Petoskey Autumn Blast '09

This past weekend was a whirlwind of driving, soccer, girls, and beautiful weather. I am just barely starting to recover.

We left on Friday right after school. In hindsight, I should have taken her out a few hours earlier so we could arrive before dark. The Yahoo! directions I had (directly from the hotel website) were wrong. After driving around for an hour, I called OnStar to get turn by turn directions. Also wrong. I 'arrived at my destination' in someone's driveway. Let me tell you, Up North Michigan is not a place to get lost in at night. There are no signs anywhere. I never knew what the speed limit was, what road I was on. Nothing is open. You are literally in the middle of nowhere. It's a miracle we didn't run out of gas and have to sleep in the car.

But we made it! We stayed at Boyne Highlands- a ski/golf resort. It's ginormous. All of the buildings look like medieval times. I expected Rapunzel to lean out one of the arched windows. I expected to see Shrek and Donkey.

See? There's Rapunzel's window. No strolling minstrels in sight...

view outside of our bedroom window @ 7:30 a.m. I didn't get a good shot of the chairlifts in the fog.

There was lots of soccer too. Wait for it.

The highlight of the trip was going to the beach on Saturday after the second game. I found the cutest bakery/yarn shop online and was dying to go before our team dinner, but the minute someone said 'beach' I was a gonner. It was the most beautiful day. The water was lovely, and the girls were exuberant; diving and body surfing in the swells. It was by far, the best 6 dollars I have spent in a long time :)

ooops. Were we supposed to stay dry?

looking for Petoskey stones in and out of the water. Emma found a ton of small ones.

And there were games. Two on Satuday, one on Sunday. We didn't win a single one. Bummer.

0-0. 0-1. 1-2.

They played very well the first two games. Emma was awesome, especially in the second half of game two. She did the most wicked header. Even her coach commented on her level of play.

Every action shot of her is blurry. Usually, she is on the opposite side of the field from where we sit, so it's nearly impossible to catch her. This games, she was on my side, and I only had my zoom. She was too close!

You couldn't have asked for a better weekend of travel! I wish I would have slept decently, the better to enjoy it all. In three days I totaled 14 hours of sleep. And put 800+ miles on the car.

So glad to be home, and to have a day to rest before I have to drive again!