Our January Trip to Michigan

Is today seriously the last day of January? Already? I don’t know where the last month went, but it’s been a fairly busy one around here!

As you might have seen on Instagram, we took a little family trip to the Oregon Coast this past weekend. We did the same thing last year and had a great time, so we decided to do it again. This time, we stayed in a rental in Waldport and we relaxed, played on the beach, and visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Sea Lion Caves. Since I already posted a bunch of photos on Instagram, I probably won’t get around to doing a blog post this year, but it was a lot of fun!

But backing up to earlier this month, we took a trip to Michigan to visit my family aka Charlie’s first time on a plane! Since he was only a few weeks old at Thanksgiving and still pretty young at Christmas, we opted to wait until January for his first plane ride. And although January isn’t exactly an ideal time to travel to Michigan weather-wise, it was nice to travel after the holiday rush and it was great to be able to finally introduce Charlie to family and friends. (We actually traveled to Michigan last January too and I shared this post, which is still very applicable with a two year old…ha!) Our trip was filled with lots of family time and since I never got around to sharing many photos on social media while we were there, I thought I’d share some here on the blog before January is over 🙂

My parents were out in Oregon for Charlie’s birth but no one else had been able to meet him yet, so my sister and brother-in-law and nephew flew in from New York during our visit and it was the first time we had all the kiddos together! The last time we had seen our nephew, Samuel, was when we were out in NYC when I was pregnant and he’s (obviously) grown so much since then! So a lot of our trip was just enjoying time at my parents house with these sweet cousins all under one roof 🙂

And thanks to my sister for bringing the boys these cute stripey PJs from Polarn!

After having two daughters, now my parents are having fun with all these grandsons 🙂

 We also got to spend lots of time with my cousins while we in Michigan which was really nice! It feels like it wasn’t too long ago that we were the kids so it’s a little surreal that now we have kids 🙂

Henry and Charlie. LOL.

We also got to spend a lot of time with my Grandma while we were in Michigan which was great 🙂

Missing a couple cousins from this one, but hopefully next time!

Unfortunately, we didn’t have too much time to get together with friends this trip, but we did get to see a few people. It just seems like there’s never enough time to fit everything in!

Sibling pic at Mike’s 30th!

One night during our visit, we had dinner at the White Horse Inn; it’s not far from my parents’ house and it’s in an area with lots of horse farms. I couldn’t resist snapping a couple pictures because the rustic equestrian decor was so good 🙂

My parents live about 45 minutes north of Detroit, but every time we’re in Michigan these days, we seems to be going down to Detroit more and more and it’s awesome to see all the new things and positive changes there. This trip, we stopped at Astro Coffee in Corktown, and even though it’s been open for awhile now, I think it’s so cute and it reminds me of Portland.

We actually didn’t have terrible weather for January and with the exception of one day of really icy roads, the rest of our trip was relatively dry and not too cold. So we didn’t get to play in the snow like we did last year, but we did get to take Henry down to the pond on my parents’ property to walk on the ice! He wasn’t a huge fan of it, but it was kind of cute to see him sliding around out there 🙂

 

He was much happier being back on dry land looking for sticks 🙂

 Charlie also had a great time in Michigan and his personality seems to come out more and more every day. He’s such a happy little guy and it was nice for my family to get to spend some time with him 🙂

I tried to put him in some actual “outfits” while we were there, why are babies in cardigans so cute?

We spent a lot of our time in Michigan this trip just chilling at my parents’ house since it’s not exactly easy to go places quickly with two infants and a toddler, but it made for a very relaxing visit 🙂

 

Another good thing about coming to Michigan in January is that we were able to be there for my mom’s birthday, so it was nice to be able to celebrate with her 🙂

Last but not least, we got to go to the North American International Auto Show while we were in Michigan! It happens every January and it’s a pretty of a big deal in Detroit, so it was fun to be able to go this year now that Henry is a little older and very in to cars 🙂

He wanted to “drive” every car and screamed when we pulled him out…ha!