Day Five of our 5 Year Anniversary Trip

If you've missed days 1-4, you can see them here, here, here and here.

Day five was fairly low-key. We slept in and then got up and had lunch at our hotel at the Round Island Bar and Grill.

We sat outside on their patio, overlooking the Lake!

After lunch, we decided to walk to Market Street and visit a couple of the old historical sites and do a little window shopping on Main Street. Here are some pictures I took along the way and once we got to downtown.

This is the old Mission House, which was the original building on the property of Mission Pointe Resort.  In the early 1820's, Reverend William Ferry, a Protestant Missionary, built Mission House to house and teach Indian children.

A few years later, the Reverend established Mission Church, one of the first Protestant churches in the Midwest.

Along this same road is Sainte Anne Church. Its the catholic church on the island.

We were able to step inside and get a peek at the beautiful sanctuary. 

We also got a picture of Island House. One of the first summer hotels on Mackinac Island.

Mackinac Island State Harbor with a rather large ship docked there that day.

 

A closer look at the ship.

Fort Mackinac

Father Marquette statue.

Once to Market Street, we went inside the Biddle House, said to be the oldest house on the island.

The old Blacksmith's shop next door to the Biddle House.

After visiting the Biddle House and doing some shopping, we decided to stop for ice cream and sit and watch the boats go by. While watching, we saw this pirate looking ship.

And we also saw this freighter go by.

After hanging out downtown for a while, we went back to our room for a nice long nap!! ☺

Then we got ready for dinner at Bistro on the Greens, which was the restaurant on the miniature golf course at the resort.

While sitting by the water at dinner, we saw another freighter go by and everyone got $2 beers!

After dinner, we went back to our room to change, and then headed down to the Lilac Tree hotel on Main Street for an 11:00 p.m. haunted ghost tour.

Main Street at Night.

The tour was very interesting and historical! Lots of fun facts and history about the island's haunts.

We also did a ghost hunt, with the special ghost hunting machines. It was a little creepy since this took place at the resort we were staying in. Apparently the theater on the grounds is haunted by a guy who went to school there while it was a college. Here are some pictures of the theater.

After the tour and hunt, we sat outside on the lawn at the resort to watch some stars and then headed to bed, after a late night dip in the hot tub. :-)

Jackson's 39 Week Pictures!

Jackson is now 39 weeks! He is walking all over the place now and even bent down to pick something up off the floor last night and then stood right back up without falling!! He's getting so big, I can hardly believe it. 

My mom's been trying to get him to put his hands up in the air, when we say "So Big"! So just yesterday, he started doing it. Its the cutest thing ever. Here is a little video. Don't mind my annoying voice or the t.v. blaring in the background. LOL.

Jackson is still eating 6 ounce bottles every 4 hours, but I might check with his doctor on Saturday to see if we can bump that up a little bit so that he may sleep a little longer at night before waking up to eat. He goes for his 9 month check up Sat., so I'll have his stats for you next week. :-) 

He eats a large jar of baby food 3 times a day and has some cereal at breakfast time along with his baby food. He eats little snacks like the Puffs and Yogurt Bites. Hes starting to get little bits of regular food, but we're just introducing that slowly. He really loves food and will eat just about anything.

His sleep schedule is still pretty much the same. He sleeps from around 8 or 9 until around 8 in the morning, waking up once or twice for a bottle in between. He usually takes 2 naps during the day, sometimes they can be anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 to 3 hours. It just depends, and it seems to be changing often.

Now that he can walk, he doesn't really want to be held, which is fun during church! This past Sunday, during praise and worship, he really did not want to be held, but we managed to make it through without any meltdowns. ☺

He still has 3 teeth, but one on top is VERY close to coming all the way through, and the other 3 top/middle teeth are right there and I expect them to come through soon.

So thats where we are right now. We are having a lot of fun with him. He's learning something new everyday it seems like and is on the go constantly. Its tiring, but so much fun!

