"Camping, in the woods. Camping, feels so good"

Friday night we took our niece, Stella, camping for her first time, along with the rest of the crowd.  We had a great night and good food.  JR cut down the fire wood for the evening, we had corn-on-the-cob cooked over the fire, smores, and all the events required of a good camping trip.

(how many little girls does it take to put tent poles together?)

(this picture is a little blurry but it was the best and showing the work that goes into wood for a fire)

(yes, that shirt is completely drenched!)

(This is our view from our campsite; we were about 30miles into the Hiawatha National forest from our house. This lake is surrounded by National forest and we were on the only campsite of the lake, so we were the only people in all this vast area)

(Goodnight Moon.  This was taken at almost 10pm.  I forget how much longer we have daylight until we have company raving about it for a week)

Blueberry picking

My mom, the girls, my niece Stella and I went blueberry picking this afternoon.  Since we have moved here I have slowly discovered how many people pick blueberries and fill their freezers with them.  Well in the last two weeks I have begun to realize what that means, it means ice cream buckets full of blueberries!!  The last week I was asking around where to go and I always got the same answer....go off on a two track (like an ATV trail, which are everywhere) into the woods and you will find them.  Sometimes I got a more specific direction "go on a two track into the woods where there is sandy soil."

So today we ventured out and found them!  I will never eat blueberries from the grocery store again!  First of all, I like blueberry flavor things but I have never really liked eating plain blueberries....today I could actually taste the "blue."  And Clara!  This girl has always downed a tub of them, but today we had to take them away from her because she was shoving them in her mouth so fast!!

Here is our little adventure:

I had to take this picture because when we started out Nora picked "a" blueberry and kept saying "mommy I picked a blueberry."  So all the girls chimed in the chorus until I said, "that's great, but I want your bowls filled to the top."  Clara's bowl, of course, came home empty, but it did make it up to about 12-15 berries!

Acorn trees

We are growing "acorn" trees.  I love this.... Early this spring, on one of our first days playing in the backyard once the snow melted Nora saw acorns all over the yard and wanted to collect them.  I got a bowl for her to pick acorns...ok, no biggie.  I gave her one of the gerber disposable travel bowls, when she came in she set the bowl on the counter, no biggie.  The bowl sat and the next week for school we were running late, as usual, and it was a "show and tell" day.  I told her to take the acorns for show and tell, which she agreed, so I put a cover on them, no biggie.  They came home and found their way back to the counter, with the cover on this time, and were forgotten about.  About two weeks later, we notice there was moisture in the bowl and two (yes, two, not one or three, but two!) acorns were starting to sprout.  We put each one in a gerber bowl and put them in the window.  They took off, so when the weather warmed up we put them in pots and they are still growing like crazy.  So each girl has an Acorn (oak) tree from the first year we moved to the UP.  The plan is to keep them in the pots until we have our own property and then we will plant them.

Full Bloom

I have talked to different people about our backyard and the insane, yet gorgeous landscaping.  Today when we were in the back I took some pictures.  When we moved in I felt it was a little (or a lot) over the top for yooper style (consider a fair amount live in the woods in trailers), but now I know more.  Our landlord has his degree in horticultural design and the yard was his Master's project, so there is a little taste of everything.  Here are pictures of our waterfall and the pond.  There is also a fountain in the middle, which we usually leave off.

I also have to take back what I said this winter when I was making fun of having Koi fish in the pond.  They are amazing and wonderful.  Why you ask?  Because they eat algae like nobody's business.  A few weeks ago the landlord sent us 4-5 Koi and a few minow like fish.  It was later in the summer than when he usually puts them in, so the pond was dark and greenish, in fact we couldn't even see the fish.  After the first week when we never saw the fish once, we figured it was a lost cause.  Two weeks later....the pond is completely clean.  One can see every fish darting around and every rock on the bottom.    I think I like the fish better than the girls.  I think you can see the orange fish in this first picture on the right side of the pond if you enlarge the picture.  

