Now that the school year has ended and the warm weather has arrived, we are doing our best to soak it all in.  This past Friday, we celebrated the start of summer break by taking a much needed daycation to Door County.

Door County is my favorite place in Wisconsin, aside from Green Bay/Ashwaubenon.  It’s a great place to escape to when you need to get away and it is absolutely beautiful and filled with lots of fun things to do!

We started our trip with a quick stop for some drinks and breakfast. While we waited in the van, Ellie asked me to take a picture.

While we were on our journey, we thought the kids should learn something so I oulled over at a historical landmark and had Zack read it to all of us.

That was our educational moment on the trip.

We decided we would drive straight through Door County and go right to Gills Rock (the tip of the thumb) and work our way back down.

When we got to Gills Rock it was crazy windy and a bit chilly.  We got out of the van, walked around for a few minutes and checked out the gift shops and picked up a few things.  Once we were freezing our buns off, we decided it was time to begin our journey down the peninsula but first, Zack and I had to snap a quick pic together.

Once we left Gills Rock, we made the decision to head down to Sister Bay and grab lunch at the infamous Al Johnson’s.  

When we were walking up to the entrance of Al Johnson’s they had this cute bench and I wanted to get a picture of all 5 kids together.  This is the closest I got…..4 out of 5 kids looking at the camera.

We were really surprised to see just how BIG the menus were.

Not only was the food delicious but the kids got to see the goats on the roof too.  Yes, goats on the roof!

After lunch we made a few stops at some local shops before heading to Ephraim to get some ice cream from Wilson’s Restaurant and Ice Cream Parlor. *Alex and I went to Wilson’s on our first date for dessert almost 8 years ago.

Once we had devoured our ice cream and cleaned everyone up, including Ellie who managed to get an upset tummy without eating anything, I decided to head over to the local beach and let everyone dip their toes in the water.

We got lucky when we got over to the beach that it was finally warm enough for the little kids to go play in the sand and even go swimming and we spent the next 2 hours at the beach having fun.

The kids all had soooo much fun.  This was Joey’s first experience with sand and he absolutely LOVED it.

Love might not even be the right word to describe just how much he enjoyed it.

One of my favorite moments of Joey’s first trip to the beach was seeing his face beam with happiness when he was hanging out with Alex.

If there is one thing that I know for sure it is that Joey LOVES his daddy!

I really enjoyed just sitting on the beach with this as my view.

After all the fun of playing at the beach we hit a few more stores in Fish Creek and Egg Harbor, picked up a 6 pack of Shipwrecked Door County Cherry Wheat beer and made our way home.

I’m so fun that everyone had such a great time and I can’t wait to do it again.  We are already planning on going back up in July.