I "heart" Michigan

I couldn't tell you what it is, but I've always had this feeling of needing to live in Michigan. I was born here, so maybe it's just in my blood. I am very happy that I grew up where I did in Indiana. But since the day we moved from Michigan to Indiana, I knew that I needed to live here. I do not count the first fourteen months after Bill and I got married. Sorry to my friends on the east side of the state, but that was not the part of Michigan I wanted to live in. There were many things that factored into that, it was our first year of marriage, I had just graduated from college and was desperately seeking a "real" job, I was depressed, etc. As you know, we moved around. And each move was to bring us closer to moving back to Michigan. Back home. Eventually we had to do it on our own. We made it back last year, in June. It has taken me quite awhile to feel as though I am finally back here. It's weird, but true.

I am a midwest girl. I like the flat farmlands. I like the country roads that are tar and gravel and run north/south or east/west. I like that I can use my hand to show someone where I live. I do not enjoy the smell of cow manure, but I do like that it means there is a farm nearby. I love the corn fields (hey, remember I grew up in Indiana).

Last night, we took a drive on those country roads. And once again, it hit me. We live in Michigan. I expect it will take a few more months before I not only believe this, but don't think of it as a surprise either. I could go on and on, because that's how much I "heart" Michigan. But I'll stop there for now. Just remember this little fact: There are around 9,942 miles of shoreline around all the Great Lakes.


Yes! Michigan. Now if we could only have better roads...

A big dose of Jars..

After writing that blog the other day, they announced on the radio (I listen to Air1 on-line) that Jars of Clay will be talking with them, [today]. How exciting!!! Heather sent me some "real" photos, for my blog. Thanks Heather!!! These are MUCH better then the dinky ones I found.


Jars at the Dove Awards. Heather, Sami and I just watched it Wednesday night. Heather had managed to get it on tape (all my attempts failed -because the website and cable guide were wrong, well and the station didn't air it when they said they would) so only three months after Heather was there in person did we finally get to experience her 2nd row thrills!

A small Jar

Well, it's better then nothing. I'm going to have to find out where to find better photos of Jars of Clay. I'm having a Jars Moment. Seeing as how I have only heard one song by them today, I needed to add a little bit more of them to my life. And I needed something to do.

A new beginning

This is the first official post, sans the Harry Potter counter. I know, some of you aren't sad at all. The rest of us have our noses stuck in the book and are reading whenever and as much as we can. Please don't say anything! Bill and I just started reading last night! This may take us awhile. I will let you know when we've finished. What will I blog about in the meantime? Well, I've been back to Meijer Gardens.. and I've been busy!
This is a dragonfly that was on the flowers right outside our front door. I noticed him while I was watering. He hung around long enough for me to run inside, grab the camera and come back and take several pictures of him. It was windy, so that wasn't easy. This is the Grand Haven lighthouse. I was there on Saturday with our family friends, Chris and Suzanne. I got as red as the lighthouse. We were in the sun a little too long for my fair skin. It's fading now... We also went to the Gerald R. Ford Museum, Meijer Gardens, and Holland.
These are daisy's from a trip to Meijer Gardens back at the end of June when I went with Sami and Rhea.

If it's not Harry...

It's George Eads. Oh, he's hot! Heather and I were having a who's a cutie discussion, so I had to add him. I don't know how to add him to my new facebook (yes, I broke down and made a facebook account) without making him my photo, which would be funny, but I don't want to do that... So he gets added to my blog.

For Heather...

Heather, this is for you. I was actually going to do a post talking about my early morning trip to take you to the airport, about how the moon was out, the streets are quiet. It only takes 14 minutes to get from my house to your apartment. About how little traffic there is, how it took exactly one hour to get up, go pick you up, drive you to the airport, sit through two green arrows because the semi in front of me took the entire length of the first arrow to actually turn, get home and crawl back into bed. I even took pictures of the moon. But they were kind of blurry, because I was too tired to hold the camera still. But I never wrote that blog (or I just did) and so for you, here is Oliver Wood, Quidditch hottie.

All things Potter

I believe the term Bill used was, "NERDS!" Yes. We are. We aren't denying it. Heather and I had a Harry Potter movie marathon. At first we were going to watch all five movies on Saturday. But I thought I was going to have to go pick Bill up from the church (he got back from his work camp trip Saturday night). But the movie times didn't coordinate with picking him up, not without starting our marathon at 6am. And, while we love Harry, we weren't that devoted! So we changed our schedule. We watched 1&2 on Friday night (which are the longest two and we were up until 12:30) and we watched 3&4 on Saturday, hopped in the car and went and watched 5. That was pretty fun!

As you can see, we had a little shrine for Harry.