Here are raspberries along the fence line.  I left the truck in the picture to place the location.  The fern-like plants between the raspberries and the truck are asparagus in full bloom.  Asparagus is a member of the fern family.  (who knew) It started coming up end of April and we would cut it off when it was the size like in the grocery stores.  At end of May we had to let the rest just grow so they would seed and produce more for next year.  We had asparagus about 3 times a week in May and it was so wonderful, Nora is now in love with it and she wouldn't touch it before.  I think the part of cutting it with our own scissors and then cooking it 2 minutes later was the trick, not to mention it was delicious.  (By the way, I knew none of this before this spring, the guy we are renting from filled us in on all of it).

summer days

Got Rock?

J.R. is a rock climber and decided that Nora was now old enough to join him.  Last weekend he took Nora to R.E.I to get a harness and her own "chalk bag," and of course rock climb.  As J.R. states "she's a natural."  I may soon be a professional belayer when Clara is old enough, as my love for the ground gets in the way of those heights.  The catch is that I already warned J.R. that we are skiing this winter, which is my love.  Here are pictures of Nora at R.E.I.

gone canoeing...

Nora got a kid size canoe paddle for her Birthday this year.  A couple of weeks ago she finally got to try it out when J.R.'s uncle came for a little fishing trip.  The three of them set off to do some canoeing and fishing one afternoon while Clara took a nap.  The weather was not as bad as it indicates here. I love in the third picture how she is paddling away.

Strawba ba baba ba ba berry

We have a strawberry patch in our yard.  And we love it!  I recommend to everyone, if you are thinking of putting in a bush or a plant in your landscaping--make it edible.  The last two days have been our first days of picking strawberries...and we have many more days ahead of us.  They are so good and fun to pick with the girls.  We go out to the yard before dinner or a snack, then bring them in to eat.  Only someone who has grown their own food understands how something so simple could be so much fun and rewarding.  (cheesy, I know, but its true).  We have a retaining wall in our landscaping and the owners put in strawberries and I am thankful.  I always thought along the line of hostas or lilies, but no more, berries are the ticket.

Rest Stop

This past weekend we went to Muncie to see the grandparents because I took a class at Michigan State University on Friday (3 hours from Muncie).  It was great because we were already 3/4 of the way, so what is a few more hours to hang out with Grandma and Papa Cunningham for the weekend.  JR and the girls got to fish with Uncle John (and were very successful, to say the least--40 fish)!!  The girls loved riding in Papa's jeep.  Here they are just playing in it before we put car seats in it.

On the way home we stopped for a potty break about an hour from home.  Here are pictures from the rest stop!  By the way, despite the warm weather, the water was about 50 degrees....brrrr.  All these pictures (the best ones of the last month) were taken in about 5 minutes time.  So here is a glimpse of the famous sugar sand beaches of Lake Michigan.

May

As the weather has turned nice we have spent all our spare time outside...JR cut a tree down, the girls have played in the woods and scouted for turkeys, and JR and I have been watching the sunsets on a nightly basis.  Here are some pics from the last three weeks.

We have a duck with her 13(!) ducklings swimming by our place daily.  They are so darn cute.  When they are in their little line it seems to go on forever and when they are off swimming around, they look like little pond skaters darting around.  I have never watched little ducklings learn to swim before and I love it.

More nightly pics...

"just like a minivan"

I laughed so hard (inside, of course) when Nora was telling me about her day.  She rides the "transit bus" everyday the two blocks to the daycare lady.  The transit bus is basically a senior citizen bus, you know the kind, short bus either gray or white (gray in our case), cost $1, usually filled with 80+ years olds getting rides to the grocery store.  Well, Nora was on the bus today with three other little girls she knows (2 from preschool and one an older sister in about 2nd grade), and they decided to sit in the back.  Nora has mentioned before sitting up next to the bus driver, so today they really ventured far.  Her eyes were as wide as they could get and she was talking in full drama about how big the back seat was, "it was from one side of the seat all the way to the other seats.  It was huge just like a minivan."
Bless her little heart.

Potty Update

Today Clara had 1 accident and 4 successes.  Yesterday she had 1 and a half   :)  accidents and 4 successes.  We are on our way...