After all these years of saying and wishing, we finally went back! This past weekend, we left the girls with Grandma and Grandpa Drake and went back to Mackinac Island, where we honeymooned, to celebrate our five year anniversary! It was such a romantic, quiet, relaxed weekend, we loved every minute of it! It brought back so many memories from our honeymoon, and we were even mistaken for "newlyweds" at one point by a store owner, what a way to top off the weekend!
This time we stayed on the island (pretty pricey, but worth every penny!) at Harbourview Inn
(pictured above) and staying on the island as opposed to off the island lets you experience Mackinac's streets at night and the night life on the island's restaurants and pubs which was so neat!
The island is set in a Victorian Era so all the shops and homes are beautifully restored to that Era. We had great food and of course fudge, since Mackinac Island makes the best fudge in Michigan.
Mackinac Island is an island north of Michigan in between Michigan and the Upper Pennisula, kind of where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. To get there, you have to take a ferry across Lake Huron
(pictured above) which is about a 20 minute boat ride.
The night we arrived, it was cold and rainy and so windy that the waves were reaching about 6 ft. high! They actually closed the Mackinac bridge because it was too windy, so I was pretty terrified of taking this boat ride to the island. The boat ride was 20 minutes too long, with waves higher than the boat and our boat even
CAUGHT AIR TWICE!?!? I thought for sure I was going to die there, but we arrived safely to the island. After checking in, we went out for dinner and hot chocolate...
Mackinac Island is known for the invasion that happened at Fort Mackinac (pictured below) which was invaded by the British after the Revolutionary War (who knew?) which we toured the next day. It ended up being a beautiful fall day so we went sightseeing at Fort Mackinac, the Grand Hotel and rode bikes to some beautiful places.
Below are the pictures from Fort Mackinac...
The girls love to pretend play together lately and Hallie always has Sydnee pretend to sleep so not only does Syd lay her head down and pretend to sleep, she even pretends to snore!!! It's the cutest thing ever! So this is her pretending to snore...
Hallie took this picture... impressive huh?
A couple weeks ago, Sydnee figured out how to open the gate to the stairs and up she went!
To my surprise, she made it all the way to the top without falling down and was in my room crying and looking for me when I found her. Yes, that was a scare, but hooray, cause she made it to the top without me ever teaching her!! So, since then, when someone opens the gate, she makes a mad dash for the stairs and giggles (yes, giggles) as she's crawling up since she knows she's being naughty. It quickly becomes a race to see how fast she can get to the top before she gets caught.
A few days ago, I let her and Hallie play on the stairs and we were there for over an hour... who knew that playing on some stairs would be so entertaining!? Because of their pj's you may think it's early in the morning, but no... this picture was taken at 3:30 in the afternoon and it was so fun to be in pj's all day. It was a much needed pj day.
Yes, we finally got family pictures taken... our first time since we've become a family! Pathetic, I know, but look how cute they turned out! Don't worry, family members, you will be getting some for Christmas, so just wait a couple more months, or "a couple more while ago's" according to Hallie. Either way, Merry Christmas!
This time we stayed on the island (pretty pricey, but worth every penny!) at Harbourview Inn (pictured above) and staying on the island as opposed to off the island lets you experience Mackinac's streets at night and the night life on the island's restaurants and pubs which was so neat!
The island is set in a Victorian Era so all the shops and homes are beautifully restored to that Era. We had great food and of course fudge, since Mackinac Island makes the best fudge in Michigan.
Cam chose which trail to take to Arch Rock and Sugar Loaf rock and the whole trail happened to be all uphill...not very fun! But the view's were breathtaking...
No worries... we just carried our bikes over the tree and went on our way.
The Grand Hotel ranges from $500-$1100/night! Men must be dressed in a coat and tie and women must wear dresses when you're on the hotel's property... it's pretty fancy shmancy I'd say. They even make you pay $10/person just to walk on the porch if you're not a guest at the hotel. Instead of walking on the porch, we spent our $10 more wisely... like on fudge and ice cream.
Hallie learned quickly that an apple with a hole in it means it has worms so it took quite a while for Hallie (being a perfectionist... where does she get that from!??!) to pick the six best looking apples, but she did it.
These are the kids in Hallie's preschool group: Adam Manter, Kerra Stewart, Jaxton Routsong, Hallie and Brayden Spagnolo. We are having too much fun with the co-op preschool!
