A Happy Homecoming

Hello again, friends! It’s been an exciting week for us here, and seeing as how it’s been SO long since I last blogged, you are due for an update.

Is that squeels of joy I hear? Settle down, now, settle down. Remember whose blog you’re reading. Our lives aren’t that exciting.

But I will tell you that to me, it was one of the most exciting weeks, at least since we’ve been married. Thursday afternoon, Tyler and I high-tailed it out of here and drove up north to a cozy little Lake Michigan beach town about 2 hours away. With camping gear in tow, and food completely stashed and buried, we decided to try to hit up Jimmy John’s for their Customer Appreciation Day Dollar Subs. Unfortunately every Jimmy Johns we passed had a line a mile and a half long, so finally we settled on Subway and tried their Chicken Chipotle Cheese Sub.

Me: I’ll have the $5 Chicken Chipotle Cheese sub.

Sandwich Artist: What kind of bread would you like?

Me: Wheat please.

Sandwich Artist: Cheese?

Tyler: Yes, please, pepper jack.

Sandwich Artist: Dressings?

Me: Uh, chipotle?

So basically, the Chipotle Chicken Cheese Sub is just a chicken sub with whatever you want on it, cheese and chipotle optional. It was a little underwhelming, to be honest, since we usually order the Turkey sub with the exact same bread and dressing and toppings. And their Turkey doesn’t have the weird dry texture. Next time, I should see if they can substitute the Chipotle Chicken Cheese Sub for a Chipotle Turkey Cheese Sub. Hey, if everything else is optional, why couldn’t the chicken be too? It’s worth a shot to save a buck or two!

And THAT was our weekend. Exciting stuff, eh?

*crickets chirping*

Kidding, of course our weekend was much more spectacular than that.

We set up our tent around 5:00 pm and had just enough time to grill shish-kabobs and clean up before it started raining. And then:

hailing! There were hail stones twice this size, but this one melted in my hand a bit before I got a decent picture of it (I’m training myself how to shoot only in Manual mode).

We pretty much hung out indoors (ha!) all night and then the next morning it rained off and on, so we walked around town, had breakfast and ice cream (not at the same time), walked the beach and pier (it was almost empty because of the weather I think), and went to a movie. 

 

Overall, the weekend was great, in spite of the wet weather early on. We had a great time relaxing together, reading, grilling, and playing with fire.

 

As with every vacation, though, we were happy to come home. And happy to prepare to welcome this little girl into our home too:

Meet Rylie. She’s a sweet car-ride lovin’ bundle of fur who loves her little purple squeaky doggy. She had such a long day yesterday, but she did incredibly well. We were all prepared for accidents in the house and a long night of crying, but neither one happened.

Can you see the bullseye on her back? She such a pretty girl. And smart too. She already knows where to *ahem* “take a break” (use the restroom) outside and she does pretty well heeling. We still have a lot of training we want to do with her to get her to be the polite puppy she needs to be, but she gets tuckered out pretty quick.

My favorite thing? Watching her with Tyler. When he’s around, he has her full attention. She loves him already, and he is so good with her. Gentle, patient, and encouraging, but serious when she’s being naughty so that she knows how to behave. She loves to please him!

In spite of her getting a good night’s sleep, though, both of us are a little sleep deprived. Something about knowing she’s away from her family all by herself makes you a little more alert at night than need-be. Hopefully tonight we’ll sleep a little better.  More pictures to come, but it’s time to get the pup up and play!

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Spring is in the air, people! Can’t you feel it?

The muddy puddles.

The squishy, squeeky grass.

The *sob* hour of lost sleep for which we are still grieving.

Yep *deep refreshing breath* spring is on it’s way for sure.

And with it, apparently an urge to nurture… something.

Sure, kids will be somewhere our future (I know that’s what most of you were going to ask about). But in the meantime, we have this big ol’ house all to ourselves and no one to share it with.

A dog you ask?

Hmmm… well, while my whole life I have never had any real desire for a dog, I think I might be changing my tune. Maybe.

It all started when Tyler’s cousins got two adorable Australian Shepherd puppies, like the ones here:

(photo credit: battlecreekpuppies.com)

Are they cute or what? Since before then even, I have been blog-stalking Kate’s blog at Chroniclesofacountrygirl.blogspot.com, mostly *blush* because I’m in love with her Border Collie, George (She also does amazing photography and lives in an awesome old house that’s several hundred years old).

Having never actually met George, though, I hadn’t experienced the warm fuzzy feeling of playing with a puppy until I met our cousins’ Australian Shepherds.

