Blueberry!

Steve and I went to Russell's blueberry farm and picked ourselves a bucket of blueberries.


It was a fantastic experience. There were many different varieties of blueberries to choose from, so of course we tried them all. There were also some of the largest blueberries I have seen in my life. And they were SO sweet right off the bush and warmed by the sun. The cost was 1.65 per pound of picked berries, but when you factor in the berries we ate, it really goes down to about 1.25 per pound. I think I ate more berries in that one afternoon than the rest of my life combined! We went home with over 17 pounds of blueberries. That is more than our two cats put together!

From This:

To This:

This is what 17 pounds of blueberries look like when compared to a 9 pound cat. All those berries went into the freezer and so far have been becoming cold smoothies on hot days. If they last until winter they'll hopefully turn into pies, muffins and jam.

Tiny Horses

We went to the miniature horse show at the Midland fair grounds this weekend. We got to walk around and see all the little guys and we stayed for the pleasure driving competition. I would love to take one of those buggies around Midland and watch the jaws drop! Who knew horses could be so cute.

Pleasure Driving
Looks like the people should pull the horses

Art Fair and Pig Gig- Good summertime Michigan fun

We've been pretty busy on the weekends taking advantage of the great weather and the fairs going on around us. Mid-July we went down to Ann Arbor to visit Steph (Steve's friend from Michigan State), which was the same weekend as Art Fair down there, and the opening of Dark Knight. We walked around Art Fair for a few hours and still didn't see everything. We liked the photos from a local artist, Mike Moats, so we bought a couple that we'll hopefully get framed soon. The birch leaf is going in the entryway and the frog will go in the bedroom.

After having fun at the Fair, we saw the new Batman movie and went out for Thai. We have been trying to take advantage of good ethnic food whenever we leave Midland because it's not really this town's forte.

Yesterday, we took a trip to Bay City, one of the three in the "Tri-City" area we live in, for the Pig Gig with some people from work. They had a petting zoo for kids and Steve, a dog agility races demo, various cooking demos, and all sorts of contests like bubble blowing or jalapeno eating. Oh, and there were a ton of bbq joints selling their meat, so we all tried different places. Surprisingly, my favorite was the Australian stand. It was a nice day baking in the sun.

Our new home

For those who didn't know, our apartment here wasn't available until July 11, so we were living in a temporary corporate-rented townhouse our first month. When we finally moved into our longer-term apartment, we had quite a mess. We had the movers take everything out of the boxes so they could take the packing material. We naively thought this would encourage us to get everything put away that weekend. It turns out, we've accumulated a lot more stuff than we realized because in Berkeley, a lot of this was tucked tightly away in our big closets.

It ended up taking us a week or two, but we finally have the place almost completely cleaned, and we love it! It's got a big deck with huge windows, so it's always light in the apartment. The vaulted ceilings make it feel big, and the cats love running around and perching on the walls that wrap around the kitchen. We even have a guest bedroom for anyone wanting to come visit! We have more before and after photos online, along with some updated pictures from other things we've been doing.

4th of July in Canada!

We were super Patriotic this year and went to Canada for the 4th of July. John (best man at our wedding) was in Toronto doing some business at Canada's Wonderland so we drove up to meet him. We had lots of fun hanging out and John even got us into the park which is HUGE. We went on the giant behemoth roller coaster and then headed out to water park to cool off on the hot day.

John and Steve

The mountain and waterfall you see when you first enter the park