Mom, Dad, and Lori Visit

We rented a pontoon when my parents and Lori came to visit last weekend. I really enjoy riding up and down the Inland Waterway. The Indian River was closed for some races, but that was ok becuase just doing the Crooked River gave us time to get back to Petoskey for the Craft Fair in the park. And we saw the Lipizzaner Stalions (http://www.lipizzaner.com/) that night too. Can you tell my family likes to go, go, go on vacations??!!

Here is Diesel getting loving at the very beginning of the trip.

And a little bit later on checking out the Lock.

Lori decided that after spending as much time on the water as she does, it was about time she tried to actually drive a boat. She did great! And Lori got a good picture of the Clock Tower. I'm kinda gonna miss pictures like this even though I feel like I see a million of the right now!!

Triathlon

My parents and Lori came up last weekend for a visit and stayed long enough to watch my first triathlon! It was actually really fun and I did well. Lori took some great pictures. The first one show us all milling around near the start of the swim.

The next one shows us swimming. Don't ask me which one is me. I have no idea. I think I finished 5th in the swim, but I passed a number of people, so I wasn't 5th at this point.

And here is me running. My best event, but definately the most tiring!

I got second overall for the women, which was really fun ... but I can't say the competition was all that stiff! Still, it was nice to get a plaque for my first attempt!

House for Sale

Our house was listed for sale on Monday, and I already had one showing (yeah!!!). Turns out we didn't have enough trees for them, but they liked the house, so I felt good about that. Tanner and I (and several other very nice friends!) worked long and hard to get it looking this great. Check out our hard work at http://www.realtor.com/realestate/petoskey-mi-49770-1102237394/

And our realtor put together a virtual tour: http://www.visualtour.com/shownp.asp?T=1644439

Tanner still has the camera, but our realtor took great pictures!!

Almost Alone

I don't have any pictures this time because Tanner took the camera (I think accidentally?). So I will keep this short, but wanted you to know that if I had a camera, I would show you how awesome our house looks. New paint, spotlessly clean basement, new stepping stones to the front door, new gutters, even a new deck!
It is already feeling very quiet here. Honestly, I was kinda looking forward to Tanner leaving so I could really get the place clean (and keep it clean!) and things have been tense with the stress of getting everything ready. But he's barely been gone a day and it is weird with just me and the dogs. So this morning, right over the farmer's field was a huge, bright, complete arched, double rainbow. It kinda felt like God was reminding me that he would take care of me. So between the dogs and God, I'm being watched over!
The good news is Tanner is coming back this weekend. Then you will get pictures!

My Birthday

Yes, I know that was a while ago. I wanted to show some pictures that my friend took from the boating trip we went on the weekend after my birthday. The first one is a lock that we went through to get from the Crooked Lake onto the Crooked River. I don't think I'd ever been on a lock before, so that was pretty neat.

This place is on the Crooked River. It might be where we stopped on the way home to go to the bathroom and then got a rope stuck in the prop.
Just a picture of a cute little kid fishing on the river as we drove past. And I think this is my new favorite picture of us!This was right at the begining. You can see Oden Island behind us. We went all the way up the Cooked River to Burt Lake. Then we went up the Indian River to the Inn Between which is a neat little restaurant right on the river and got lunch there. Then we turned around and went back. If we had kept going we could have gone all the way to Lake Huron, but we wouldn't have gotten the pontoon back to the rental place in time! It was really a fun trip, and I hope we get to do it again sometime.

Visitors!!

I love having visitors. It gives me an excuse to play the hostess ... which for me means fixing up the bedrooms and bathrooms all nice and touring around beautiful Northern Michigan. Which, honestly, has a lot more meaning now that I'm leaving. I actually got to see a few things this weekend that I havn't seen before becuase I was showing my Grandparents and my Mom around.

On Saturday we went up to Mackinaw City. There is a lighthouse that we toured and an old fort that they are reconstructing. I find all that local history stuff pretty facinating.

Then on Sunday after church we drove around Bay View and Wequetonsing to see all of the beautiful Victorian homes and gardens. They loved it!!

Then we went to Charlevoix to listen to the Petoskey High School Steel Drum Band. I love watching them. They have so much fun while they are performing!

Shooting Clay Pigeons

Not sure if I got the spelling on this one right, but just wanted to share a few pictures of us shooting clay pigeons in Tanner's parent's backyard. We made a very last minute trip to PA this weekend and stoped briefly in Grove City. I'm usually a pretty good shot, thanks to Mr. Cliff always letting us shoot when we visited them, but the boys definately outshot me this time!

Here is Caleb shooting a double.And all of the guys together as the sun was starting to set and we were running out of pigeons. Seeing Eric again was a pretty neat suprise. He is Tanner's older brother who lives in Germany and we hadn't seen since before we got married. And Drake watching longingly from the house. Tanner didn't trust him not to chase after the pigeons!