Hummingbirds

Last post for today, but I have so many more to post.
For anyone who really knows Tim, he's a bird fanatic. We've had a bird feeder in our yard for awhile and enjoy blue birds and cardinals and all the 'normal' birds. This summer we decided to add a hummingbird feeder as we've seen quite a few hummingbirds around. What a great addition! It's sitting on the back deck and the birds aren't scared at all, so we get quite a lot of bird watching in. Today Tim decided to take some pictures so I thought I'd share them.

Last weekend we went to a community activity called the All American BBQ that our new chiropractor puts on every summer. It's a great outreach to the community and all proceeds to go MUST Ministries, a local charity here in town. The kids had so much fun! They also do xrays for anyone who wants them and a spinal analysis.

The girls with their spray painted hair. (All 4 of the older kids had it done).

Cotton Candy!!! They also had snowcones and popcorn.


Katelyn's kitty face


Seth helping the magician.


Micah on this amazing inflatable waterslide and pool


Tim and Jacob playing with bubbles.

Cutie Pattooties

When we were back in Michigan, we finally got to meet our best friends baby. Olivia was born last December and it's been driving me crazy that I can't see her! Here's a couple pics of her. :) How long until I come back????????????

I'm SURE they were planning their wedding!!!

Blueberry Picking

Today is Tim's birthday and I've been wanting to go blueberry picking and decided today was a good day. It was cooler outside (85* instead of 95) and so we packed up and went. The place we went was only $5 a gallon so we ended up with 2 gallons, and are hoping to go back this next week and get more. The berries were amazing and the bushes were so full! Micah couldn't stop eating them and only ended up with a handful of berries in his bucket. I asked him if we should go and get lunch and he said "No, I want cranberries for lunch" (he couldn't remember 'blueberries'). haha Here's a few pictures of our adventure. :)

The drought is coming to an end

This summer has been much wetter than last summer was, and while the drought is still pretty bad, it's definitely improving and looking like it won't last forever. They haven't lifted water restrictions yet, but they are definitely talking about the improvements. It's also nice to see the grass green! On Tuesday we had a pretty big storm roll through and it brought a TON of rain very fast. I actually got stuck at school because it was too bad outside to go out, and Tim got stuck at the field house (the covering by where the Rugby team practices) and his Rugby practice cancelled. After it was over, I went to pick him up at the field and we decided to brave the last little bit of rain, risk getting wet and go see the waterfall. It was worth every rain drop that hit us! The rushing water was amazing!!! The waterfall has been a small trickle for the past several months and the river actually had a stagnant water smell. Not on this day! The one area usually is about a 6' revene type thing, and that day it was full to the top and almost overflowing. Here are a few pictures. On the way to take them, one of the campus police actually stopped us and asked where we were going. He told us to go quickly and to hurry back and to make sure we stayed far away from the water. I'm also including a picture that was taken in October so you can see the difference!!!

This is the area that is usually a 5-6" ditch type thing. It was full and if you look to the far right, you can see how it was almost to the level of the road!!

Here are the kids and Tim last summer, playing on the rocks.


And here is that same area this week!!!



And here is my dad and the kids last October.




Here is that same area and waterfall this week. Notice the chair! The water was actually right up to the level of where that chair was and was starting to come over the wall!

You won't get the humor

Today I started my wet lab again (the one I have to retake). The teacher opens up the two cadavers we will be using and then we have to 'flip' them from their back to their stomach. When that was done she started dissecting the back of the one and said that she wanted someone to start on the arm on the other one. There are 3 of us who are retaking this class-me and 2 guys. The one guy will dissect but didn't want to and the other guy won't even touch the body so I decided to go ahead and get started with it. I started the first incision and had a couple people come over to watch, grossing out and commenting. I just kept working and acting like I really enjoyed it (which actually, I did. It was MUCH better than last quarter where the bodies were 9 months old and NASTY!) At one point, I was in up to my elbow and thought it quite humorous that these big, burly guys were grossing out. I was covered in 'people juice' and little pieces of fat and at one point, the guys wouldn't even come near me, for fear I might accidently bump them with my hands. HAHAHA

