Rain, Rain Go Away

Yesterday it rained non-stop all day, even pouring a few times! According to the Michigan forecast it's supposed to be cloudy and rainy for the next 5 days. My mental health is taking a big hit!

In spite of the rain I managed to get to a few estate sales. One of them was at a 1.5 million dollar house and the house next door was also for sale at $1.95 million! I didn't take any pictures, though. 

One estate sale company was advertising for help. I was talking to one of the workers and she was telling me that they are very flexible with their hours and the pay was pretty good, too! Plus they had a sign-on bonus after a certain time. How I would love to work for a estate sale company! The only problem is a lot of the sales are far away from where I live, like 50 or more miles. It would mean driving back and forth for 3-4 days in a row! I don't really want to do that because a) I can't put those kind of miles on my leased car, and B) the actual drives themselves would involve very busy expressways! 

Anyway, one of the sales had several tables full of jewelry. 

This is just one of them. I love looking at estate sale jewelry but seldom buy it. I already have enough jewelry that I don't wear! 

Another sale was in a warehouse and was a estate liquidation company sale. 

There were two floors just loaded with all kinds of pictures, lamps, vases, mirrors and tons and tons of dried flower arrangements! All very ornate stuff that was not my style at all! 

I visited three estate sales and all I bought was a coffee mug! I only go to look at the houses anyway! 

I did manage to get this blurry picture of a license plate on the truck in front of me. It's hard to read but it says CASKET! Wonder the story about that?

I'll leave you with our two baby robin snatchers neighborhood cats Gabriele and Rosita hanging on our deck waiting for Rich to give them treats! 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends! 

Take Me Out To The (T) ball Game

My son Chris was in town this week. He flew in on Tuesday and left on Saturday night. 

He specifically came here to see Maxwell's one and only T-ball game. He was here for the practice on Tuesday and for the big game on Saturday morning. 

Of course, because you  can't count on Michigan weather for squat it was rainy and cold for Maxwell's game. They played 3 innings anyway and it was pretty cute if not a little uncomfortable. 

Here he is with his team (in front with the white pants) and with his little trophy!  Although he struggled a little with being so shy he says he'll play again next year. The league is for 4 and 5 year old's so he'll be at the upper age and also will have a year of pre-school behind him.

We also had a graduation party to go to and it stormed off and on the whole time! Luckily they had a big tent we were under! 

Then we dropped Chris off at the airport for his 9:00 flight back to New Hampshire. It's always a little sad and quiet at our house for a day or two when he leaves. Luckily we'll see him again for our family vacation up north! 

That was it for my week! 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends! 

Saving Baby Robin

We have two big pine trees in the front of our house and for the last couple of weeks we have been watching a robins nest in one of them. A few days ago we could see the baby robins were pretty big and standing on the edge of the nest ready to fly the coop! 

We also have two neighborhood cats who like to hang around on our deck because Rich gives them treats and also because they like to watch the birds at our feeder.  They actually belong to the people across the street from us. I was talking to the neighbor and she told me their names are Gabriel and Rosita! She also said she worries about them running across the street all the time and I refrained from asking her if she's so worried about it why does she let them outside? 

Anyway, can you see where I'm going with this? 

Saturday night we kept the boys overnight and Sunday we were hanging around outside with them before their mom came to pick them up. I was looking across the street and noticed one of their cats pounce on something. I watched for a second and could see a bird try to get away and the cat pounce on it again. When I mentioned it to Rich he said that about a hour ago he saw one of the cats grab a baby bird off of our lawn and run across the street with it!  

Oh no...not one of MY baby birds! I walked across the street and I could hear the robins chirping in the closest tree. I shooed the cat away and picked up the baby bird. It was so tiny and had a small puncture wound on it's neck! But it seemed ok otherwise. It was standing and flapping it's wings. I brought it back to our yard to show the boys. 

Maxwell immediately held his hands out to hold it. Levi declined but did pet it very gently. The bird looks big in Maxwell's little hands but it fit perfectly in the palm of my hand! It was so tiny!

Then I had Rich put it in the tree on the highest branch he could reach. After a short while the parent birds were coming to it and feeding it. The next time I looked the baby and the parents were gone. 

I going to assume they all flew away together! 

All the splash pads have opened again in this area and Shauna and I took the boys to one on Friday. 

They loved it. I see we will be spending a lot of time at them this summer!

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends!

Roll With It, Baby!

Lately I've been making an attempt to get my pantry a little more organized. One of the things that has bugged me from the start is this shelf. 

It's just a little wire hanging shelf we put up when we moved in. I have always used it to keep my aluminum foil, wax paper, plastic storage bags and those kind of things. When I've needed a particular roll that is in the back I usually knock something else off in the process. Plus the roll of parchment paper is too long and I have to prop it up on one side. 

I've been looking for some over-the-door hanging shelves to use inside the door but I have not been able to find one that the baskets are long enough.

Rich got this handy little plastic bag for a gift (it had six beers in it) a few years ago and I thought it might work to hang on the pantry door and hold all those rolls. It has dividers on the inside and even had a little tab to hang it with as you can see on the bottom picture. 

So I put a command hook up and after waiting the required hour hung my little bag and filled it with all the rolls that were on the shelf. Almost immediately the little tab broke and everything fell to the floor! 