*sigh* I melt…

And then… one morning I was outside taking pictures of the sunrise through the trees and I was barked at by our neighbor’s dog (who looks like he could be a Border Collie!). Since then, he has been quite shy and quiet, but he’s always watching us, curious about what we’re doing living so close to his property.

Here, puppy, puppy… come play with me!

Don’t tell our neighbors this (although I’m not sure they exist anyway – all I’ve seen is the dog), but today I went outside to “take pictures” again *wink*wink* of some of the glorious green plant-age that is sprouting up, in hopes that my neighbor-dog would wander on over to say “hi.”

But to no avail. I really just want to make friends him, but I think I must have scared him off.

What is it, puppy? Is it my freakish height?

My Toyota’s monster-truck exhaust sounds?

My Taylor Swift karaoke?

Sorry, I forgot you could probably still hear that.

*sigh*

Anyhow, we may not be friends yet, but just wait until the weather warms up and I pull out the frisbee. Just so long as he doesn’t leave me any *ahem* reasons to not want him wandering over to our property.

In the meantime, I’m left to nurture the indoor plant-age we have acquired:

Some basil I bought at Meijer…

And a potted carnation-relative plant that I received for signing up for the Garden Club at Home Depot when we went to the Home and Garden Show last weekend.

So far, both are looking a little rough. I’m beginning to get a little nervous about tending a garden of my own. My father in law is an expert gardener — I can’t let him down! It’s looking like the previous owner’s idea of landscaping was bushes – lots and lots of bushes. That seems like an easy approach to me. But, if I can get a little help, I’ll at least try to use this urge to nurture to muster up a green thumb.

Or maybe a green pinky.

Or pinky fingernail.

Eww, green fingernails? Gross.

Anyways…

If you know my neighbors, will you please tell them I would like to be introduced to their dog so that we can play and I can decide if I want a dog of my own.

And if you see Tyler, please don’t tell him ANYTHING about this post. *whispering* He’s not a pet-person. So until I’ve at least made friends with our neighbor-dog and intoduced the two of them, we’ll just keep my scheming between us, ok?

A Photo Tour of Traverse City

Man, I have been so busy blogging lately. Posting about our 2nd anniversary, about the Detroit Tigers game we went to, more of my superb marital advice, and my recent attempt at making shredded chicken enchiladas that turned out to be burritos.

Oh, you don’t remember those posts?

Huh…

Maybe that’s because I didn’t actually write them!!! I have “written” a half dozen posts in my head since my last actual post. But I have not found the time to actually sit down and type any of them out. So instead I have had a steady stream of mental blogging during which I appear to be in some kind of catatonic state, staring off into space and moving my lips ever so slightly while I talk to myself.

Anyways… so now for a real post! That will mostly consist of a pictoral-narrative of our recent camping trip with my family (my brother included! I haven’t seen him in 3 months and the last trip we all took together was probably 5 years ago).

It was an amazing trip. We had a campfire and made smores and played uchre and ate ice cream. We also shopped in the cute downtown strip, went on a bike ride, and drove out to the peninsula to go wine tasting and spend some time on the beach by the lighthouse. It was perfect weather and the water was BEAUTIFUL. And most of all, it was just a wonderful time spent with my family. We haven’t all been together like that… well, ever before really, at least not with Tyler as a part of our family.

I also recently read the user manual for our camera and have been dabbling a bit in photography. Dabbling a verrry little bit. So here is a sample of my photos from the weekend, a miniscule representation of how beautiful it was in Traverse City.

Ok, so this is not actually Traverse City. This is a picture of my mom’s flowers that I took before we left. I was trying to play around with macro-shots (up-close).

This is another picture from my mom’s garden. I was trying to play around with the focus again. It could have been a cool picture, but my focus was all off. I was kind of struggling with the camera because I was partly in the bushes and couldn’t really see in the view finder. That’s my excuse anyways.

This is Traverse City. See that water? Isn’t is gorgeous!

At the vineyard where we did the wine tasting (I’ve never done this before. I would love alcohol if it didn’t have any alcohol in it! As it turned out, the kind I liked was the least alcoholic! I have the palate of a 7 year old I think. Which isn’t a bad thing I guess). I’d like to call this photo “There’s One in Every Bunch.”

No need for applause.

The lighthouse at the end of the peninsula.

My brother. Isn’t he cool? I love the aspect of this photo with the lighthouse in the background.

 

And, my amazing parents. We had so much fun. I am so thankful to God for such a great family.

And that, my friends, was our trip! Tune in again… uh… sometime soon hopefully for more!