Family Trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan

Our summer calendar is filling up fast, so we decided to take a quick family get away while we had the chance. I checked hotel prices through HotWire for some area cities and went with a 3 star hotel in Grand Rapids that we got for $36 a night. This was an amazing bargain. I checked the hotel's website and the lowest price for one night was $120. The hotel ended up being an all-suites Holiday Inn Express with a nice breakfast included.

We spent one afternoon at Sagutuck Dunes State Park, on Lake Michigan.

Landen had lots of fun playing in the sand. We did not have so much fun battling the beetles and biting flies at the beach though. We also did not have so much fun getting there because we took a 25 mile wrong turn, then got in an hour long traffic jam.

Makenna swam the most at the beach. It was cold water.

The kids loved the pool at the hotel.

Landen is watching himself ride his bike on YouTube in the Apple Store.

Kylee and Makenna are sitting in a bowl of "Daddy's favorite cereal."

I liked the Grand Rapids Public Museum better than the Indianapolis Children's Museum. The exhibits were more aesthetically pleasing, it wasn't crowded and it only cost $19 for our family of five to enter - due to their summer special prices. We spent about four and a half hours touring the museum at a leisurely place. I would describe it as a science / history museum with an emphasis on history and a focus on how people lived in the early days of Grand Rapids, the late 1800s.

Kylee standing in front of a section of the Berlin Wall. In the exhibit photo just to Kylee's left, the section is photographed at Checkpoint Charlie when the wall started coming down.

There's no extra charge to ride the museum's carousel. We rode it three times.

Kylee and Makenna in Yesterdog. We all agreed, "That was a good dog."

We took one of the seats out of our van for the trip. It worked out pretty well, as this picture from our trip home shows.

Vacation Expenses

We tried to keep our recent family vacation to Lexington and Pigeon Forge as inexpensive as possible. I think we managed pretty well (although, maybe I should have pulled the trigger on the three and a half star hotel I saw on Hotwire in Sevierville for $45 a night. That would have saved $150. But I'm not sure what the breakfast situation would have been with that hotel, so we might have ended up spending quite a bit more on food.)


2009 Spring Break Trip to Lexington, Kentucky and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Expenses to feed, lodge, entertain, transport and souvenir our family of five:

Food: $335.49 (Includes dining out, groceries, snacks, chipping in for pizza and the veggie tray we took to a family gathering.)

Lodging: $310.59 (All at the Inn at Christmas Place - my sister didn't charge us rent for the four nights we stayed at her house.)

Entertainment: $44.92 (Includes Magic Beyond Belief show for three, miniature golf for two, DVD rental for four.)

Souvenirs: $53.21 (Hat for Makenna, bear for Landen, bear for Kylee, shirt for the girls and a shirt for me.)

Transportation: $124.10 (Four tanks of gas.)

Total: $868.41

$24.80 per person, per day.

The Kalahari

Kristi's parents took our family to the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio for a Christmas getaway. Even though our vacation was delayed about 4 hours due to ice, we had a great time. I'll just post a photo slide show and leave the description of the trip to Makenna, who covered the vacation here.

Trip to Indy

We took an after Thanksgiving family trip to Indianapolis. We spent Friday and Saturday night there and had a great time. My dad, who is traveling on business, was able to meet us for supper Friday night and go to the 2A state championship football game. He also took us to the Children's Museum on Saturday. We were so glad he was able to drive us there because the line for a valet to get our van out of the garage looked to be at least an hour long.

Here's most of what we did.

• ate at Qdoba in Kokomo
  
• walked around the Indiana State Capital
• went to Circle Center Mall
• tried to eat the the Old Spaghetti Factory
• ate at Jillian's (where my dad and I watched the end of the Purdue basketball game and the kids played games upstairs.)
• went to the 2A state championship football game at Lucas Oil Stadium
• swam
• got bagels from Einsteins for breakfast
  
• went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum
• ate at Currito
• saw The Polar Express in 3D at the IMAX theater
• got groceries on the way home
• ate at Qdoba in Kokomo again

We like the make-it-fresh burrito places.

Polar Express is not one of my favorite movies, but it was pretty cool in IMAX 3D. I would recommend it. Landen especially liked the movie (although he would NOT leave the 3D glasses on.) When it ended he asked if we could watch it again, then refused to leave until the last of the credits were rolled.

We stayed at the Westin and we very pleased with out stay. We stayed there for $55 a night - which was the bid I placed on Priceline when I made the reservations a few months ago. It was a great trip. The kids were very appreciative and well behaved, which makes the trip for me. Here are pictures from the trip.