Can you tell we’re in love with Michigan? Just a bit? 

Have a great weekend!

One thing we’ve discovered about traveling with Lila is that she seems to do well when every day isn’t an “on” day—in other words, we try to have one day with a “BIG” activity—a hike, a drive to another town, etc.—and then the next day, we try to take it pretty easy.

Yesterday was a “take ‘er easy” day.  We drove about 15 minutes into Frankfort, Michigan to do a little exploring.  We ended up picking up some lunch at a local deli and enjoying a picnic at a local playground/park.  It wasn’t a crazy, groundbreaking travel event…but Lila seemed to enjoy it. 

Quite the little explorer.  I loved seeing the expression of pure glee she got, every time she’d climb the ladder up to the slide all on her own.  Her adventurous spirit amazes me, amuses me, and terrifies me. 

The Frankfort playground was fun, but today, we had a bigger event on the horizon: dunes.  BIG dunes.

This morning, we headed out to Sleeping Bear Dunes park again, this time with the Sleeping Bear Point dunes loop hike as our goal.  Our hiking guide book claimed that of all the hikes in the park, this one offers the most “bang for your buck,” so to speak—dunes, sweeping views of Lake Michigan, forest trails—even a ghost forest!

The book was right—I think this was my favorite hike yet, largely because of the variety it offered.  The hike was about three miles long, and it seemed like around every bend, there was new beauty to behold.

It started with a pretty steep dune climb:

…which lead to, not surprisingly, stunning lake views.

From there, we did a lot of sand hiking—UP dunes and DOWN, UP dunes and DOWN…

…until we came to the ghost forest:

Beautiful.  Finally, after one more long climb up:

…the trail began to wind down, this time back through a beautiful forest trail:

This was seriously one of the prettiest hikes I’ve been on.  Even Lila seemed mesmerized—though she was very happy to complete the last bit of the hike OUT of the backpack:

After the hike, we made one last stop in town—at the Frankfort farmers’ market!

We picked up home-baked spelt bread, cherry brats (!?!), cookies, asparagus, lettuce, and some coconut-walnut granola.  YUM.

Now…lunch:

…and NAPS.  Have a great day!

One of the perks of our cabin rental?  It comes with a BOAT!

The boat is definitely no-frills, and looks like it might sink in a rainstorm, and doesn’t go more than about  5 miles an hour…but still, it’s a BOAT!

Yesterday, we revved up the engine and headed out on the lake.

Actually, yesterday, we flooded the engine…then we had to sit around and wait thirty minutes before trying again, at which point we THEN headed out on the lake.

In the meantime, Lila and I admired the little fish living under our dock:

The dogs were pretty interested as well. 

When we finally got the boat going and got out on the water, Lila was a little apprehensive at first:

…but she was having fun soon enough!

Ryan manned the wheel:

Pretty fun afternoon activity!

Yesterday was pretty laidback, otherwise.  Lila and Ryan did a little hootenannying:

And we enjoyed dinner on the back porch:

I still can’t get used to how crazy light it stays here at night! This was around 7:30!

I think we’re going to head out on another hike today.  But we learned our lesson—we’ll be hiking AFTER little princess:

…has her morning nap.   

Have a great day!

Yesterday morning, we headed out for another hike—Empire Bluff, which, like the Old Indian Trail, is a part of Sleeping Bear Dunes park.  This hike is supposed to have one of the prettiest views of Lake Michigan in America, so we knew it had to be good.   

It didn’t disappoint.  After about a mile of wooded hiking:

…we arrived at a preview of what was to come:

After another five minutes of hiking, we arrived at the grand view:

SO pretty.  And only slightly dampened by Lila’s incessant crying from the Ergo.  Word to the wise: skipping morning nap and going on a hike instead is NOT advised.  We’ll have to try this hike again when she’s in a better mood. 

When we got back to the cabin, Lila passed out for about three hours—poor girl was seriously beat!  Ryan and I hung out, had lunch, read our books, and waited for Sleeping Beauty to wake up.  And when she did, we headed BACK out…this time, to Traverse City! 

Traverse City is about forty minutes away from where we’re staying, and we were really impressed with it.  It had a ton of cute shops, LOTS of restaurants and breweries—definitely a fun place to explore!

Lila burned off some energy at one of the Traverse City beaches:

Seagull harassment at its finest. 

For our final stop in Traverse City, we had to refuel with a healthy snack—a BIG slice of pie.  Being in the “cherry capital of the world,” you can guess what we went for.  But, we honored our Alabama roots as well: cherry peach crumb pie:

SO. GOOD. 

Hope your week is off to a good start!

