4th of July... in Marquette!

After we left our house, we breathed a sigh of relief about not having to rush around doing any more work on the house. Our friends Jim & Jennifer (mentioned previously) had offered that we, along with Nathan & Heidi and their 5 kids, could stay at their house while they were in lower Michigan for the 4th. So we all camped out at their house for the weekend and enjoyed being 2 blocks from the beach, now that the weather was nice enough to enjoy it. :)

Here are all ten kids camped out on Jim & Jen's living room floor. It was cozy, but fun. :)

It was a very picturesque Marquette day at the beach. (The water was still only about 59 degrees, though!) Here are Naomi & Joshua with a rainbow-colored sailboat in the background.

Matt & me enjoying a relaxing 4th of July at the beach. :)

Nathan likes to line up their kids in height order when they go out places. It's always fun to see the reactions when he lines our kids up with theirs. Someone said to us as we walked to the beach, "I feel like I'm in the Sound of Music!"

A woman who was working in her beautiful garden, right by the beach, made a remark about us needing a photo. So when we all left to head to the parade, we came over to take a photo of the kids. She offered to take our photo, and we learned that her 18-year-old son had died the summer before. It seemed to us that her garden was her expression of her love for him. The urn in front of us was empty in honor of her son, and she just temporarily stuck a pot of flowers into it for our photo.

Oh, and going from left to right, that would be: Naomi (5), Wil (3 1/2), Jesse (6 1/2), Joshua (8), Jack (6), Sam (he turned 8 on the 4th!), Marissa (12 1/2), Calvin (10 1/2), David (15 1/2), Sydney (12 1/2), me, Matt, Heidi & Nathan.


The "J Brothers" (Joshua & Jesse) at the parade. It was *so* nice to be at the Marquette 4th of July parade! It had been 3 years for us. We saw friends we knew in the parade, and it was fun just to be there for it. :)

After the parade, we had a picnic with Jean Kay's pasties at the Presque Isle park in Marquette. The kids and dads looked for agates (a kind of rock only found in the U.P.). It was a beautiful afternoon.

While we waited for the fireworks that evening, this is the view we had. Beautiful, huh?

All in all, we had a beautiful, "touristy", 4th of July in Marquette. More photos of our Michigan adventures will be coming later this week...