A special weekend

I know I've shared with you before about how special I think my family is.  I was blessed with a loving Dad and Mom, and siblings who have remained close through the years.  My mom passed away 15 years ago, and my Dad remarried almost 11 years ago.  We all love Ann and are happy to have her in our lives.
This past weekend, my Dad invited the whole family to Frankenmuth Michigan. It's about 2 1/2 hours from our home.  The whole family was able to go, except for our son Andy who lives in KY, and our niece Arianna, who was had final classes to attend.  There were 21 of us in all.
Frankenmuth is a beautiful city with a Bavarian history.  Many of the buildings have an old time Bavarian look, there is also a covered bridge and it's just a great place to visit.  We stayed in a hotel with an indoor water park, so there was plenty to do.

Warning - lots of photos!

 Entering Frankenmuth

 This was taken from our deck.  The tubes are one of the water park rides.  Several of my family did this one. Climb 5 flights and ride a raft down the tubes!  I just took pictures.  :)

 Alaina and Ruby arrive and greet Great Grandpa.

 Our hotel was next to Bronners, which is a well known store in Frankenmuth that sells Christmas things all year long.

Our room was a loft room, with room for 8 people.  The girls loved looking over the edge and running up and down the stairs.

Here are a few photos from Frankenmuth.  Such a pretty city!  The middle photo is a bell tower.  The bells played music and the deck had automated figurines that came out different doors to tell the story of the Pied Piper.

We took a ride on the Bavarian Belle which is a real riverboat.  It was a one hour ride and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here's some nieces and a nephew, Laura, Aaron and family, Ruby with Ann, and Heather and Andrew.

We saw turtles and baby ducks!

Beautiful scenery.

Ruby and Alaina think they are steering the boat.

 Dad and Ann

Our little captains after the ride.

 Dad took us to Zenders for supper. They are famous for their chicken dinners and we agreed!

Ruby was enjoying the soup!

 Ruby and Grandpa were having fun looking at pictures together before bed.

The next morning, Alaina was up as usual, but Ruby had a hard time getting up.

We had a room where we had the most wonderful buffet breakfast!  We all agreed it was probably the best breakfast buffet we ever had.


After breakfast we had a church service before we left for home.  It was a wonderful weekend!

The whole bunch of us!