The drive from our house in Huntsville to the cabin we’re renting in Michigan was almost exactly twelve hours, with Indianapolis SMACK dab in the middle.  It made the perfect spot for an overnight pit stop…which was lucky for us, because it also meant that we got to visit our good Purdue friend, Mindy!  Indiana will always hold a near and dear place in our hearts, because it’s where we first met, as grad students at Purdue!

Looking good.  Looking real good.  That’s a fireman’s hat I have on.  I won it at the fair.  Respect.

Anyway, we had plans to meet up with Mindy upon our arrival into Indy on Friday night.  Remember this beautiful baby quilt that Mindy made for Lila? 

So pretty!  We were so happy to be able to meet up with her and “meet” her baby boy who is due later this summer!

Doesn’t she look great?  I was definitely not that stylish when I was pregnant.  Oh well.

We made it to Indianapolis by about 5:30, and headed over to meet Mindy at a food truck festival, where these delicious Indian tacos were enjoyed:

Yum!  The food festival was also nice because Lila was able to burn off some of the CRAZY energy she had built up from the road trip.  She didn’t end up going to bed until 9 o’clock!

The next stop on our road trip was Saugatuck, which we used to break up Saturday’s drive. 

Saugatuck was about four hours north of Indy, which made it the perfect stop for a lunch break.  We pulled into town and immediately found a cute waterfront park, perfect for a picnic. 

I stayed with Lila and the dogs while Ryan got us food at a nearby restaurant.  I told him to just choose something for me, and he came back with these seaweed salad tuna nachos:

Definitely not what I would have probably ordered myself (ha), but surprisingly delicious!

We spent about an hour walking around Saugatuck—SUPER cute town, with lots of shops and restaurants.  And lots of tourists. 

Before we headed on our way, we had to share a little ice cream:

Lila was a fan. 

I was sad to leave Saugatuck—such a cute town!—but we knew that we needed to get on our way in order to get to our final destination (our cabin!) before dark.  Or at least, I THOUGHT so—I didn’t think about the fact that it stays light here in Michigan until about 10:00 pm!

We made it into town about two hours later and checked out our super cute house—I’ll post more pictures of it as the trip goes on, but I’ll just say it goes above and beyond our expectations!

We unpacked, took a trip to the local grocery store, and returned home just in time to make an easy dinner: pasta with turkey, veggies, and tomato sauce, plus salad and bread.  Nothing fancy, but it hit the spot after a few days of eating out.

Sunday held many adventures…including Ryan’s birthday! After a blueberry pancake breakfast, enjoyed especially by Lila:

…we headed out for a hike!

We’re about 15 minutes from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park, and are really looking forward to exploring some of the many trails that the park has to offer.  This morning, we did the Old Indian Trail, which started in beautiful woods and culminated with a sandy climb up (and then down) to a beach on Lake Michigan.

The wooded trail was about a mile:

I know it isn’t long, but everything feels a lot longer when you have a toddler strapped to your back! I was happy to see this sign:

…until I realized that it meant we had to climb over the dunes.  My legs got quite a workout!

But it was worth it…to get to the beach!  So beautiful! The beach was totally deserted—we didn’t run into a single other soul!  Lila was a little nervous at first:

…but soon enough she got over her fears and was running EVERYWHERE, exploring the water, the sand, the rocks—everything!

I’d say it was a successful trip.  The only mishap occurred when Lila wandered a little TOO far into the lake and totally soaked her clothes.  She ended up completing the hike back in Ryan’s t-shirt:

…which meant Ryan had to hike topless! You’re welcome, Michigan!

WHEW!  Longest. Post. Ever.

But, one more thing.  Happy Birthday to Ryan, my ever-patient travel partner!

I’m glad we’re on this road trip (and ALL road trips) together! I love you!

Thanks for sticking with me if you made it to the end of this post.  More Michigan fun to come!

…

I’ve never had much of  green thumb. In fact, I have more of what you might call a black thumb. I can kill plants just by walking into a room. Flowers leap from their vases in an act of suicide. Bonsai trees commit hari kiri. Fake fruit withers. When I went to Redwood National Forest, 1000-year-old growth trees crashed around me. Whenever I go to Rainforest Café for a Volcanic Cobb Salad and some Mojo Bones, the animatronic trees malfunction.

Suffice it to say, I’ve never been much of a gardener. But when Anna and I moved to our new home, complete with a spacious, sunny backyard, we decided we want to go all Barbara Kingsolver and start growing some food and flowers. We started off with a tomato plant and a few decorative plants around the yard.

About the same time, a Facebook friend posted about pallet gardens, which looked both 1) super trendy, like something hipsters would gather around to twirl their moustaches and drink moonshine while listening to the new Blind Pilot album, and 2) fairly easy to construct. “Super trendy and easy” was my nickname in high school, so I promised Anna I would build one, and set to work researching the requirements.

