Michigan LIving: Fall Week 15

Arrrrgggghhhh!
Sick again-- this time it was both girls. They say this is the time of year everyone gets sick around here, and it seems to be true-- lots of people are sick. But, man, it sure sucks when it works through a whole family.


Meanwhile, we did squeeze in a little bit of adventure...




From our porch we saw this creature eating something... anyone know what it is, 'cause we don't! What we do know, however, is that when you yell it is the funniest, fattest, wobbly runner we've ever seen.
















Last night-- High School youth group-- we worked through the question "Why Do We Have to Die"... so it seemed to be fitting to do that at the local cemetery from a local funeral director. Believe it or not, it was a very cool experience!













And now for a well earned mini-vacation- we're not going away, instead the Carter's are coming out from CA for a week long visit-- bring your sweaters!

MIchigan Living: Fall Week 14

So everyone is healthy again-- Hallelujah! And this week had a regular amount of adventure to it...







To start, Emily began a new job. She's working as a para-pro at a local elementary school (kind of like a one-on-one aid with kids who have special needs). Every day ping-pongs between great and terrible, depending on the kid's mood!





Friday was DeWitt's Homecoming which began with a parade cruising down one of the main streets, a tailgate party at the local Junior High, and of course the Homecoming Game... all super fun!








Saturday Chris got to be the uber-cool guest speaker for Northpointe Community Church's Men's breakfast... mainly because he's the new guy and nobody is totally bored with him-- yet! 75 men and some 'soon-to-be-men' spent the morning looking at what it means to be a Biblical man from the book of Genesis... and ate a lot o' sausage.





The rest of the day was spent in Grand Ledge (about 20 minutes away) at the Fall Color Festival... basically half a day spent walking through some awesome looking trees, eating some fresh kettle corn, making rings from horseshoe nails, and sampling maple syrup cotton candy... tough day, huh?!?













So we started this blog back in June under the premise that we would probably die in Michigan, and at least we could all get a good laugh out of it. Well, we're still alive and totally loving it... and for all you CA friends-- the temps have been around 72 degrees during the day and 50 degrees in the evening... tough huh! And just to hammer home the point, here's what we see outside out kitchen window every morning!



Jealous? Yeah, I know...

Michigan Living: Fall Week 13

Sick, sick and more sick... that was the main event this last week.




Since preschool we learned that it's important to share so that's what we did this week-- after Chris got 'Michigan death flu' he shared it with Emily... who might have shared it with the girls-- still too early to tell!




Danielle has had a number of 'disaster' drills at her school-- each more interesting than the next. Fire, lock-down, dam breach, stampede, coffee bean shortage,etc. (some of those might have been made up!?!) The coolest one so far was the Tornado Drill... which looks suspiciously like the earthquake drills from California-- still not sure how covering your head with your hands provides protection from a ton of falling debris and flying cows (Remember Helen Hunt in Twister?), but then again I'm no physicist!



And speaking of tornado drills, this last Saturday was the first Saturday of the month. Remember what that means? Yeah, we didn't either! Apparently they're still testing those city wide tornado sirens-- at 8:30 in the morning!

Michigan Living: Fall Week 12

Fall is officially here... the weather shows it and the local news guy confirmed it! So this week was a mix of cooler temps, rain, clouds, and sun-- and lots of color on the trees which makes Emily super stoked!





This week we took our first (of many) trips to Uncle John's Cider Mill- a local 'farm' that juices its own apples into cider. They also have a Kids Coral (Danielle really wanted that mentioned), and pumpkin patch, some games, food, a winery, and a bunch of other fun Fall stuff...
















And here's Danielle's new mode of transportation...









...and possible the only way we can get around in the snow...











...and not a bad way to spend the evening...









...unless you get caught stealing pumpkins.

Michigan Living Week 11: Fall (almost)

So definitely summer is over, or at least mostly over since the nighttime lows have been around 37 degrees and the daytime highs somewhere between 65-70. That's close enough to Fall temps for us ex-Californians to call it FALL! Not to mention the fact that the leaves have begun to change from green to a myriad of different colors (did you know they come in more varieties than just green?). So what do you do in Fall? That's right-- CORN MAZE! We attempted our first this week, and set a new record. The maze (in Williamston for you locals) says it takes about 1/2 to 1.5 hours to finish-- we did it in 2.5 hours! Ha! That'll show 'em... we certainly got our $25 worth!












