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The beginning of another year of college for my kids.  There's always some anticipation about this event for me that has nothing to do with actual scholastic progress, and has only a little to do with my children leaving me once again.  No, the anticipation comes from the move . I feel like I do it every year--help some child (and in a few cases, children) move into their new digs at school.  For a few Fall terms, Mark and Hannah have just continued living where they were living in the spring so it's no big deal, but normally, it's an event for sure. This year, it was returning Glo to BYU after being on her mission for the past year and a half.  It just so happened that Hannah was moving out of her apartment (the rent was going from $365 to $510/month) into Helaman Halls for the last four months of her college career, so I knew I would be double-tasked. I envisioned it taking days to get Glo packed here at home, but as it turned out, she left most everything in...

Ahhhhh, there are so many things I love about Michigan, and BLUEBERRIES  is one of them! I love blueberry season around here! It might be that there are some really terrific farms close by (versus strawberry farms which seem highly commercialized and hard to find).  Dexter Blueberry Farm is basically blueberry heaven. I stayed on top of the season this year and was anticipating opening day.  We ended up going four (or was that five) times, each time picking between 12 and 18 pounds of berries.  No matter the poundage, we always came home with three pails--one was to keep in the fridge for a snack for the babies or to add to oatmeal, one was for immediate baking, and one was for freezing.  Seriously, it became a production line when we would get home, rinsing the berries and getting them where they needed to be.  In the end, it felt like we had SO MANY BERRIES, but as I have been going out to the freezer and pulling out yet another bag, I wonder why we ...

Yay! I'm so thankful we have discovered the fun and magic of Michigan lighthouses.  Visiting them gives us a purpose to a road trip and allows us to explore a bunch of fun things along the way. And Coco.  This was her maiden voyage with the family!  I mean, this is the entire  reason I went back to a larger vehicle.  The little babies were in the back and everyone else was up front. Because we've started our trip multiple times now in St. Joseph, we decided to drive a little further north up the coast and begin at Little Sable Point Lighthouse I love this lighthouses for a couple of reasons the main one being that when John and I visited it last October, there wasn't a person there, and we just laid down on the beach in our winter coats and soaked up some fall sunshine.  We might have even fallen asleep ;-). I also love it because there is no pier to access it--it just sits right there on the beach.  And it's made entirely of brick! Howev...