Road trip

Work does not stop.. so we left town when Monday rolled around. A long day in the car, snacks, Android tablet, audiobooks and pit stops dotted our day as we clocked almost 500 miles in our little rental car on our way East to visit friends and do some American History school work.

Sunsets

We have been spoiled living in Monterey seeing amazing sunsets over the Pacific Ocean. However, Michigan is not to be outdone, many an evening we were treated to a magnificent sky show as the sun descended in the West.

Henry Ford Museum

Detroit is in many ways synonymous with automobiles so no visit is complete without a trip to the Henry Ford Museum- a fantastic collection of all things transportation and early American life.  Bob and Noah armed themselves with notepads and pencils, Lukas grabbed the camera and off we went.
 Not until the boys had gotten airplanes out of their system were we able to venture into the other areas of the museum - flying must be in their blood.
So the tour began with airplanes and ended with a paper airplane competition.... 

Post church slump

Lukas and Noah enjoyed the big hotel bed and caught a little rest after church on Sunday morning before they changed into swim shorts and headed for the pool - a daily thing while we were East.

Catching up on July

We spent most of July visiting Bob and friends on the East Coast, and had a lot of fun. After a very long travel day complete with hours of on the tarmac waiting, we finally made it to Detroit and Bob. Jet lag, travel and heat were good reasons to spend a leisurely and slow 4th of July. Not far from Bob's hotel is a water fountain park and we walked over to cool off, our Monterey California bodies were not taking well to the summer heat in Detroit.
Lukas, Noah and Bob chased each other, splashed, jumped, and laughed while I attempted to capture it all with the camera and not get wet!

Bob treated us to a home cooked meal in his hotel suite and we then headed off to see a baseball game, the boys' first one. Although a rain delay pushed the start of the game to well pass the boys' bedtime, our three hour jet lag worked in our favor and we all managed to stay awake to see Detroit win. The evening ended late with amazing and colorful fireworks, which felt as if they were set off right in front of our eyes. A fabulous 4th, family, food, fun and fireworks, does it get any better?

Rolling down the hill

Noah and Lukas also found time to build two different marble runs today. The loops and curve one was quickly abandoned for the straight up and down with a vertical drop from rail to rail of 8 inches and ending up in the living room. Now we really do need to clean under the couch in order to find all the marbles..

One way to do it...

Our next door neighbor has a beautiful magnolia tree in his front yard. The only trouble is the leaves drop all year around and most of them blow into our yard.. It does not take long for us to have a large pile of brown dead leaves by the front door and along the garage.
Today, I asked the boys to help me sweep. I pulled out the broom, the dust pan to gather the leave in and handed over the 'baton' of making it happen to these two capable young men. Little did I realize the challenge I gave them - they did not see a simple sweep and gather job, they saw an opportunity for invention.
A few minutes later this contraption headed down the drive way. Effectiveness?  Well, at the moment the yard is leaf free.. but the wind is kicking up so maybe the invention must come out again tomorrow...