Sept. 24th.....we went to the beach!

We went to the beach today after I picked Alex up from school!  It was almost 80 degrees here.  The water is COLD now from all of our cool nights but kids don't seem to care about that stuff.  It was kind of an impromptu stop so I didn't even have the camera with me (or towels or swimsuits or sand toys for that matter) but it was a gorgeous afternoon!

You just never know

I come from a long line of people who see nothing strange about saying "Hey that place looks kind of scary........we should totally stop there sometime!"

You see those places are either in fact....absolutely scary, or really pretty cool. There isn't a whole lot of in between and either way you get a good story out of it so it was worth stopping.

On the way to pick up our goat milk today we made one of those stops. Alex and I had spotted a
"Rock Shop" on the way in this very old odd building kind of half built into a mound. The place was hopping today - I couldn't believe how many cars were there! The owner told me that monday was often quite a busy day. I guess it never occurred to me that a rock shop between Interlochen and Honor MI would have a regular "busy day".

This stop definately qualified as not scary at all and pretty cool! (Well I guess you'd have to think rock shops in general were cool to get that impression but we do, so we loved it!)

Happy Autumnal Equinox/ Mabon/ First day of fall!

Today is the Autumnal Equinox ~ Alex kept watching all day to see if he could tell that the light time and dark time was equal :) He assured me he could totally tell the difference.

We had a few friends stop by, the weather is just amazing lately so we spent most of the time outside. I had grand plans of making some seasonal food and the planning just didn't happen this weekend (I do however have a much cleaner house) so we'll have to try again next year.

We had a great time outside though and have lately really been admiring our wide variety of mushrooms in the backyard. We have about 15 of the huge fairy tale quality toad stools and then countless smaller varieties scattered around.

Before supper we did make a traditional/seasonal type craft ~ a "talking stick" ~ we used a stick we found on the beach at Misery Bay on our Labor Day camping trip and each of us chose a stone or other natural item to decorate it with. The glue is drying tonight and tomorrow Alex wants to add some paint.

Three Cups of Tea

In August our book club read "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortinson and David Oliver Relin. It turns out that it was also the annual book for TC Reads this year and that means that the author comes to town to speak! A friend of mine was smart enough to grab tickets to the TC Reads event one day at the library so we could go hear Greg Mortinson speak about his work and his organization the Centra Asia Institute. The event sold out very quickly.
It was really interesting to hear him speak. Amazing how much has been accomplished and amazing how many children there still are that need schools just in that one part of the world. If you haven't read this book yet or heard about the organization I highly recomend checking them out.

Cherry Roubaix

Saturday afternoon we headed downtown to watch the 1st annual Cherry Roubaix bike race. Alex loved watching! He was so excited, we were watching on a corner so they seemed to be going really fast around that corner. Maya seemed to feed off the energy too! She was laughing and clapping and so squirmy that we could hardly hang on to her. Thanks to Team Schmitty for reminding us of the event!

This weeks goat farm trip

Since we have to drive a little ways to get Maya's milk, we try to make an adventure out of it and see something or do something new on the way home. I've also been looking through the booklet we have with all the local farms listed in it to find other produce or products we use/buy that I might be able to pick up on the way.
Today we did two things - we stopped along the road at the Betsie river because the salmon are running and there were tons of people out fishing.
I have no idea why blogger typed the above text as a link and I can't get rid of it so just ignore it!
Next we stopped at a farm I found in the "Taste the Local Difference" brochure that had fresh produce and also llamas. When I looked at their website to see how close it was to our route I realized that I had met the woman pictured as one of the owners before. So I gave her a call and asked if they were open for visitors and had any veggies.
Alex loved learning about the llamas, they had a beautiful labyrinth garden and we got a great tour of their vegetable gardens. So thank you very much Llama Meadows!

NHL prospects tournament

Along with the Red Wings training camp we also get various other NHL teams in town with their prospects teams. Last weekend they started their tournament so we headed over to check out a game. It's a pretty cool atmosphere - all the teams have staff there that are mixed in the crowd with clipboards making notes about all the players. Some of the players from other teams are walking around and sit and watch some of the games.
The kids did great considering how long that is for them to sit still/pay attention to something. One nice thing is that Centre Ice has two rinks and they stagger games half an hour apart so you can wander over to the other rink between periods and watch the other game too. We sat right in front so Alex could really see the action (and so the kids had room to move if they got antsy).
After the game one of the refs noticed Alex still watching them move the nets and pick up the pucks and he came over and gave Alex the game puck! He was so excited...he slept with his puck that night!

Quick....it stopped raining!

Get outside!

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver is quickly climbing my list of favorite non-fiction books. I'm about 3/4 of the way through it and it is so interesting. It's entertaining, informative and inspiring. And I just realized looking at the website that "our" goat farm family is featured on the "Share your local food stories" page!!

Tea time!

For our August meeting one of the book clubs I am in read "Three Cups Of Tea" by Greg Mortinson and David Oliver Relin. It's really an amazing book, a very quick read and I've thought about it a lot since I finished it.
It turns out that their book tour is stopping here in Traverse City this month and a friend of mine picked up a couple of tickets to Greg Mortinson's presentation! I'm really excited to be able to see him speak.
For those of you who are local and have read or will read the book, the event with Greg Mortinson at the Opera House on Sept 21st is sold out but if you still want to support Greg Mortinson's work - the next weekend there will be a benefit tea for the Central Asia Institute (the organization that builds the schools talked about in the book) at Grace Episcopal Church.
It's Saturday Sept. 27th from 2-5pm at Grace Episcopal (341 Washington St.), ticket are $10 and are available at the door and all of the profits go to the Central Asia Institute. There will be door prizes.
The event is sponsored by The Potter's House, UCC

Then sunday

After another wonderful lazy morning....

Alex and I headed out for what he calls "private time" for the two of us and drove out to get our weekly goat milk. It was Alex's first time to the farm and he got a little tour and really enjoyed seeing the animals and how everything works. We got milk and eggs and he thought it was so cool to see the chickens that gave us our eggs.

Afterwards we stopped at the really nice playground in Elberta. At the picnic pavillion there we stumbled upon some sort of party.....there was clearly several generations of one family there but the majority of the party goers were very elderly (like 80+) and it was a full on theme party. Hawaiian theme party. Complete with grass skirts, leis, tribal drumming music and ......dancing. Thank God there were no coconut bras involved.

Last weekend

was suppose to be rainy and miserable and turned out to be really nice. Definately the feeling of fall in the air.

After a wonderful lazy morning we headed outside to go for a walk and look for signs of the seasons changing.

Happy FIRST Birthday Maya!