The Accidental Boilermaker

My grandma’s second husband, Clarence, passed away last Thursday at the age of 93. They were married for 24 years.  Today was the funeral.  We drove up to Wisconsin Wednesday afternoon and met my parents and Meredith and Hans at the hotel. Katherine couldn’t attend as she is in Italy for a conference. After a day of long travel for all of us, we felt like walking to dinner. Of course after dinner, we swam in the pool and then Evelyn read a few bedtime stories.  Meredith grabbed a Bluey book for me to read because it had a few French words.  Thursday morning was the service. I was a little anxious to get to the funeral home and was acting a little extra, so while I was inside Starbucks Nate took a picture of Evelyn and Jameson promising to be on their best behavior. And they were for the whole day.  The service was very nice. I was able to sit and talk with my grandma for a little while. Clarence was just an overall good guy; the kind of person you can’t think of...

 Jameson has morning soccer camp this week. It is somewhat on the other side of town. Yesterday we needed groceries, so we drove home and back. But today Evelyn and I stayed close and did some fun activities. We got coffee and hot chocolate and read our books.  We also did some shopping. We were on the hunt for something specific and visited several stores but we were ultimately unsuccessful.  We did see one of our favorite librarians who recently transferred to a different branch so it was very nice to catch up with her. After soccer we played putt putt. Everyone managed to get a least one hole in one. 

 We spent the day at the Indiana Dunes with our church life group. It was our first time there and there is a nice, big beach. It was very crowded. We waited in line to get into the park for about 20 minutes. We didn’t have a problem parking, but it did take us a while to find the other family who arrived before us. Everyone else arrived and it was time for swimming, playing, and eating. We took a break from swimming to climb one of the dunes.  The kids had a blast running down and then climbing back up the dune. It would have been fun to do more hiking but there were just too many of us. And the kids wanted to go back to swimming.  Eventually it was time to go back home. Jameson fell right asleep. It would be fun to go back and maybe camp there. We only went to the state park, not the national park. But we agreed, Warren Dunes is better. 

 We took a trip to the zoo this morning. It wasn’t busy, it wasn’t hot, lots of animals were out and active. It was a nice time. 

 It’s officially summer! We didn’t do anything super special. We went to the library where Evelyn picked out Percy Jackson Lightning Thief as her summer reading prize. It’s the book we are reading as a family, but now we own it. Jameson chose a book called Fart Quest, but hey if he’s reading… After the library they wanted to rescue the toys they had frozen in ice, a good activity on a hot day.  Jameson helped me make strawberry freezer jam.  Evelyn learned from a friend last night at basketball camp that she was named MVP for her huddle at power camp.  But missed out on a medal and Kona Ice treat since she was sick. She wasn’t necessarily disappointed, but we said how about after camp on Wednesday we go get Zesto’s to celebrate being MVP. 

 Today’s activity was strawberry picking. It’s been two years since we went to Lincoln ridge for strawberries. We went first thing in the morning so it wasn’t too hot and picked 11 pounds. At first the buckets look so empty you think it is going to take forever but before you know it, they are full.  It was a little windy today. We were getting ready to take Evelyn to her basketball camp at school and saw this not so small tree branch in the yard. 

 We had a nice Father’s Day. We all slept in and Nate opened his presents - some clothes, candy and coffee. We worked outside; we are almost done with mulching! And we worked on cleaning the garage. In the afternoon we went swimming at jury pool. Dads got in free with two paying kids. Evelyn also figured out how to swim without plugging her nose. I didn’t get any pictures of Nate with Evelyn or Jameson but I did get some of him showing the neighbor boy his electric guitar. How he knew Nate played guitar, I’m not sure but Nate was happy to take a break from yard work.

 Our busy week actually ended on a subdued note.  Sunday evening marked the start of VBS. This year I volunteered to work with Evelyn’s age group. We had 13 nine year old girls in my group. But they were all very sweet, fun girls. It was a great group. Jameson had a good group too, lots of friends from upward basketball and Friday night church. He got to go on stage one night and play the cup game. Monday through Thursday afternoon Evelyn had Fellowship of Christian Athletes Power camp. She was doing basketball. It sounded like she was having a fun time and knew some girls in her huddle (small group). On Wednesday, Jameson and I played tennis while Evelyn was at camp.  By Wednesday afternoon though, camp and VBS seemed to be catching up to Evelyn. We were picking her up at 4:30 and going straight to church.  By the time we got home and took showers, they were going to bed at almost 10:00. She said she didn’t feel good at church so I had Nate pick her up on his way ho...

 Tuesday the kids had piano in the afternoon and then asked to go swimming. The pool is just down the road from Mrs Dorian’s house, it was opening day and the weather looked good so I said yes. It was a lot of fun and we got in two hours of swimming before it started to rain. Wednesday was global running day and we ran a 5K in the evening. We did this event last year, so I knew the course and felt confident that Jameson could run the 3 miles at his own pace. We did talk a lot about race and trail etiquette beforehand.  Evelyn and I ran a 30:06; 9:41 average. This was faster than her 5K times from last summer. Evelyn was 3rd out of 7 girls 14 and under and 120th overall (there were 281 runners). Jameson ran a PR with a 27:30; 8:51 average. He was 7 out of 24 boys 14 and under and 83rd overall.  He was excited to be in the top 100.  We also got a ticket for a free item from a food truck which was super exciting. Jameson was hurting after his race, he really pushed hims...

 Monday morning it was time to pack up and head home. We said goodbye to Lake Huron and skipped a few last stones. I would love to come back to Hoeft State Park. There were a few things we didn’t get to do like visit the limestone quarry. So we might be back. 

 Saturday night was cold. I didn’t sleep very well. Sunday morning we went back for coffee and cocoa with the camp hosts. The naturalist also had watercolor painting for the kids.  The naturalist recommended for a 2.5 mile hike around 5 sinkholes which we thought sounded like lots of fun. The sinkholes did not look like what we expected (more like big ravines) but it was a fun hike. There are steps to walk down into the first sinkhole and then lookouts for some of the others. We also saw a porcupine! We must of scared it as it was climbing up a tree.  The plan was to get lunch after the hike, but the restaurant we picked wasn’t opening till 2. We decided not to wait and just eat snacks before swimming in the Ocqueoc falls. It was a warm day but the falls weren’t busy and the water was very refreshing. We swam and climbed around on the rocks. We slipped a lot but no one got hurt. And the naturalist was there with information about sinkholes so we got all our questions from...