The Tangrens

I’m not going to do a daily travel log (litterally) as I have up to this point. (I hear the cheers) I just want to highlight the some of the things about our week long reunion at the beach house, in Manistee on Lake Michigan. As I type I’m seeing this.

Nice huh? Yeah, I could totally get used to this. Derek is like this

He could totally get used to that too I’ll bet. And the boys are like this

They could absolutely get used to that too. They love their cousins and they don’t need us when they are together. They’re not even all here yet.

This is our room in the beach house. Not exactly sure why we got the biggest room, maybe it’s because we have the youngest kids and they might need to sleep near us (which has been the case). This room is amazing. We call it the suite. This is the view we wake up to.

This is the bathroom off to the left

This is the walk in closet

And this is the shower

Notice anything missing? Like a DOOR! There are two shower heads which leaves you with these two options when you’re showering…the room view

Or the mirror view

With absolutely nothing between you and the view. Uncomfortable is a bit of an understatement. Derek says that it’s just waiting for an awkward family moment.

But, it works for bathing two little boys at the same time! J

Of course the first impression it makes is the stairs up to the house itself. There is some debate how many steps there actually are. I counted 62 but some say there are more like 66.

There are benches to rest along the way.

On the last night we were in the beach house Derek gathered up all of the teenager cousins and offered them a challenge. He said they were going to take as much stuff down to the cars as possible ( they all kind of grumbled and said ‘I knew it!’) and the person who went down and back up the stairs the most would get the ten dollar bill in his wallet. That perked up quite a few ears. But the caveat was that they’d have to beat him. They started off at a run. Then we were scared that they’d go tumbling down the stairs but there were no casualties minus one cousin getting pushed off a flat spot onto the beach grass. Just a little friendly competition between the boy cousins.

Again and again they went up and down the stairs taking everything we could think to send down. There was a rule that girls couldn’t take luggage though. It was not a cool evening either. We began to worry that some of them would pass out from heat stroke, so we brought out popsicles. One by one they gave up until there were only two; Derek and Ethan, the oldest boy cousin.

Noah was very cute and sat at the top of the stairs yelling “I’m waiting for you Daddy! Yea! Daddy!” When we didn’t have anything waiting for them to take down they would just go up and down the stairs without anything. At the very end everyone had done it at least 10 times, the next one was 18, Derek did 30 times and Ethan went up and down those stairs 34 times!!! Derek sat them all down afterwards and told them how proud of them he was.

Then he talked about some gospel parallels to what they’d just done. He talked about giving women proper respect and treating them right (that was why the girls didn’t carry luggage thing), about being able to do hard things, and enduring to the end (quoting a scripture in 2 Nephi). It made an impact on at least one of my nephews. I think my husband is pretty amazing.

Despite its little oddities, it is really an amazing house. No curtains or blinds on any window (minus the closet in our suite and the two other bathrooms) but 99% of the time you don’t want anything over the windows. I had to restrain myself from taking pictures of every

last

sunset.

These pictures are not photoshopped people. They were that beautiful!

In fact every time I saw the view we saw everyday it took my breath away and I ended up taking all too many pictures of the views out those windows. Almost all of the windows are ceiling to floor and all of them have amazing views.

Certainly the most striking view is the lake but even the garage view is beautiful.

It’s got three decks for gathering, lounging and admiring.

So funny stories about the decks, one day I was down at the beach and Jaleigh and Noah were in the house. Jaleigh came down to the beach and said she wanted to be at the beach now so I went up to the house. Noah had a dirty diaper so I changed it and rinsed out his bathing suit. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to put on a swim diaper or a regular diaper so he was in the buff while I went to hang his swim suit outside to dry. The wind was pretty strong that day and the door shut hard behind me. When I went to go back inside the door wouldn’t open. I asked Noah to open the door thinking that he’d locked me out. He kept saying that he couldn’t. Then he disappeared. So I stood on the deck and called to him and called to the people on the beach but they were too far away to hear me and even if they were closer they wouldn’t have been able to hear me because of the waves. I started looking around for another route but all of them required precarious positions which I knew that Derek would be mad at me for. Finally Holly happened to turn around and saw me.

Do you see me up there?

I beckoned to her and Nathan came running up to rescue me. As it turned out the wind had closed the door so hard that the door had gone beyond the door jam. He had to get a screwdriver to pry the door open.

During all this Derek lounged in the surf.

Then on Tuesday when the Garricks got here we had Family Home Evening and had a bonfire out on the main deck to roast marshmallows and have my parents tell stories. Ethan had lit tiki lamps around the deck which added a fun ambiance. When my parents were telling stories I inadvertently turned around and noticed the beach grass on fire behind us. Holly who was holding Elijah got up and moved toward the fire.

She almost grabbed the oil to douse the flames with. Ultimately Nathan who had been a wild fire fighter in Utah many years ago ran to get a towel and put the flames out. Then they got buckets of water to put it completely out.

One evening late in the week we were making dinner and noticed Noah , fairly scantily clad out on the little porch deck, just running back and forth. I sat and watched him for a bit and laughed. I went and got my video camera to capture it:

What a cute kid.

The one problem was there weren’t enough rooms for all the adults to have rooms so two had to be on the couch every night. But we were all under one roof and all the cousins could be together which is where they wanted to be.

But the best thing about the beach house is that it is a beach house. There is nothing but sand and beach grass between the house and the lake.

The path to the beach was long and hot but so worth it.