Adventure Monday!

Today was Monday! Hence: Adventure time!

It was Juanito's weekend off, AND Beth had today off, and so they both joined us for our adventuring. Yay!

After a quick stop at Meijer for some picnic-y foods, we headed up to a tiny town about 45 minutes away, where there is a giant slide that goes down the side of a hill. It wasn't super fast today...until Houston took off his sweatshirt and sat on it, took off his shoes and rolled down the cuffs of his jeans so that they covered his feet, and flew down the slide so fast that he flung right off the end of it and tumbled to a stop in the dirt. That, of course, created a new flurry of excitement wherein everyone had to pass around Houston's sweatshirt (it was the fastest) and have a go. Fun for all!

After sliding to everyone's hearts' content, we climbed back in the car and headed up to Montague, where the World's Largest Weather Vane lives. (It's 48 feet tall, and the arrow is something like 26 feet long.) And, i mean, it's not like a weather vane is the MOST exciting thing in the world, but now we can all say that we saw the Biggest! One! Anywhere!

Around 14 years ago, Beth and i went to Montague with Houston and had a picnic and let little 1-year-old Houston play on the playground, and so we knew there was a park nearby. We didn't know exactly where it was, although we were pretty sure it was by the water. So we started hunting, and found a spot with a field and a boat launch and a marsh walk and picnic tables, and decided that that was a lovely enough place to eat our lunch. It might have been nicer if it hadn't been quite so cold, but everyone who had hoods put them up, and we soldiered on. (I mean, it was probably in the low 60's, so it's not like we were in Siberia, but when the clouds were covering the sun and the wind was blowing, it was cold.)

We were all excited about the marsh walk, because there's one near us that we used to love, but it's been closed for a couple of years now, so this sounded promising. And it was pretty...but it was also incredibly short. It was like...walk a 100 yards, turn right, and that's the end. But it was still pretty enough to sit and enjoy it for a bit. And! There was an island? In the middle of the lake? With plants growing on it and stuff? And it was totally moving. Like...just floating along as if it's perfectly normal for islands to just meander downstream.

Anyhow. We stopped at an actual playground (probably the one we'd gone to years ago) so the kids could play for a bit, and then headed home. And that was mostly it, except that on the way home, we stopped to see a mini-Stonehenge. It's adorable - maybe 1/2 or 1/3 size - and i totally wish we could have gone closer, but it's on private property, so we had to content ourselves with standing by the gate, peering in.