Beach outing

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There are a ton of pictures in this post, so if you have dial-up, it might take a while to load.

Saturday was so much fun. Our church drove up to Lake Michigan for an afternoon at the beach. This was not a trip to go swimming (our Independant Baptist church wouldn’t have planned a swimming trip), but a trip to enjoy the sand dunes and to play some beach football and volleyball.

26 people piled into vans and off we went. It was somewhere between a 2 and 2 1/2 hour drive. They loaded our van with everybody else’s stuff so Stephen and I didn’t have anybody else riding with us. It was really nice to have some time to talk.

There had been some concern about the weather becaue there was a 70% chance of thunderstorms. It was fairly clear when we got there, and not too cold. Most of us kept our long sleeves on, but there were a few people in tshirts. We ate lunch, and then everybody scattered to have fun. The younger kids made sand castles. Little man just enjoyed being outside.

One family made the teenage brother into a sand mermaid – I didn’t realize it until I saw pictures, and then I had a good laugh. Later Little man and I took off for a walk along the beach, looking for neat things. He was thrilled to find a monarch butterfly. Stephen joined us a few moments after that. We really enjoyed looking at all the rocks that had washed up on shore.

As the afternoon wore on, we watched as clouds gathered over Chicago. Eventually we couldn’t see the Chicago skyline anymore. We enjoyed watching the storm come across the lake. Once the lightning began we realized that the storm was coming faster than we thought, so we packed our things and left the beach. We stopped just long enough to take a few pictures.

Here’s what the storm looked like coming across the lake:

It was absolutely breathtaking. Our God is so amazing!

We couldn’t have had better timing – the rain began right as we were finishing loading up the vans. By the time we got back on the interstate it was hailing, but that passed quickly. We went to a nearby mall so we could all eat at the food court (I think the reasoning was that everybody could eat what they wanted). Apparently the Lord wanted us to leave the beach right when we did, because the rain stopped as soon as we reached the mall. We ate and then headed home. It was a long and busy day, but the time away for Stephen and I was well worth it.