At the movies, waiting while they cleaned the theater. Okay, so we were the first ones in the theater, we got perfect seats, and the theater wasn't even full!


And these are the leftover tattoos from when book six came out (Bill brought them home). We weren't nerdy enough to put them on our foreheads, just our hands. Mine was gone by Sunday morning.

And now, we wait for Book Seven!

Christmas in July

Here it is. The best chicken, the famous chicken. Oh it was delicious. And all the food you get with it. My favorite is the liver pate and the cheese spread. But the mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and apple cinnamon bread, and coleslaw, and oh, it was all so good. Yum!

If you don't know, Frankenmuth has the largest Christmas store in the world (and they put the Christ in Christmas). I've now been there four times. Seeing as how I love Christmas, I love walking around Bronner's. I also love the little Bavaria. (Oops, I have pictures of that, I didn't attach them to my blog.)

That's where I was on Saturday.

By the way, do you see the chicken in the picture?

Goodbye my furry friend

Tuesday, July 3rd, Mom and Dad took Tails to the vet. He is in a better place now. He's no longer in pain.

I got Tails from Shawn Scott in 10th grade. I remember it because we had Chemistry and he was talking about how his cat just had kittens and he threw her over his garage (apparently she wasn't hurt too badly, maybe he didn't even do it). I was shocked! I must have asked if he was giving the kittens away because one evening he came over with this little orange kitten. Mom said yes, Dad said no. But we took him anyways. Then we found out he had fleas. One day his fur just exploded. He wasn't abnormally furry one day, then the next day his tail poofed out, and he was full of long fur (think Himalayan). We had this duster that looked like his tail. I told Amanda that it was his tail. She believed me!

I named him Tails, after the Sonic the Hedgehog character. Our other cat, Mykah looked a little like Sonic, and I had hoped that Tails would follow him around like the characters in the game. It didn't happen, but Tails did turn out looking a lot like his name sake.

For the rest of my years in high school, Tails would follow me around. When I would get ready for bed, he would sit outside the bathroom door and wait for me. Then he would run into my bedroom and sit on my bed.

I think it was back in March when Bill and I were visiting Mom and Dad for their anniversary when we noticed the big lump on Tails' back, near his tail. We all agreed that instead of treating it, he should be put down IF it started to bother him. At that time, it didn't seem to bother him. Well, on Friday, Mom said he licked it so much that it opened up and had started bleeding. The best thing for him was to put him down.

I didn't get a chance to say good bye. He always knew when I was coming to visit. The week before I'd come back, he would sit outside my old bedroom door and meow, like he was waiting for me. He went through a lot with me during my high school and college years. For awhile Bill and I had talked about bringing him to live with us, but Mom said their other cat would get lonely without Tails. (Mykah was put down now that long ago either).

This is my good bye to my furry friend. I'm going to miss him when I go visit Mom and Dad.

I love you Tails!

Say ya to da U.P. eh!

This is only the beginning. Here are a few of the pictures from the Jr. High Mission trip to the U.P.

We start with lunch on Lake Michigan, where we found this sailboat. In the boat were two peices of laminated paper. One was a Bible verse, the other was the name of a couple and their phone number (a Detroit area code). We signed the sail (it told us to) and set it back out to "sea".

Heather and I stopped in the Yooperland Gift shop. There are incriminating photos from this stop... but we had fun. She had this bumper sticker on the trip up, stuck it in her window, rolled down the window and it blew away! So we made the pit stop so she could pick up another one!

Heather is finnish. We honked anyways.

Where's Rocky?

Here's the lighthouse from McLain State Park. If you look at a map, it's all the way up in the U.P. past Houghton, in the little land that juts out. It's pretty far north! Almost as far as you can go!

This is me, with my feet in cold Lake Superior. The water temp was only in the 50's, which was a warm front.

That did not stop the kids from swimming in it! They were out there for at least an hour. We're lucky we didn't lose anybody to frost bite! They agreed that maybe Lake Michigan was warm after all!

Here's the sunset over Lake Superior. The sun didn't hit the horizon until 10:50pm. It was pretty cool. It was still light until midnight!

Here are all the kids leaning over the stairwell that they painted in Marquette First United Methodist church. They also painted a hallway, but I never got a picture of that! It was originally 1960's golden rod. We painted it a nice neutral cream color. They did a great job!


Heather and I had run out to the van to get something out of it, we've forgotten now, and this is what we found. The pretzels jumped ship! Oh well, it was a rental! We cleaned them out best we could. But when we returned it Tuesday night, we found more stow-aways. We left them for the birds.

I still have pictures of Mackinac Island to post. I am also adding pictures to the Jr. High blog. Yum, fudge, I'm going to go eat some now!