Our family vacation

Every year my Dad rents a cottage on the Indian River in Northern Michigan. It is a beautiful place. The Indian River is just one river in a long inland waterway that stretches all the way across the top of the state.

We spend lots of time on the boat and this year for the first two days of the trip both of my sisters and their husbands were there. It was so nice to all be together in the same place. It doesn't happen often.


This is my little sister Julie, She is having a baby girl in 4 short weeks from now! My first niece on my side of the family! I am so excited and Julie is sooo cute pregnant. Her and Davie are keeping the name a secret, so the girls are having lots of fun guessing. In the meantime, we just call her 'pork chop"!!

Here are our photos from this year's trip!

Hope your having a great summer too!

Laura and Wayne's Wedding

My middle sister Laura was married on June 20, and it was a beautiful day!

Please visit:
www.grandriverimaging.com
and enter
event code: 48524-June20
to view the online wedding photo gallery.

Me and all the girls were in the wedding, Rich and Amy were photographing and I was helping with the photography as well, so it was quite a day. The day before was horrible weather and it rained a huge amount, so when we got up Saturday morning to start getting ready the farm was one big mud puddle. Can you guess where I am going with this? I'll save the explanation and just share the photos:

and this is before the worst of it! By the time we finally wrangled them and got them into the tub, they were covered in mud from head to toe!

But we all managed to get cleaned up and we all had fun.

I really liked my dress....and the girls were so precious. Getting all dressed up had a mesmerizing effect on them. They behaved like perfect angels all day! Maybe I should dress them up more often!

What a beautiful day. Everything turned out wonderfully. Congratulations Laura and Wayne!

my hillbilly husband

Ice Cream!

There is no better treat in the summer! We have been eating lots f ice cream lately.

Thankfully there is such a thing as Gluten free ice cream cones!

We get these at Harvest Health, but I also just noticed that they had them in the Gluten Free section at Meijer. They are very good, all the kids love them.

A day of celebration!

We are learning about the important balance between work and rest out here on the farm and also learning the importance of celebration. We had a great on the 4th. we worked hard all day cleaning up the farm and in the evening had a crazy parade and did some sparklers.

The big blue Ford

crazy little Daisy

Rich lead the parade in style.

We hope that you are finding time to celebrate this summer!

New Life

It is an exciting time at the farm. There seems to be new life everywhere. This old farm is slowly coming back to life.

The chickens have gone broody! Which in case you didn't know, like I didn't know, means that they are sitting on their fertilized eggs. We are experimenting with letting them hatch and raise their own chicks instead of the modern method of using incubators. This chick is the first one, see her nestled in her mother's wing peaking out just her little head? The mother is very protective.

They are the sweetest little pair foraging around the farmyard together.

The kids have some tadpoles from the pond in a big bucket that they are keeping an eye on.


...and last week Sunday, Brian brought their cow here from the farm where it had been living. The day he went to move her, he discovered she had given birth to her calf. Her name is Sunday and she is so sweet and playful. The cow must be milked every 12 hours and it is a very time consuming job, one which would be much easier with a milking machine. There are many things that make sense to do the old fashion way, but some that become such a burden without modern tools.

Solaya is 12 weeks now and growing so fast! All of our children are growing and learning so much. It is so exciting to see them having so much fun.