a few of my absolute favorites.

Wish I could show you all our adorable kids. But they're not mine to share, right?

View from our porch of the dock next door. Yeah, mega zoom for helping me get this tight!

Nom nom nom. Suttons Bay Farmers Market.

My first two boys, sleeping together in a hammock. Sweetest sight ever.

This was the only nap he took for an entire week.

Michigan strawberries are tastiest.

Taken with my "retro" lens, the Diana lens. Blurry or retro cute? Still trying to decide?

My little Jack was the youngest guy there.

My hubs, bearded and bespectacled.

Need something pretty to put in your yard?

Sitting on the dock of Suttons Bay...

Sigh. It was so lovely. So, so lovely.

I do have sewing plans and some other bloggy plans coming this week. Thanks for indulging my and my vacation story today. :)