Eleven years...

Each year we try to do something new for our anniversary (though last year we repeated our honeymoon trip), and some years it has just been a road trip to find a new place to live in a new state which isn't terribly exciting. But we try. So, this year we went to Traverse City. We'd never been and everyone told us we had to go.


We loaded up the family, all our sinus infections be damned. Which for me meant a very painful drive because we went up in elevation and I couldn't get my ears to pop! We were supposed to take a cruise on a catamaran, but they accidentally double booked so we didn't get that (refund plus gift certificates though, so we'll try again another time.) There was a point in all this we were questioning why we were still going, but we are glad we did.


The boys kept us giggling all through lunch at the Mackinaw Brewery. The food was okay. Even I thought the fish was well done and I'm not a lake fish person. The beer was not bad for a microbrewery, but nothing to write home about. Really the highlight of lunch was being with our goofy boys.


After lunch we popped into The Cherry Republic to taste and stock up on all things cherry. We sampled lots of things, Cherry BBQ, Cherry Mustard, Cherry Salsa. And we did some wine tasting. Although I wouldn't switch from grapes on a regular basis, we settled on a bottle of 100% Cherry Wine to bring home. Oh, and dark chocolate covered cherries. Mmmm.


This was a bin full of cherry pits that the boys climbed into.

There were lots of great shops and bakeries and eateries, but we didn't think the boys were much interested so we'll have to save exploring more for another trip. We went to the beach right near down town. 

The water was FREEZING! Not that we expected to really do more than stick our toes in, but wow-zah! it was like dunking toes into ice water. It was truly painful to stand in it.

But the boys really wanted to be there for the sand. 

Malachi desperately wanted to build a sandcastle and put a flag in it.

I was even on this trip. There is rarely photographic evidence of my existence. We are trying to be better about that.

We wrapped up our time at the park with a ride on the mini train. It was a loud steam engine, so Malachi rode the whole time with his hands on his ears. :)

Moomers is an acclaimed ice cream place that is right on the premise of its own dairy. So we went out and tried some ice cream before heading home. Unfortunately the cows were all in the barn so we didn't get to see them. The ice cream was good. I had Cherries Moobilee because I was in cherry country, so what else. :) Matt got Spider Moo which was red and blue. It was a mix of their blue raspberry and red pop ice cream. The Red Pop ice cream really tasted like red pop. It was crazy. The boys got cookies and cream and lime sherbet, in case you are curious.

That is probably my favorite picture from the trip. It was foggy out in the bay, but you could see white sails from the boats dotting the horizon.