Anyways, I knew you wouldn't find the humor in it, but it was quite amusing to me. A guy named Jason was standing and talking to me and kind of grossed out too. When I started to compare it to deer processing, he asked if he could join in and he took over for a bit. Once he got in there and worked on the body (we named her Betsy), he agreed it wasn't nearly as bad as he had first thought. Fun times at Life U! LOL

It's been a busy summer

Tim and I finished up our finals on June 18 and the next day we packed up and headed to Michigan for 3 weeks. Seth, Mikayla and Katelyn had gone up the week before with Aunt Debi & Uncle Andy and were busy enjoying the Northern Michigan wilderness. While in Michigan we had so much that needed to be done, so many people to see and so much fun to be had. In a nutshell, we spent a day at Michigan Adventure with my family and the next day we spent it at Lake Michigan and then a dairy farm. We celebrated Katelyn's birthday while there and then went to a party for my cousins kids (Alex & Vanessa). All the kids, except Jacob, spent a week with Tim's parents swimming, going to the zoo and the park. On the 4th, we went to my Aunt Gayles house for her usual 4th of July summer party. THe kids enjoyed swimming in the pool and having snow cones. Seth was in Washington DC with Tim's parents for a family reunion and then sight seeing so he didn't get to go with us. On the 5th, we went to the fireworks. We spent time with friends, going to Splash Universe (an indoor waterpark), a day at the beach and bonfires. We also went to a little martini bar/jazz club for a night.

Tomorrow we get back to the grind of school. I have 23 credits and Tim has 18.2. It's going to be a tough quarter but it should go much smoother than last quarter.

I will post a few pics of our trip, tomorrow.

My city

I've always been a Detroiter. When anyone asks where I'm from, I rarely say "Southwest Michigan"; it's always "I'm from Detroit". While living in the Atlanta area, it makes me miss my city even more. Atlanta is an amazing city with a ton to do (although we've done none of it cause it's too much of a hassle to go downtown with all the kids and we don't have any babysitters to help watch them just so we can go out and hang out). Everyone talks about the crime in Detroit, and yes it's true, the crime is bad, it's not as bad as Detroit. It's per capita and since Detroit is one of the smaller cities, we rank at the top for the crime rates. But when you take a city like Atlanta that has over 5 million people in the metropolitan area, you are going to have more crime. And the crime is so violent and so random. I have a friend who had 2 gunmen break into an apartment of a friend that she was with. It's estimated that they shot 32x. For what? They grabbed their purses and ran out the door. The only way my friend could escape was to jump out the 2nd story balcony, injuring her hand and breaking out all her front feet. It's now in court. It was a completely random crime. While this does happen in Detroit, I honestly just felt safer there. I didn't have an issue with driving to downtown Detroit, either with Tim or alone. I DO however, not go too far from home here in the ATL. Too much traffic; too many people; to much chaos.

The scenary here in Atlanta is beautiful and I've gotten used to coming up over a small hill and seeing a mountain in front of me. The smell of pinetrees is pretty amazing too, but there is nothing like Michigan's lakes and the soft grass. Here in Georgia its so dry. The rivers are low and the lakes are so far apart. Growing up in Waterford, we had a lake on every corner!!! And the grass here is so soft and prickly. You really can't walk barefoot on it because it really hurts your feet.

So, yes, I'm a Detroiter. I'm PROUD to be a Detroiter and can't wait to come home and be a fulltime Detroiter again!

Check out this blog for some great pictures of Detroit...the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. http://fadeddetroit.blogspot.com/

2 weeks!!!

2 weeks from today, I get to go home!!!! It's 8am right now and hopefully that that time in the morning I'll at least be to the Tennessee/Kentucky border, if not further (maybe Lexington)!!!

Pics of Tim

Tim is looking at trying out for rugby this fall and is training really hard for it. He's been doing weight training 3-4x a week at the gym and is really bulking up. I don't know if you can tell too much in these pics, but I thought I'd post them anyways. He has the perfect build for Rugby and when we were watching our Rugby team play in the finals the other day, he looks just like them! Yep, I just had to show him off. ;)