Also Fall brings a new flavor of Starbucks gift card which Emily got super excited aboyut (spelled phonetically), even got the barista to load her other gift card onto this one (in case you can't tell, it says Starbucks in Braille, and Emily has been learning Braille for the last couple of years).





Fall also opened the opportunity to begin using our fireplace-- which is very cool, but a little odd since progress invented forced air heating so as to not burn your house down with open fire in the wall-- but it sure looks cool!



Fall also means eating and drinking-- pretty much caramel and apple everything! (Mug made by Emily at Rebekah's pottery birthday party... caramel apple cider made by Emily too!)










Last, but not least, Fall has brought out a new fashion sense for me (Chris)-- wool socks and cap. Honestly I wasn't even sure I owned socks, and have never been sure of what they were good for... who knew the answer was Fall?

Michigan Living: Summer Week 10

Maybe we could call this the first "normal" week... wasn't really filled with too many odd MI adventures, just a good, solid week!



School began for both girls this week and went great! Other than the fact that everyone has to be up at 6:15 to get Bekah to school by 7:30 no problems! Super cool! And of course we had to have an "after first day of school" celebration at BIGGBY...



Rebekah also finally finished her extended birthday bash with 10 friends at Playing Picasso (a paint-your-own-pottery place). She had a great time with some great girls!











(As we were typing this a huge frog/toad thing just jumped on our window ledge... which is psychotic since it's like 15 feet off the ground!)



We had some great weather this week, and a visit from this terrifying bug on our porch... how freaky is that?

Michigan Living: Summer Week 9

The Ninth Week in Michigan sounded pretty much like this...

Open House... Steak N Shake... Football... Lake... Tornado Siren... Birthday... Lucky... Washer Death... Fire Pit...

Both Rebekah and Danielle had their open house/orientation for school this week. Both got endless attempts at their new locker combinations and an equally numberless walks around the campus routing out their classrooms.



Had to make a trip to Jackson (about an hour away) and stopped at a mid-west institution: Steak N Shake... way better than White Castle if you ask me!





Thursday brought a special treat with the first DeWitt Football home game of the year. It was a thousand degrees and a shutout (DeWitt won!) but super fun nonetheless.

I talked to our "new" vacation/weekend/activity coordinator (admin assistant)- Janet- about ideas of "fun stuff" to do on Friday, and she invited us up to her lake house at Five Lakes-- complete with pontoon, swimming, speed boat, tubes, jet ski, and basically "the best day ever" (a direct quote from Rebekah and Danielle!)




Saturday morning the "now I have to replace my soiled underpants" siren went off (that would be the Tornado siren for you CA readers!)... no cloud, storm, or weather of any kind in the sky, but the siren was wailing. So the ladies went down to the basement with Chris eventually waddling down in a towel since he was half-way through a shower when it happened. Turns out they test those things on the first Saturday of every month (October thru April)-- good to know! (the 911 operator was very helpful.)

Rebekah turned 13!!!!!!!!!!!!! Birthday celebration began at Five Lakes then dinner and presents on Friday. Saturday morning was spent shopping with Mom for make-up and then learning how to put it on. Rebekah says that this was the best birthday ever!!! And technically it's not over yet since next week she'll take 10 of her new MI friends to a pottery painting place, pizza, and cupcakes-- not too shabby, huh?

Danielle had a psychological breakthrough-- she now loves dogs! At least she likes Golden Retrievers! The folks who owned the awesome lake house also had a beautiful Golden Retriever named Lucky who became Danielle's new best friend. She even began to entertain the thought of getting a dog someday as long as it was like Lucky!!




Our washer decided to die mid load on Friday evening! So we bought a new one on Saturday...it is nice to have a washer that actually cleans clothes!!






Finally we ended this week with a cold evening (something like 68 degrees) in front of a hot fire pit roasting hot dogs and marshmallows for smores! The mosquitoes decided to join us so we came in to blog!