My suspicion was correct, and pallet gardens are not that difficult to construct. Several websites carry instructions, but I ended up following the ones offered by BrightNest. So when my father, whose handiness I did not inherit, was in town last month, I managed to pull him away from Lila long enough to start construction.

When building a pallet garden, the first thing you need is a pallet (see, I told you this was easy to figure out). We went to Lowe’s to get ours. All of the pallet garden sites make a big deal out of choosing the absolute best pallet. You must find the Megan Fox of pallets, they say, gorgeous and well-built without any flaws or blemishes (unlike Megan Fox, however, you do not want your pallet to be chemically treated – the State of Wisconsin will tell you why). So I envisioned spending hours deliberating between pallets to choose just the right one, but the workers at Lowe’s simply disappeared behind a curtain and brought one out to us. It was more the Tara Reid of pallets, weathered and cracking at the seems, but like the producers of Senior Skip Day, I resolved to work with what I had.

The next step in building a pallet garden is stapling landscape fabric to the back and sides of the pallet so that it can hold dirt. Many websites say that you cannot overfabric or overstaple this project, so we thoroughly stapled a few layers, hammering in the staples for good measure.

Next, you have to load your pallet garden up with soil. After building a pallet garden, I am still not entirely sure how to fill a vertical garden with soil. You have two choices – load the soil in while the pallet is horizontal and turn it vertical, or turn the pallet vertical and then load it with soil. Both present obvious problems, so being the centrist that I am, I chose a middle approach, putting some soil in during the horizontal phase and finishing after turning the pallet. This resulted in a lot of soil ending up on the ground, but to be honest, I’m not sure how I would fix the problem next time.

Once the dirt was in, it was all over but the planting (we decided on plants instead of seeds). Our pallet garden has cilantro, mint, basil, lettuce, lemon balm, sage, and peppers growing out of the top. All in all, it turned out pretty well, and we have already eaten some of vegetables of our labor.

While I’m proud of my handiwork, especially since only a few plants have died, I must include a two caveats about our garden. First, the garden is not organic. We used Jungle Growth Flower and Vegetable mix. I can’t find the ingredient list online, but it most likely contains chemicals, including, most likely, some of that mutagen that created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Secondly, if I had it to do over again, I’m not sure I would make the pallet garden vertical. It has trouble holding soil and water, and one of my colleagues suggested this would become an even bigger problem as the hot Alabama summer wears on. Time will tell.

Still, our little pallet garden is a great first step in growing plants instead of killing them. I’ve managed to be diligent about watering and to grow enough lettuce to support my shoe fetish. The other day, we made caprese paninis with basil and tomatoes from our garden. And on my latest weekly pilgrimage to Rainforest Café, the only trees that died were the ones that were clear cut to produce the beef for my Bamba’s Barbeque Wrap.

So who knows? Maybe my black thumb will turn green, and we’ll someday have a full garden. Maybe we’ll even get that goat (named Kid n’Bray) that I’ve always wanted.

Our trip to Shreveport was a quick one—in on Friday, out on Monday.  Our flights over were SUPER easy— like, this easy:

…but usually when that happens on one way of the trip, I can almost guarantee that the other way isn’t going to go quite so smoothly. Aaaaaaand it did not.  Our flights on the way there were in the morning—we left at 7:30 and got in at noon, which was really perfect timing for a good-mood baby (plus a morning nap). 

Our flights home had us leaving at noon and arriving at 5:00, which is…well, it’s not necessarily a recipe for disaster, but it’s certainly not a guarantee for an easy flight. Some afternoons, Lila is great and takes another nap; some afternoons, she insists on staying up and fighting naps, and thus is pretty cranky and exhausted by late afternoon.

Yesterday was one of those days. 

Plus she threw up in the airport bathroom.  Plus her diaper leaked and she peed all over me on our second flight. 

Sigh.

Eh, you win some, you lose some.  For the second flight, which was by FAR the worst, we were in the very back of the plane in our own row, so at least we didn’t disturb a lot of the other passengers.  

We have one more flying trip lined up for this summer—a trip out to Seattle in July—and I’d be lying if I said this didn’t make me a little nervous.  Our second flight was ROUGH…and it was only 1.5 hours.  Our Seattle flight will be almost five hours on the plane.  I think the age that Lila is at right now might be the hardest for plane travel—she’s FULL of energy, and also isn’t quite at the point where you can distract her with an i-pad or tv show.  We tried both on the flight home, and the i-pad kept her attention for about 10 minutes, max.  She just isn’t all that interested in it yet.  She was a little more interested in the full episode of Yo Gabba Gabba that we played for her, but the plane was so loud that she couldn’t hear it, so after about ten minutes, she lost interest in that as well.  She loves to read and look at her books, but you know…you can only read “Five Little Ladybugs” so many times before the plot becomes a little stale. 

