A Weekend Visiting Family & Friends

Cole & Olivia enjoying their new cousin Haddon

     This past Thursday we drove down to Jeb and Lisa's place and enjoyed a nice weekend visiting family. On Saturday we went to Jeff and Nancy's home (Joyce's sister) for dinner ( soups and breadsticks). Our niece Karen flew home from Dallas Texas with her new baby. Haddon is 4 months old and we were excited to have our first chance to meet our new great-nephew. Wow, that kind of makes us sound old! His little cousins enjoyed spending time with Haddon too. 

     We spent the night at Joyce's parents and had a nice time together. Jenni, our daughter, brought the train over from Chicago Friday night to enjoy the family time as well. She helped her grandma out with some computer problems while we overnighted Saturday.

     

     Sunday morning Joyce, Jenni and I headed over to Hartland United Methodist Church (about an hour away) to attend the morning worship service. This is where our previous pastor, Paul Gruenberg and his wife Lynet, were assigned this past July. It nice to see them again. After church we went out to eat together and had nice time catching up on each others lives a bit. 

     Sunday afternoon we were back at Jeb's enjoying the grandkids again. That  evening we took the grandkids to Sam's Club shopping followed up by a trip to Panda Water Ice in Fenton for an shaved ice treat. Very yummy!

     Jenni had been scheduled to fly to Boston on Monday for a few days of a training seminar, but the hurricane canceled that. She was happy when she got the e-mail stating the training would be rescheduled later on. She was dreading  the mess the hurricane would do to airline schedules. 

 Karen holding Haddon

 Cole busy playing with colorful cups

Hartland United Methodist Church

     We headed back home Monday and had a good trip home other than having rather gusty winds left over from a cold front that passed through Saturday. It's always fun to visit family, but it is nice to be back home in the UP.

Weekend @ Northwoods Camp

 Our trailer site at Northwoods CC

     The weekend before last we got our trailer out for one last outing before winter. We camped with our friends Steve & Leanne and Eric and Penny. Steve is a board member at Northwoods Christian Camp a non-denominational camp about 5 miles south of Pickford here in the eastern UP. It sets on 320 acres of mostly wooded land with a small lake. I am told that at one time the camp, which still has the remains of an old sod runway, was a missionary pilot training facility. In addition to 4 campsites we were using, the camp now has boys and girls cabins, a few family cabins, a main lodge/dining building and a chapel. An interesting feature at the camp is a "Mini Mackinac Bridge" across the lake separating the girls and boys cabins. Wildlife is abundant and we saw several deer during the weekend.

     Steve asked us if we would be interested in helping with clearing new growth that has come up along the 4 miles or so of cross country ski trails. The ski trails have been installed in the past couple of years. We agreed to meet out at the camp on Friday afternoon. We set up camp around 3 and shortly thereafter headed out with our lopers to start working on the trails. We worked until supper time and had a nice potluck picnic time together followed by a great time around a campfire. 

     Saturday morning we awoke to cloudy weather with rain threatening us. We put on our rain gear and worked on the trails until about 3 in the afternoon. We enjoyed supper together again, although we had to stay inside due to the rain. We invited our new pastor, Larry, and his wife, Judy, to join us for supper. We had all 8 of us in our trailer. It was a bit cozy and we had a good time together. 

      Even with the less than ideal weather, we enjoyed a nice weekend camping together with good friends.  

The "Mini Mac" bridge

Log Building Demo

Log building at the beginning of demo

     We have had an old log building on our property that has been in bad shape for several years. The roof was caving in worse every year. Also the logs that were against the ridge that runs through our land were falling in. 

     I knew that a some point we would need to remove the building but was putting off the job. About 5 or 6 years ago I built a new 12' x 16' storage building to store the lawn tractor, snow blowers, push mower and other items that we had been storing in the log building. 

     I hated to remove the old building even though it was no longer safe or useful for storage. It had been part of the landscape for the 23 years we have lived here. Memories of the kids playing out there....

      Well a couple of weeks ago we decided it was time to take it down. So between  my chain saw and saw zall we spent 4 or 5 days taking it apart. It is now just a memory.

 Almost down to the floor

The log building is gone!

Enjoying Fall Colors at Home

      I have enjoyed reading the blogs of friends that we met and spent time with on our hikes along the Appalachian Trail last year; Flame (Erma), Snakehips & Spud (Tom & Sue), Pigeon (Toni), Country Mouse & Shadow (Clara & BJ), Zig Zag (Rebecca) to name a few. I have been reluctant to start this blog, not due to lack of material so much, but because I feel I don't have the writing talent and wit of the folks mentioned above. With that being said, I am going to give this a  shot and see how it goes. Please feel free to add comments...positive only (just  kidding).

Colorful vine climbing the Red Pine tree past the bat house

Red bush in our backyard displaying beautiful fall colors

We have been enjoying the nice autumn color display for the past 3 weeks around our place. The leaves have been falling quite a bit this past week and many of the trees have lost most of their leaves. Joyce has been using the lawn sweeper behind the lawn tractor to pick up the leaves and put them on her garden. She tills those into the soil and gets the garden set for next summer.

We had a nice surprise this past Tuesday as my cousin Tim and his wife Cindy stopped by for a short visit. We went for a walk through the woods and enjoyed the nice color, making it back to the house dry as it started to spit a bit of rain.

It was great to catch up with them again.

Yesterday was a pleasant day and we spent most of the day outdoors.

Joyce worked on trimming raspberries in the garden along with raking and sweeping leaves. I went to the woods and cut firewood in the morning. In the afternoon I decided to cut down an oak tree in front of my work shop. It has been dying (damage from the fire we had when the shop burned down several years back) I made sure it wouldn't fall on our garage and stretched a rope from the tractor to put tension on the tree. It dropped right where I had planned. Amazing! They don't always cooperate that way. 

Oak tree after I cut it down.

Well I guess that's it for this entry. I will add others to catch up on other things we've been up to soon. Thanks for following along.    Greenstone (Jeff)