Day Four of our 5 Year Anniversary Trip

If you've missed days 1-3, you can see them here, here and here. ☺

On Day 4, we woke up and had breakfast again at The Inn at Stonecliffe, where we were staying. After breakfast, we checked out of Stonecliffe and had our bags sent to The Mission Pointe Resort, where we would be staying the next 2 nights. We then hopped on a shuttle that took us to The Grand Hotel, where Jake was golfing that day. I rode along to take in the beautiful scenery and to get some practice time in with my DSLR camera. There were so many beautiful landscapes and flowers! Here are some pictures of the golf course, Jake golfing and some practice pictures. ;-)

This is the very well kept street that runs up in between the Grand Hotel Golf Course (also know as the Jewel or the first 9 holes) and the Grand Hotel itself. You can see Lake Huron in the background.

I've mentioned hotel shuttles the last couple of days, well this is the Grand Hotel shuttle. Very fancy!

The beautiful, immaculately kept hotel grounds.

Jake putting while we waited to get started.

Some beautiful flowers at the Grand Hotel.

The beautiful golf course!

A mama duck and her ducklings. ♥

The back 9 holes are actually played at the Grand Hotel's "Woods" location. You take a carriage ride up to the back 9 (called The Woods), which was actually right by The Inn at Stonecliffe.

They built the front 9, or the Jewel, in 1901 and later thought they needed to make this an 18 hole golf course and added the Woods 9 in 1994.

A beautiful home that sits on the golf course.

After golfing, we took a taxi to the Mission Pointe Resort where we were staying for the next 2 nights.

I actually took this picture later in our trip, when we went para-sailing.

I took this picture of the resort from their observation tower, which you can see on the left had side of the picture above.

These next three pictures are of their main lobby.

For whatever reason, I don't have any pictures of our room. :-( But here are some I found online. We had a king size, jacuzzi suite, however, we didn't realize it but this hotel had no air conditioning. We had a fan, that really did keep us cool and the weather was so great that it didn't really ever get hot, but we did miss the air conditioning and probably wouldn't have stayed there had we realized this. But the history of this hotel was really cool and its a great place for families.

This was the hot tub on our patio. The best part of the whole room.

The suite had a little foyer and directly to the left was the bathroom. There were two other doors in the foyer, one leading to the bedroom and the other leading to the living room. The patio was right off the living room. 

After checking in and getting settled, we had dinner at one of the Resorts restaurants... Chianti. Its an Italian Restaurant. We actually sat outside, overlooking Lake Huron. I didn't bring my camera to dinner, so I don't have any pictures of this either, but here is what their dining room looks like.

After dinner we changed and went and played miniature golf on the Resorts putting green.

After playing miniature golf, we went over and sat on their beautiful lawn, looking out at the lake! We watched the sunset and then went back to our room. It was a great day and evening!

The Paper Mama Photo Challenge

I stumbled upon this photo challenge today and thought I'd go ahead and enter. Chelsey @ The Paper Mama, does a weekly photo challenge on her blog with a new topic every week. The stipulation is that your picture should be based around your child (or fur-child). The challenge this week is, "Story". So I thought I'd enter this photo because it tells a story of Jackson's strength and determination. He started walking 2 weeks ago at only 8 months old!

Sleeping Through The Night

I'm taking a break from our vacation posts today, mainly because I forgot my memory stick, to talk about getting your baby to sleep through the night.

Jackson has always been a pretty good sleeper and we've never had problems with him being awake all night or anything, but he does still wake up at least once, but mostly twice a night for a bottle. He always takes the bottle and goes right back to sleep, but I would really like to eliminate the nighttime feedings all together and get him sleeping through the night.

I know this will take some time and patience, but I also know its something we really need to work on. He's 9 months old now and I know he really needs to be sleeping through the night.

So I'm just looking for some advice on how some of you mom's have gotten your babies to sleep through the night. I just read about the Moms on Call method. Have any of you used this method or some other method that worked well for you? Any comments or suggestions would be helpful. ☺