Favorite Scenic Photos From Our Trip up North

I am trying to get caught up on my posts. This is a post dedicated to the beautiful scenery we saw in the upper parts of Michigan. It looks even better now that I am missing warm weather!

So what fun things are you going to do today?

Before Dave left for the Michigan football game he asked me the previous question. My response was, "NOTHING." I was feeling a little bit overwhelmed by all the things that stack up with working 40+ hours, being a mom of a toddler, cooking, cleaning and shopping and figured I would be cleaning and working on the house all day.

WELL, My poor attitude changed as I blogged for a moment and decided to enjoy the day with my baby! How could I NOT have fun with a 21 month old?

Here is what we have done:

Read books, colored, made Mac n' Cheese together (Anna loved helping me stir and pour the ingredients in), sat as "big girls" at the table, took "cheese" photos, sang songs, danced, played outside, danced outside, threw Mia her toys, watched Elmo- did the hokey pokey for Anna's first time,

and let Anna get in Mia's crate....

Now we'll go hang out with Lincoln and Sloane then come home to meet the Owens and watch the Utah game (which you can see was recording as Anna did "tricks"! GO UTES!

I LOVE THESE BROWN EYES!

And I DID get the house cleaned too! I guess pity parties are not welcome today.

Life's Simple Treasures

Hi, my name is Anna and I am here to tell you about how simple things can bring you GREAT JOY! My first favorite thing:





#1 A ROCK. You can do a lot with rocks, you can stomp them, collect them, put them in your pockets, hold them in your hands for hours, put them in your mouth or simply throw them into any form of collected water you can find. (demonstrated below).

#2 YOUR HANDS. You can clap, sign, eat, pick up rocks, wave, blow kisses, point, play, but most importantly and what I discovered today... you can do finger tricks!

#3 A BUS. They are fascinating you can see them all over town, but they disappear fast making me ask my mom, "go?" Today we saw (okay I was asleep, but my mom did) a bus on fire and we had to drive through its smoke!

#4 PAINT. You can do a lot with paint. It makes beautiful pictures on paper and bellies and I think it would look good on rugs, but my mom stopped me from doing that! ):

#5 PUMPKINS. They are ever where this time of year. I like to sit on them, look at them, and drink out of my pumpkin sippy. Pumpkin is also fun to say!

#6 CHEESE. It is simply one of the best forms of food. You can have cheese chunks or melted on sandwiches, or shredded on top of pasta after it is already mixed with cheese. I had all of these today!

#7 TRACTORS. They can also be found everywhere. There are many forms and I am interested in EVERY one!

#8 BOOKS. There are SO many different types and you can read them anywhere! My favorite is on someone's lap, especially in rocking chairs, or what I call "rocka rocka"

#9 WALKING BACKWARDS. Why don't we do this more often? It isn't the most effective way of getting around, but it is SO FUNNY!

#10 JESUS. I love Jesus. I love pictures of him, costumes of him (yes I saw one tonight) and statues of him. Sometimes when I am having a hard night I like to sleep with my Jesus statue from my dresser, it helps me sleep better! He is amazing.

Wonderful visitors, rain, cider mill, detroit, and much more!

FRIDAY

We were so happy to have Dave's parents come visit for the weekend. We had so many things planned, and did as much as we could with the weather. It was a GREAT weekend! Thanks again for coming Papa and JoJo!!! We went on a rainy car tour around campus, walked through Kerrytown to lunch...

Lunch at Zingermans Deli, one of the famous places in A2 that we hadn't been to yet. It was delicious!



Anna loved having her Papa and JoJo here!


After lunch we went to Dexter's cider mill the oldest constantly running Cider Mill in Michigan. We had wrong directions to see the cider being made and we walked right into the room where the cider press was. Ha!
Anna kept wanting to go back into that room!A scene from behind the cider mill.





Despite the rain it was beautiful! We really wanted the Miners to see how awesome the fall leaves are, instead they saw how green it is here.



Anna is obsessed with rocks right now and even more obsessed with throwing them into water...


... or other things. (She kept making the funnies faces anticipating the loud clank it would make at the bottom of the can.)

After the cider mill we went to a pumpkin patch/ farm. We got to see this one week old calf and two one -month old pigs. Later on that night we had dinner at the Gandy Dancer a cool old train station turned into a fabulous restaurant. Probably the best Filet Mignon I have EVER tasted. Thanks to the Abernethys and the new Kid's Swap for letting us enjoy dinner as adults!

SATURDAY

We set out to see Detroit, daring I know. It was so sad to see all the destruction and loss of city life in once one of the most influential towns!

We first stopped by the Detroit Temple. It is beautiful and very small, compared to what we are used to in other cities, especially SLC.

Next stop...MOTOWN!! YEAH! Michael Jackson...need I say more?

The river walk... I cannot believe how close we live to Canada, that is Ontario across the water!(It was freezing if you cannot tell).




The next set of mostly blurry photos show the destruction. If you look closely at the buildings you won't see windows, but emptiness or boards. Some of these buildings are awesome, it is so sad to see that this is what has happened. I didn't take any photos of the good stuff like Comerica park, the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts), many beautiful churches, etc. So this paints a real sad picture, but shows the truth.





Anna loved having JoJo sit next to her in the car.

Back to beautiful Ann Arbor. We took a nice long walk around Gallup Park and the Huron River. It was beautiful!

Cute couple!

SUNDAY

Sunday we relaxed and watched (or tried to) our church's General Conference (when our leaders speak to the church, it is amazing. Click here to find out more: http://www.lds.org/). Then, that night we had Dave's cousins, Richard and Sarah, over for dinner and birthday cake. I wanted to bake Dave a cake (honestly I want to be on one of the food network shows, but that takes training... which I wouldn't mind having), but I also wanted to make a yummy raspberry pie for my in- laws so... I did both (with lots of help from JoAnn). We were stuffed! But it was worth every calorie! Dave opened presents wrapped in Baby gift bags, no I am not pregnant, but that is all we had to wrap with! He got a bunch of clothes, nothing too exciting this year, unfortunately.

DAVE'S actual Birthday...


We bid farewell to Papa and JoJo, worked, Dave attended 8+ hours of school, we dropped Anna off at the Tophams (thanks again you guys) and went out for a fun dinner just "us." We had delicious Italian food at Palios and Dave's meal was FREE! as well as a FREE dessert...Dave chose to try a canolli for the first time, delicious!



Here are the two buddies before Anna went to bed.

I am in love with Anna's "cheese" these days, she does it sometimes just to make me smile. I also am in love with this 28 year old! (:

It's a new season so you know what that means...

The dog woman strikes again!!!




To see what I am talking about see previous post from Monday September 14th.