Friends and Family

I really like living in Howell.  I feel like we are lucky enough to have the best of both worlds.  It's definitely a suburb (I'm not exactly sure what it's a suburb of, but I feel like it's a suburb nonetheless!), but it still has that small town feel to it.  There's a cute little downtown, lots of open land and an abundance of restaurants, shopping and we are within an hour of Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lansing. 

That being said, there's no place like home.

A couple weeks ago, Lincoln and I met two of my oldest and dearest friends in Downtown Grand Rapids for none other than "Festival".  It's actually called Festival of the Arts, but I'm pretty sure everyone refers to it as Festival.  Lisa was in town from Chicago and Kristina was in GR with her husband from LA.  What better way to get together than to go to Festival?

Festival is one of those things I didn't appreciate when I was younger.  We always went to Festival, but it was pretty much just to people watch and eat meat on a stick.  Now that I'm older, I realize what a cool thing it really is.  There are stages set up all over with different bands and dance groups and singing groups, etc., performing throughout the 3 days.  For the little ones, there are booths set up where you and your kids can make t-shirts, they can have their faces painted and participate in other fun art projects.

The best thing was, and always has been, the food booths.  Like I mentioned before, we always went straight for the meat on a stick booth.  Years later, the first booth where we stopped was still the meat on a stick booth at the Vietnamese booth, (old habits die hard...isn't that what they say?) but we also stopped at the Middle Eastern booth, the Islamic booth and the Bosnian booth.  We made a stop at a Dutch booth, but I don't think that counts since all we had was ice cream.

It was so much fun walking around together, catching up and realizing how much culture there really is in Grand Rapids.  I love that since the diversity scene in Howell is pretty limited!!

I wish Lisa and Kristina were closer.  Seeing them always makes me so happy and brings me back to a different time in our lives, even with Lincoln in tow.  Who, by the way, loves his aunts!  And his Uncy RJ!

After spending time downtown, Lincoln and I went to my parent's house for the afternoon.  Nate made a last minute decision to come over, too, and my parents happened to be watching Quin for the day.  It worked out perfectly.  Quin and Lincoln have so much fun together.  Gigi and Papa have a couple of pools (one is supposed to be for the dog) and a sink that is constantly running water (his personal fave).  They played with the sidewalk chalk and hung out in the shade when it was too hot in the sun.

One of my favorite things about the day was how it turned into an impromptu family gathering.  Joelee and Jason brought the triplets over for dinner.  I loved it!  We missed Kirk, but it was so great

Lincoln and I didn't stay too long after dinner, but we had such a great day seeing friends and family.  I wish we could do it more often.

It's been a great summer so far!  Looking forward to our vacation in a month.  Yay!  :)

Hope you all are enjoying your summer as much as we are.