Peas In A Pod

What a Weekend! (Long/Photo Heavy)

I hope you all had a great weekend!  We had a wonderful time celebrating our anniversary.  It wasn't a highly planned weekend, but it all sort of just "happened" nicely....

We got up at 6:00 am and met our neighbors Tim and Leanne at 7:00 am for our motorcycle ride. 

We thought about stopping in this little town, Lawton, for breakfast, but we had just started riding.  So, we kept going.

We stopped at a little restaurant somewhere along the way and had breakfast.  The whole time we were riding, I kept telling myself, "You're going to be good and order oatmeal."  That was the healthy choice.  And it was quite chilly.  I thought oatmeal would warm me up a lot.

But then we walked in and the special was Cranberry Walnut French Toast.  My willpower did not hold fast.

We started just south of Kalamazoo and rode up to Tippy Dam, where the purple pin is in this map.  The darker green you see on this map in that area is all the Manistee National Forest.  So, it was a really nice ride.

This map shows you where we were once we got to the dam.  We were on the western edge of the reservoir.

Here you can see the roof of the dam and the reservoir behind it.

At the top, where we parked, were all these power lines.  The dam was constructed by Consumers Energy, which provides a lot of power to Michiganders.

The best part of visiting the dam was we hiked down this trail to the area below the dam.

As we neared the bottom, we saw this sign.  I had never seen a sign like this before, but if I heard that siren, I think I'd get the heck out of there!

Here is the area below the dam.

There were salmon fishermen everwhere you looked.  Apparently, the salmon were running.  They run up the river you saw in that second map.  Then, they get to this pool below the dam and are sort of trapped.  So, I guess it's a really good fishing spot.

Here is a fish one guy caught.  I put my foot by it for scale.  That is a good-sized fish, huh?  Papa Pea said it was a salmon.  I wouldn't know....

The rapids were pretty cool.

There was quite a bit of beauty around the river's edge.

We rode on after visiting the dam and stopped here for lunch.

I had to laugh at what was on the menu.  No, I didn't order the frog legs, in case you were wondering.  I had a burger and a beer!

After lunch, we rode around some more and headed back toward home, through the national forest again.  This was my view for much of the day.  Can't complain about that!

On the way home, we drove through Allegan.  We had heard there was a one-lane bridge there, so we tried to find it.  Here it is!

That was fun!

And when we returned home it was dusk, and we were treated to a beautiful sunset.  The day was wonderful.  A little long, but good.  It was chilly early and late in the day, but warm in the middle.  We got rained on a couple of times, but not bad.  A nice way to spend the day.

On Sunday, we decided to go to the beach.  I had been wanting to visit South Haven, so that's where we went.  I had some schoolwork to accomplish in the morning, which I did.  Then, we went to South Haven (if you look on the first map I posted, it's on the shore of Lake Michigan, south of Holland quite a ways....almost directly west of Kalamazoo) and found this cute outdoor spot for lunch.  The day was warm in the sun, a little chilly in the shade.  Had a glass of wine with my lunch.  The day was starting off great.

We walked out on the pier to the lighthouse.  Nice views of Lake Michigan.

We checked out the north and south beaches.  They looked pretty empty.  It was windy and about 70 degrees.  Too chilly for most people to be on the beach!

Poor Sweet Pea jumped off this pipe, just having fun.  She fell toward me and wopped her forehead into the camera lens!  Ouch!  She had some tears and a bruised forehead to show for that one.

After the tears were dried off, Papa Pea said, "Let's go check out the sand dunes!"  And Sweet Pea wanted to play in the sand.  So, we went to Van Buren State Park and hiked up the hill.

We were rewarded with a spectacular view of Lake Michigan at the top.

 
And beautiful sand dunes, too.

It was way too cold for me to get in, but not for these two.  Sweet Pea is a rock hound, and this beach was a great place to go rock hunting.

She also discovered that if you dig a hole in the sand, it starts to fill with water.  She thought that was pretty awesome, so she decided to dig a big hole.

Papa Pea came over to help.  I helped a little, too, but mostly I sat and warmed up on the towel!  When we came over to help her, Sweet Pea said, "That's it!  Now you're getting into the spirit of things!"  That really cracked us both up.  I'm still chuckling over it today.

All in all, it was a great weekend.  We had a general plan, but nothing too specific.  It was lazy, yet we got to do a lot of things.  Best weekend I've had in a long, long time.

But I didn't sew a thing.  I have nothing to show for myself this weekend (not even the laundry got done!).  I have no idea what I'll blog about this week, so it might be a little thin!  Maybe I can catch up on some older stuff!  Haha!

Hope you had a great weekend, too.

Until next time,

 

Halloween Goodies and Some Just for Fun Stuff

I got quite a surprise last week.  One of my doctoral students, Shawn, texted me and asked if I was still in the office.  I texted back, "Yes."  He wrote, "Okay, I'm on my way.  I'll be there in 20 minutes."  He was coming from Battle Creek, where we are starting a clinic.  I'm thinking that he needs to talk to me about the clinic or something.  So, I text back, "K.  I'll wait for u."