Anyway, we’re leaving for Michigan on Friday, and this mama is happy to be driving instead of flying!

Not much else going on here…just getting ready for our upcoming trip and wrapping up some loose ends before we leave. 

On our last day in Shreveport, we got some swimming in.  I’ll leave you with some sweet pics of my favorite water girls!

Look how big he’s gotten!!

I know, I know—babies grow up and get bigger.  It’s a fact of life.  But somehow, it never ceases to amaze me.

My friends and family will tell you that for as long as I’ve talked about having children, I’ve ALWAYS wanted girls.  I grew up in a very girl-heavy family, and I’m not too big on “boy” stuff—sports, science, dinosaurs, being loud…(no stereotypes here, right?).  Don’t all boys love t-rexes who loudly talk about football and the periodic table?  I thought so.

But I gotta say—this little guy might just change my mind. 

He is the BEST baby—so sweet and laid-back and easy.  Is it a dude thing?  Because when I look at the attitude that these two can give off at the drop of a hat:

…and then look at sweet Baby Dylan, just rolling with the flow and taking it all in stride…

…I think, “You know…maybe next time around, a boy would be nice.” 

Then again…girls can be pretty sweet too:

Hope you had a great weekend!

Well…it’s actually doing really well! There were a few lettuces that just kind of wilted right away and bit the dust, but altogether, the herbs are going great and the lettuce is flourishing!

We’ve made a few meals lately that revolved around food we’re growing—ie, lettuce and herbs, ha.  One day it would be nice to try a fuller garden with actual food beyond lettuce…but that day is not today.   

On Sunday night, I made a chimichurri sauce with our available fresh herbs.  From our garden, I used cilantro, basil, mint, and oregano:

…plus a big bunch of parsley from the grocery store.  In the blender, I blended the herbs with olive oil, juice of a lime, 3 cloves of garlic, and a splash of white wine vinegar.  Season with salt, and voila!

We served it over grilled steak and vegetables, and soaked up extra sauce with bread.  Yum!

Then, on Tuesday night, we harvested lettuce leaves from the pallet:

…to make these summer salads.  Lettuce, topped with sprouts, grilled chicken, grilled zucchini, blue cheese, yellow cherry tomatoes, and pepitos.  Yum!

I know it sounds silly, but eating from the garden really does give us a nice sense of pride.  I’d like to try growing a bit more someday, but for right now, I’m glad the little bit that we ARE growing is thriving!

Have a good one!

But.

I have to admit, I think this next project turned out SUPER cute.  It’s not that it doesn’t look homemade—it does.  It still has the ragged edges, the uneven sewing stitches.  But somehow they really do just give this felt book more charm.

I got the idea for this book when I started looking on Pinterest for activities to occupy a toddler with on a plane.  A lot of people had pinned “quiet books”—homemade books filled with little activities for a kiddo to work on (quietly) to occupy a longer period of time.  This one on the Martha Stewart website is absolutely adorable.

Anyway, the wheels started turning, and soon enough I was headed to Michaels to get the supplies for my own version of a quiet book.  Some of the quiet books I saw online had really cute, complicated activities on the pages, but since Lila is still pretty young, I stuck mainly to flaps that she could lift up to discover something new underneath. 

Here is each page, along with what each page does!

Brown tree…

…button opens to show owls:

Bananas:

…open to reveal monkeys:

Heart envelope and ribbon:

…baby can pull another heart in and out of the envelope:

Pond with flowers:

…flaps open to reveal frogs:

Number three:

…reveals three cherries on the next page.  The leaves are sewn on, but the cherries can be played with:

Buttoned flaps:

…reveal stars:

(sorry—blurry picture!)

Butterfly cloud:

…folds down to reveal more butterflies:

Sun:

…folds down to reveal flowers:

Tree with bird:

…opens up to show more birds and branches:

Ladybugs on a branch:

….cloud flaps up to reveal bird:

Big heart:

…opens to reveal smaller heart:

Final page—six hearts:

WHEW! That’s a lot of pages.   

This project actually only took me a day (not including the time I spent getting the supplies.  A lot of the felt pieces are actually stickers—the birds, frogs, etc.—so that helped a lot. 

I really do love this, and I can’t wait to give it to Lila—we’re flying on Friday, so I’m going to take it in my bag. 

This first book is a little rough around the edges, but again, I don’t really mind that, and now that I have a better idea of what I’m doing, I can see all sorts of felt baby books in my future.