Michigan Trip Day 3-Still Living Grandly

We awoke all chirpy and happy on Wednesday morning, our only full day on the island.  

G was on her best behavior in the dining room for breakfast.  

We hit the lawn for some croquet.  

One of the gardeners took these pictures on my iPhone, and I think they are just amazing.

That hotel is gorgeous, and so are all of the grounds.

Genevieve played in the fountain.

She waved at all of the carriages and horses that came by.

The ladies took a carriage into town where ice cream was consumed at 10:30 a.m.

Abby tried to help G with this bike, but it didn't go so well!

Lady Genevieve and I retired for an afternoon nap while Aunt Shirley and Abby explored more.

Trinity and Eddie spent the morning playing golf at the hotel.  

When T returned, we ate lunch at the pool grill.  

Look at Satan's creature behind me.

That seagull was a bit too close and his actions could only be described as "intimidating loitering."  

G played seesaw on the pool loungers.

I present the sequence of events that did not result in Genevieve swimming.

I'm in the water (it was heated and 80 degrees, but the air is 64 degrees.)  "Come here, G." 

I stood up to go get her.

Notice she heads in the opposite direction.

I sat back down and tried to grab her.

She outran me.

(disclaimer:  no pregnant-bad shadow and some terrible posture)

I gave up and we made our own snow cones.

G loved hers until she didn't.

There was a major meltdown and it wasn't the ice.

We changed and played for a few minutes on the Island playground.  We also picked up some fudge for Bob.

Then it was time to prep for dinner again.

She does her own hair now.

Here she is, promising to be a good girl at dinner.  

That promise was not kept.  I finally lost my sh*t when she winged crackers and crayons off my head in the middle of the dining room and screamed that she was putting me in time out.

There I was, once again, trying to have a nice dinner like Baby at Kellerman's, and my little terrorist wrecked it.  

I snatched her up  in a football hold and gingerly took her dinner on a silver platter in my other hand.  I walked shamefully to the entrance of the dining room, which I swear was the length of 3 football fields.  

This length would have been fine had I been a member of Homecoming Court, but I wasn't.

She finished her dinner on the floor in our room.  

This time Trinity brought me both my main course and my dessert.

Moral of the story:

2 year olds can act like total a-holes.  

We departed the next day and G paid our fare.

We had a wonderful time overall.

A formal dining setting just isn't realistic for my child at this point.  I would have put up the iPad, but the amount of china and flatware on the table allowed for little room.

Cheers to Mackinac Island and naughty toddlers.  

Michigan Day 2-Mackinac Island

We departed early from Saugatuck for the 4 hour drive up to the ferry to Mackinac Island.  Genevieve carried some of her own luggage.

These clueless fools decided to ride on the top of the ferry, when it was 65 degrees and windy as possible.

Genevieve thought riding on the boat was almost as exciting as the dune buggy.  

16 minutes later, we were in a carriage.

To the Grand Hotel, please!  

Yes, yes, this will do.  

And boom!

A Carleton Varney designed room.

If this looks familiar, he was Dorothy Draper's protege and she designed The Greenbrier, where T and I stayed 2 years ago.

I was in pattern heaven.  

We checked out our view of the lake!  

We met Abby, Aunt Shirley and Papi to check out the rest of the hotel.  

This is the view from the front porch, the longest in the world.  

Included in a stay at The Grand Hotel is a 5 course dinner and breakfast daily.  That sounds lovely, except when you have a toddler who is potty training.  

Lady G carefully selected macaroni and cheese off of the children's menu.

She ate most of it, then she leaned over and announced to me in this gorgeous dining room, "I have to poop."

Awesome.

Now the tricky thing with G is that she is terrified of the sound of toilets flushing.  Especially those damn automatic ones.  So I took her in the most gorgeously appointed bathroom ever, only to have her scream and refuse to sit on the toilet.

Trinity continued to enjoy his 5 course meal and cocktails while I ruminated in hell in the bathroom.  

Finally, she decided to put on a diaper and go find a quiet place to "poop."

That would not be in the bathroom, because of all of those flushing toilets.  

So we found this beautiful area in the parlor and I swooned over that palm print.    

I needed a picture of at least how nice we looked before we got down to business.  

Fortunately, no one was in this little alcove area.

There was a lot of effort and red facing it as I sang Baby Beluga softly in her ears as encouragement.  

I was really missing my 4th course about now. 

She finished and screamed "I'm done!"

Now this is when all hell broke loose.   

She took off into the main parlor, where guests were enjoying cocktails and the music of this beautiful harpist.  My child was running away from me, announcing, "I pooped!"  

As I chased my child, I thought about how much this entire scene was like that classic version of Jack and the Beanstalk.  

Here is the beautiful harpist-

And here is Betsy the Giant, fee fi fo fumming through that beautiful room trying to catch my tiny "Jack." 

My glamorous Jackie Kennedy feelings of grace quickly gave way to Giantess chasing poopy toddler.  

I finally caught her and carried her in a football hold to the nearest elevator. 

After a bath she went back to quietly coloring on the geranium stationery of the hotel.  

G had eaten most of her macaroni and cheese before this all occurred, so she was fine.  I had gotten through 3 small courses.  I enjoyed some nice peanut butter crackers from her snack bag as my 4th course.  Thank God Trinity had enough sense to bring me dessert when he came back up.  

We all slept well and I woke up ready for Day 3.  

Michigan Mini-Vacation Day 1

Our little family of three got up on Monday morning and drove to the Saugatuck/Douglas area of Michigan.

It was about a 3 1/2 hour drive and the weather was sunny and about 64 degrees.

We stayed at a 13 room retro motor lodge called The Pines Motor Lodge, and sadly I did not take any pictures of that darling little piece of minty green happiness.  

It was darling and the beds were divine.

As soon as we checked in we drove about 3 miles down the road to take the Saugatuck Dune buggy tour.  

Genevieve was so excited that we told her we were going to go really fast.  

Trinity also told her not to scream too much, so she wouldn't wake the "dune kitties."  My husband is such a nut. Throughout the ride she was shushing me often not to wake the kitties.  

She absolutely loved it.

We stopped at a lookout point and she got busy in the sand.  

She wasn't so hip to the sand that got in her shoes.  

We ended our evening with a meal at the Mermaid Bar and Grill that was right on the water.

They brought us blankets so we could sit outside because it was so windy.

I had downloaded Finding Nemo on G's iPad to watch on the way up and she was fascinated by the boats and kept asking where Nemo and Dory were.  

We tried to explain the difference between a lake and the ocean, but she turned into Dory for the trip.  She couldn't remember any explanations that we told her, or she refused to believe them.

Where's Nemo? was a common question.

Our first day and night in Pure Michigan were wonderful.

We still stuffed G in a Pack 'N Play, but I think this was the last trip for that.  She barely fits in it anymore.