Another Day in Paradise

I make no apologies for my adoration of Interlochen and my life at the moment. I only wish all of you were here with me!

The girls had their first day of rehearsal today. Since it's Monday (technically a day off for the kids), they only had rehearsal for 3 hours in the morning, and the rest of the day was ours.

Hannah and Anna were champs, getting up at 7 a.m. to go running.

Rehearsals were a success, although Hannah doesn't like having to count 90 measures of rest in a John Williams' piece :-)

Anna practicing with Hannah

Glo loves her orchestra and the music they are playing.

Lunch.

Anna then spent an hour with Johannah, helping her rehearse her next set of audition excerpts. Johannah has no desire to be put in the lower orchestra anytime soon.

Afterwards, we were off for the day. Our destination? Sleeping Bear Dunes, voted "The Most Beautiful Place in America". Seriously.

We've been here for five years now and never visited the dunes. They are only 30 minutes away. Boy, we have been missing out!!

We first drove "the scenic drive". Anna was our tour guide, and we both learned a lot while the girls completed the Junior Ranger program.

We just HAD to stop here (hey, it was on the way!)

Feeling guilty about biting off the bear's head...

This was 600 feet (or some other unbelievable number) above the lake

Two of these toes are related, and the other hopes she will be be :-)

When we pulled into the parking lot, I told the kids that it wouldn't take more than five minutes to climb the first dune.
Yeah right, I think I heaved up a lung.

These three made it to "the benches"--the highest point on the dunes.

Now THIS is my kind of picture! See me? In my orange shirt? Don't I look wonderful--skinny and tanned and young?

Yeah, she's a BABE!

No wonder we were afterwards finding sand in places we didn't know we have :-)

SUCH a great day!

We finished off the night by driving to Grand Traverse Pie Company for individual slices of pie which we took home along with our two large Pizza Hut pizzas. The Bachelorette was on at eight, and we weren't ready for the fun to end.

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