Our first destination in the morning was Windmill Island. I figured, you can't go to Holland and not see the Windmill!
Evan was grumpy and Scott's not much of a "look and see" kind of guy, so I tried to cheer everyone up and make the most of it. We went on the first tour of the Windmill and our tour guide was from Holland and moved to the States 12 years ago and moved to Michigan only back in March! She did a great job explaining the purpose of this Windmill and how it works. We went up 5 floors!
After touring the Windmill, we walked back to look in the shops and try on the wooden shoes, of course! There was a playground and carousel the boys enjoyed too. We spent about 2 hours there and it was the perfect amount of time to see it all.
At this point the kids and Scott were ready for some lunch and a change of pace. So, we drove to Holland State Park Beach down the road. This is a great beach! We paid for admission/parking since we don't have a State Park Pass and as we walked toward the beach there was a huge building that had a concession stand, store, bathrooms, and tables to sit down at to eat. We all changed and I grabbed the kids some pizza. We had fruit, veggies, and drinks packed in the cooler. Then, we found a spot as close to the water as we could find. It was quite a different experience from the beach the day before, but we made do. The sand was frying hot!!
We spend the rest of the afternoon building sand castles and moats, swimming all the way out to the "pole" in the water, and jumping in Lake Michigan off of the pier (well, Sean and Scott did anyway). Let me tell you...it was a hike from our spot in the sand to the end of the pier. Wear shoes because the sand is on fire and don't bring much with you because you'll have to carry a child...
We reached our limit of the sun around 4pm, so we decided to grab an early dinner at New Holland Brewing Company in town and then head back to our hotel for...you guessed it! More swimming. :)
I probably pushed our luck, but I was dying to see a sunset over Lake Michigan. We let the boys swim at the hotel and relax for a bit and then went back out around 7:30pm. I don't know why I dressed the boys in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, but they decided to go swimming in their clothes anyway. I thought they might be done with the water. Note to self: Where's the water, there will be my children...swimming in it!
But, oh! The sunset was just stunning!!! And so worth every bit of Evan's meltdown as he got out of the water and realized we had no towel for him!
It was our only challenging behavior day on the trip from the boys, but we pulled through and made some great memories today! And we said goodbye to Lake Michigan, as we were heading to Muskegon in the morning to go to Michigan's Adventure Amusement Park!
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