So I hung it by the handle but it sagged too much and swung back and forth whenever the door opened or closed. 

The next day I bought two more commend hooks and put them next to each other as far apart as I could stretch the handle of the bag. Once again I waited the required hour. Note: Looking at this picture I think I probably should have bought white ones so they blend in a little better. 

Anyway, that worked much better and the bag stays still when the door moves. I intend it to be a temporary solution until I can find some kind of wire basket that is wide enough for that pesky parchment paper roll. 

We've been going to Maxwell's T-ball practices every week and they are fun! Maxwell loves it but he's shy and I think he's one of the youngest and smallest kid on the team. He'll participate as long as his mom or dad are close. 

Levi on the other hand is ready to play! Unfortunately he has to wait a few years until he's old enough! 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends! 

This, That and the Other

We've had some beautiful warm weather for a week and now it's cooled down again. Last night it got down to 42 and today the high is only going to be 48!  Brrrr! At least the humidity is gone for a minute! 

My little lilac bush that I thought may have been damaged due to a late frost is blooming like crazy and smells heavenly! Apparently it's a different kind of lilac that blooms later than the purple flowered ones. It has lighter, different shaped blooms but still very pretty! 

My azalea is blooming like crazy, too! This is my third attempt at growing an azalea bush, one at each house we lived in.  I guess third times the charm because it's doing really well.

Last week when it was still Spring and not Fall it was warm enough to break out the pool for the boys when they came over. The water was a little too cold to actually go all in but chairs and feet in the water was good enough! 

We don't have any plans for this holiday weekend. Shauna is going to be potty-training Levi so I'm not sure how much we'll see them. 

Maxwell has started playing T-ball. They have a bunch of practices and then one game in the middle of June. He's so shy though and will only participate if his dad is with him! So Brad became an assistant coach! 

If you happen to have a Trader Joe's by you I highly recommend these frozen meatballs. They are the best I have ever had! 

As a side note: It's so nice to be able to go into stores without a mask! 

Well, that's about it for now. I'm getting pretty antsy and am going to be looking for a job once summer vacations are over. Everyone is hiring right now so it shouldn't be too hard. 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends, 

  

Part 5: Waterfalls

Anyone who knows me knows that waterfalls are my happy place!

The upper peninsula is loaded with waterfalls and we went to three of them on this trip. The first one is literally 10 feet off the road and it's called Alger Falls. 

It's a small waterfall and it's two levels. 

The next one we visited is called Horseshoe Falls. 

It was bigger than the first one and had a pretty stream that ran down a hill. The bad thing was it's on private property and we had to pay to go back and look at it! 

The only other falls we visited and the biggest one is called Wagner Falls.

There is a trail about 1/4 of a mile through the woods to get to it. What I love about that is you can hear the waterfall before you see it! The sound of that rushing water seriously soothes my soul.  I could just sit there and listen all day! 

We wanted to visit Tahquamenon Falls too which is a pretty good sized waterfall and a series of smaller falls but we missed the turn and by the time we realized it we were too far to turn back. 

These are really small falls compared to some of the beautiful big ones they have in the UP. We've visited a lot of them but there is still more we haven't seen! I intend to see them all eventually! One of these days I'll repeat posts I've made of other falls we've visited up there! 

That's about it for our little getaway. On Saturday we left in the morning and drove all the way home. 

We made one more stop before we crossed to the lower peninsula. The bugs weren't nearly as bad on this side. 

And I was able to get a much better picture of the Mackinaw Bridge. 

Thanks for coming along with me on our little trip. It was nice to get away. 

In July we are spending a week in a house on a lake in Gaylord, Michigan with Shauna, Brad the boys, Chris and his girlfriend and Brad's mom. I can't wait and of course I'll be telling you all about it!  

I'll be back soon. 

Until then be safe and well my friends. 

Part 4: Fayette Historic State Park and Big Spring

On the last full day of our trip we went to Fayette Historic State Park. It's an old iron smelting town on a harbor surrounded by cliffs. 

It's closed now of course but you can still go inside some of the houses and buildings. This white house surrounded by a picket fence was the supervisors house. He lived in luxury compared to the laborers. 

These are the furnaces they used to melt the iron. It must have been a hot and horrible place to work. A lot of the workers were Irish immigrants and lived in poverty in little cabins that are gone now.  

I took this picture off of the Michigan DNR website because it shows how beautiful the area is. 

After Fayette we went to Palm Book State Park to see the Big Spring or Kitch-iti-kipi as the Native Americans called it. 

I took this aerial view picture from the internet. The water is blue-green and you can see how crystal clear it is!  

You can take a raft across the spring that's manually powered by a rope pully system. Here's Rich manning the ship! There is an open viewing area in the middle of the raft so you can look down to the bottom of the spring, 

The spring is about 40 feet deep and you can see clear to the bottom. Large trout are swimming all over. It's a little hard to see in the bottom picture but the circular areas a little below center are the areas where the water is coming into the spring. You can't tell from this picture but the mound of sand where the water is coming up is about 10 feet high! 

I tried to upload a video for you of the water coming up in the spring but blogger wouldn't let me! Too bad because it's pretty cool looking! 

I could have watched it all day! 

Next time: Waterfalls! 

Until then stay safe and well my friends!