About 20 minutes later, he shows up to give me this wonderful little gift that his wife (Myra) and he made for us:

I was pretty glad I had stuck around!  :-)  And it didn't have anything to do with work!

It was all tied up with this cute cobweb ribbon.

I opened the card.  Myra had made that, too:

How cute is this card?!  So simple, yet so effective.  Makes me want to get all my scrapbooking and cardmaking stuff out again.

I pulled the ribbon off and put this super cute Halloween countdown on my mantel:

 
I stole some of the pumpkins from my candle holder I posted about a while back and put them around it.

Sweet Pea is having a great time changing the numbers everyday.  (This photo was taken a few days ago.)  The other day, she was going to go up a number and then she said, "Wait a minute...we're counting down, right Mom?  So, I need to go down a number, not up a number, right?"  Great math leasson for her, too!

This motivated me to get out the rest of my Halloween decorations and get them up.

Here are some of them.  I bought that pumpkin man (on the far right) a couple of years ago when I was at a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.  I just love him.  I made the little stuffed pumpkins that are flanking him several years ago.  They are getting faded, but I still like them.  I bought the wooden pumpkins some years ago at a craft fair in Utah, I think.

I made these eEK letters two years ago at a scrapbooking store in Idaho.  They are wood, with scrapbook paper on them (using mod podge), much like what Myra made.  There is a little spider hanging from the K.  I should have taken the photo closer up.

I have some decorations on the other side of the room, but I haven't had a chance to take photos of those yet.

So, a huge THANK YOU to Myra and Shawn for the wonderful gifit.  It is so cute, and it just made my day.  It also got me going on the rest of my decorating!

We also went to the pumpkin farm and apple orchard this weekend.  We got our pumpkins, gourds, and Indian corn.  So, I'll be decorating outside here soon, too.  I need a couple bales of straw, however, so I'm waiting for Papa Pea to pick that up for me.  Notice how Sweet Pea is dressed?  Yes, it was flip flop weather this weekend.  Awesome!  It was about 80 degrees!!!  The tress are just beautiful right now with all the warm days and cool nights.

Here are a couple of random things:

Talking about getting my scrapbook supplies out again....when I was organizing my drawers and tubs last weekend, Sweet Pea had fun going through everything and asking if she could have stuff and make something.  So, I gave her free access to my stuff.  Here's what she created.  I think it's pretty cute and funny.  Normally I would take off her name and blur it out, but I thought it was funny how she spelled our last name.  We keep having this ongoing argument that you don't spell Peterson "Petersin."  She knows how to spell it but insists on using an "i."  She says, "Mom, s-o-n is 'son.'  That's for a boy.  I am not a boy!"  Argh.  This will pass, right?!

We have been riding our motorcycle/scooters a lot lately since the weather has been so good.  Probably not too many days left that we'll be able to do this.  (Maggie, I hope you're getting lots of scooter riding in, too!)  Anyway, we saw these two beautiful motorcycles out in front of a pub we stopped at on Friday night, and I saw this helmet on it.  That sticker just cracked me up.  I want one of those.  Thought you might get a kick out of it.

I have lots on tap to show you this week.  I'm nearly finished with the Cowboy Blessing projects, I worked more on my new bed quilt, and I started some wonky log cabin piecing for my guild nametag.  I'll show you that and maybe post a tutorial on paper piecing.  Also, my sister-in-law, Linda, sent me some quilty stuff I can't wait to show you.  So, come back later this week for updates on that!

Until next time,

Mama Pea

How to Pay for a Remodel

Hello All,

Hope you are having a wonderful summer day! 

We had a rather sad day about a week ago.  Papa Pea decided to sell his BMW motorcycle to pay for the expenses we are incurring to remodel the house we just bought.  I loved this motorcycle, and so did he.

I love riding on the back of motorcycles with him (and so does Sweet Pea).  Actually, Sweet Pea got pretty upset when we sold it. 

BUT, it raised a lot of cash to pay for our expenses, which was good.  We took a very small amount of the money and purchased a used, cheaper motorcycle so he'd still have something to cruise around on with me (I still have my scooter).

I was impressed with the deal he got on the bike.  He was able to purchase this and still have over $10,000 left for our renovations.  Pretty good.  We will try to get him another big cruiser someday when we can afford it again.  He thinks it's amusing how much I support his motorcycle habit...he says most wives wouldn't do that.  I guess I love riding as much as he does.

The John Deere tractor you see here came with the house when we purchased it.  It has a lawn mower attachment and a snow blower attachment, which will really help with the LONG driveway this summer.  I have a story to tell you later about John Deere tractors, but I'll save that for another day.

Papa Pea sure loves this big garage he has (in addition to the two-car garage on the house).  This is about one-third of the space in the garage.  We are glad to have a section for storing the "toys" and another section that will be his wood shop.

Hope all is well in your world today.  Have a fantastic weekend.  Any fun plans, anyone?  I will probably be painting!  More updated house photos soon.

Until next time,

Mama Pea