Day 1

We're in the U.P.!

At the hilltop

Sleepy boy

Pebble beach

We were on the road and heading north just after 4:00.  We crossed the Mackinaw bridge around 7:00 and stopped at the gas station. After a nice stretch we were back on the road.  We had pop tarts for breakfast. The boys were laughing hard at Tom & Jerry. They also watched some old Transformers. I drove for a little over an hour so Jared could sleep. We stopped again for gas and some ladies on the highway yelled, “we love your dog!”  Haha. We arrived in L’ance just before 12:00.  Wyatt was a good puppy waiting in the van while we ate our sweet rolls. Eli doesn’t like sweet rolls so he got french fries. Just after 1:00 we crossed the Houghton Hancock bridge. It was raining when we stopped at the stone boat in Kearsarge. Eli fell asleep just before getting to "the tunnels". We arrived in Copper Harbor around 2:30. Setting up camp took a few hours. Adam set up his hammock to read in and fell asleep. Jacob read his book and Eli played on his scooter. We woke Adam up so we could take a walk over to Pebble beach. There was a warning sign telling us not to go in the water due to high e-coli from the floods.   We walked along the beach and Wyatt was super hyper as he ran around on the long leash. Eli and Daddy went to look for blueberries and they found lots of them. Eli shared some that were in his pocket. When we got back we took a walk around the campground with Adam and Eli riding their scooters. We made sandwiches for dinner and then got ready for bed. Daddy started reading the first book in a new series of 39 Clues. He read to us every night and finished the first 3 books in the series.  

7-19-18

1 more sleep until Copper Harbor!!!

7-18-18

Nana brought out muffin's and cookies!  Yummy!

Visiting Aunt Missy

Wyatt's first trip to the dog park

7-17-18

Adam helped me get the crates packed with food and loaded in the trailer.  I spent hours working on seiving an ash glaze that Jared had worked on for a few hours last night.  I made a huge mess with it when I accidentally floored the pedal and it splashed all over.  The bucket was sitting on the pottery wheel. Nik came over for a couple hours and the boys played with legos.  When Jared got home from work we waxed and glazed pottery.  This evening we went to the park.  Took a few laps around with Wyatt.  The boys had fun on their scooters.  Adam left a pile of blood when Jacob scooter kick stand hit Adam's ankle.  Ouch!

7-16-18

7-15-18

We drove down to Indianapolis to visit Dad, Mom, Eric, Kat, Andrew and Noah.  Wyatt’s first long trip in the car.  He did wonderful.  We arrived early afternoon and visited for a bit. Aunt Mary Kay stopped and we had a nice visit with her too... then the chainsaw came out.  Mom had a list of things she needed us to do so we got to the list.  Enough sitting around.  it was just under 483 degrees F but we got to work. There is an old blue spruce that was dying at the corner of the drive way.  It was to come down, and it did, but didn’t fall exactly the way I wanted too.  Opposite.  but it came down.  Felling a tree is the easy part, the next part is was where the blood sweat and tears and more sweat…. and yet more sweat.  Did I mention it was just under 593 degrees F.  ~ 98% humidity.  So once the tree was down there were just undert 9238 limbs.  whew…lots of chain saw work.  The rest of the family had to drag all the branches and mess I was making to the burn pile.  I took a break to help drag branches as well.  whew that was work. Mom cleaned up the street, I mentioned it didn’t quite fall the way I wanted, and we eventually  got it all chopped and cleaned up.  Mom had a few other branches to cut off a tree so got that done as well and then showers.  I think we all over did it a bit.  Especially the 80 and 79 yr olds. A nice pile of logs and two big piles of branches.  Saturday Dad said some stranger threw a “lit cigarette"  in the pile of branches we made and it it all burned up.  Oh well so much for that piles but what a coincidence.  So Saturday Eric, Kat Andrew and Noah stopped by.  We got to chat with Andrew about his camp experience.  Sounded like he had a good time.  Kimmy, Andrew, Noah, Wyatt and myself went for a walk around the neighbor hood.  That was fun, lots of good conversations.  Mom had more projects, fixed the hose, fixed the ceiling in the den with some new ceiling tiles, took the radiator in the bathroom out and sanded/ground 72 layers of paint and a bunch of rust off.  Took it all the way down to the metal and re primed and painted. It did cool down into the low 200’s F.  In the evening Wyatt enjoyed chasing the lightening bugs, lots of lightening bugs and he wanted to get them all.  It was really funny.  Sunday we cleaned up and headed to church then back to mom and dads for lunch and then piled in the car to come home.  Had a great weekend, nice to get a bunch of big projects off mom and dad's to do list.  I’m sure she’s already working on a new “To Do List”.     

7-14-18

Russell boys

Haha Wyatt