Forgiveness

Ok, Ok, I know that I have said that I am going to try to keep up with this, I actually have a legitimate excuse which I have wanted to share with everyone but I didn't know how to do it......well 1. I have an ovarian cyst, and I need have to it all removed via c section scar--which will result in some time in the hospital--but the good news is I will be down, and I will have time to get caught back up, so bear with me.

2.  I was taking the 40 hour class and I was just about finished when I found about about need to have this surgery, so I had two weeks, and I thought I am going to get this finished.  Passed the class and the final exam and got the state exam scheduled!  I am officially a licensed real estate agent, working with CENTURY 21 Drews Realty.   There are a few more things I have to get finished up but hopefully by April I will be going good!

That said, I wanted to say, we went on a snowmobile trip which was ended up being the last one of the year---and let me tell you, it was the BEST!  Right now I am only going to share a few photos, and I will share the rest later, but I can't wait any longer to show these because it was the most amazing thing---Lake Superior ice shelfs:

My husband is the only one who managed to drive out there--it was so slippery, but while we were looking over the edge, I felt as if a penguin should hop up there! It was the most amazing thing!

Promise to share more about this trip as soon as I can!

Wow......

Well, last evening we had intended to heading to the boat.  Once we got the car loaded made our way toward town to get some food and then be on our merry way.   The rain was coming, and we knew, but we had no idea it would be so bad.


We made our way down Jonesvile Rd heading toward 69 in rain so hard we couldn't see in front of us, and we come upon a police cruiser blocking the road way.  We could not get through because of the giant tree laying across the road.  Let me rephrase that, it was laying just to block half  the road, we  (we being my husband and I) would have went through but the police wouldn't let us.  So we turned around and headed back the way we came from and turned north on the first cross road we came to.  I don't recall the name of it but as we came upon other vehicles, we soon learned that there was another tree across the road.  My husband got out in the pouring rain and tried move the tree only to dicover that it was bigger than he anticipated.  We turned around.  The oncoming car stopped us to tell us of what we already knew and said to Chuck: can both of us move it?  Yes--it actually ended up being 5 people, The man and woman in the other car, Chuck and I got out tojavascript:void(0)o, and then another man got out to help as well.  Sucess!  We moved the tree enough for everyone to get through!  On our way again.  For about two miles.  The next tree we encountered was almost as big around as my car.  Ugh!

Irritated, I said, next tree we encounter we are going HOME!  We made it quite a ways, all the way to Marshall Road before we seen another tree down.  This one had a van beneath it.  We pulled over and made a couple calls.  The weather at the boat: GREAT!  The weather back home (Hillsdale):  REALLY BAD!  The worst of the mess was around the Hospital area.  We had a hard time actually getting home because of down trees and power lines, we had to go out and around to Bear Lake Road just to find a clear path.  We found out that we didn't have power at our house.  So we hopped in Chucks SUV and went into town to assess the damage.   Quite a few of our lawn customers are in the area where the "tree top tornado" made a mess and we wanted to check on them.  Luckly they were all okay, but the neighbors were not:


This house actually had two trees on it. There was one in the back too.  The house next to this house had a tree actually uprooted:
 

It was pretty devastating and as far as we know there were no major injuries, thank goodness.  Our hearts go out to all of these people.

Before and After

When I was out taking fall shots, I seen this house, which I initially thought was abandoned and of course that caught my eye more than the bright yellow tree.  When I realized that the house was not abandoned I settled for this shot.  But settling doesn't mean that I can't imagine it's abandoned and spooky! Take a look:

Fall?

Since I missed the weekend, I thought I would make up for it with some fall colored trees.



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From here, I will go away from trees.

Tuesday

Today we had a very busy day!  Let me tell you, I don't know why people think that a vacation is rest!  My husband wanted to show us things in Florida that he did as a child as well as do the space center and see the ocean.  Well as you may remember we left the house Thursday afternoon, and pushed down to Florida checking into our resort by 2 p.m.  Well needless to say we were tired!  I have to tell you, it doesn't seem like it has slowed down at all!  Today we started at 6 a.m.  Our air boat tour was scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m. and we figured we needed to give ourselves 45 minutes to get to our destination.
We went out on an air boat tour for 1 hour and a half.  We didn't get to see a lot of alligators, but we did get to see a bunch of birds, and I got to see a pink bird, which I believe was a spoonbill of some sort, but I didn't get a shot of him because he took off as we were buzzing by.  Here is a bit of what we seen today:


These were the first birds who didn't fly away as we came by.  I am pretty sure that they actually put forward their best side.


It's a small world, this shot was taken in Florida, I live in Michigan, about 30 minutes away from Litchfield, and we actually worked for the owners of this company.


We seen these just before we got on our airboat.


This was the last thing we expected to see while out in the wet lands and swampy areas.

This was out on a refuge trail, we didn't see a lot of animals or many exotic birds, but it was very cool to see the areas we did see.


And finally, we did see the Manatees on Sunday, but we didn't get great photos because we were quite a ways away from where they were swimming. We did find another area thanks to some locals, and these Manatees were really close, but the water is murky and they don't surface very often and when they do they mostly just take a breath so it's quick and not a lot to see! Here's some noses:


I did get a tail. But most of the shots are of noses.
That's all for now!

Why we didn't go....

So last weekend we head for the boat with thoughts of coasting down the shore to South Haven dancing in our heads. Ha ha! Thursday night we left our house and set off to Grand Haven. We had reservations for a slip in South Haven, which is the 2nd time my husband has made reservations. Checking the weather before we left, there was a chance, a rather big chance, that we might not be able to make the trip due to the weather. First thing Friday morning, my husband and I went and got coffee then made our way down to the beach to see how the lake was looking. The website I checked for wave heights said 6 to 8 footers, but I didn't really expect to see them:


The beach was empty, except for the seagulls, who didn't seem to mind us being there;




It was so windy that when the seagulls would try to run away from the water, they would get all fluffy, which they didn't seem to like, so they would run then turn around very quickly! They were also hoovering in the wind, a few of them right next to us as we were walking toward the shore. Even though our trip was out of the question we had quite an experience on this morning and we had an awesome day just checking out things in Grand Haven and Muskegon and Whitehall. All of which I will talk about later!