Right now I am sitting in our suite in the hotel in Grand Rapids, more specifically Kentwood, MI. I am in jeans and a polar fleece sweatshirt and FREEZING. Not at all complaining, because I love it. It is not even 60 degrees right now, and it's near 2 pm. More on this leg of our trip later.
We arrived at Nicki's new place last Thursday, after making the customary stop at Skyline for dinner. The girls were in heaven to see their Aunt. Chelsie's graduation was Friday night. We dropped the girls off at Michelle's, so Katie could watch them. There were limited tickets for the graduation, so we felt they would be better off not at a long ceremony. They were thrilled and already playing the Wii by the time we walked out the door. The ceremony was actually VERY nice! I was pleasantly surprised. The three speeches were short and sweet and the amount of dignity displayed by parents and graduated far surpassed any of the CHS graduations where I used to teach. Chelsie was beautiful and I found myself counting the years, I have known this girl for 13 years, wow! She was just 5 when we met. Now she's all grown up and off to BGSU for college this fall. Amazing! The weather had been so perfect the entire day....mid 70s and sunny. As we were walking back to our car after the graduation, my foot hit the grass and YIKES it was cold. Oh how I long for bottling up that coldness and taking it home to Memphis!!!!
Afterwards, we went to hang out with Dave's sisters for awhile. I can't recall the last time I was out until after 1 am! I enjoyed sleeping until 10 the next day.
Saturday brought the big graduation picnic. Nicki and I met one of her friends Jenny at the Moose lodge to get a few things cooked for the shindig. 15 boxes of mac n cheese, 4 boxes of pasta salad, pulling 2 pork butts, and a huge pan of green beans. WOW....there was so much food! The pork was compliments of Dave, it was good! Once we got the food to the picnic shelter, it was finally time to relax. So many of Dave's family was there, so it was very good to see them and catch up. The girls had such a fun time playing. Libbi fell in love with this little puppy she just walked and held ALL afternoon. The shelter had a huge playground and there were lots of kids. It was actually quite relaxing!
Sunday we slept in some then went to Skyline for lunch, before dropping the girls off at Michelle's for the week and us taking off for Grand Rapids. Michelle had offered to keep the girls for a week so Dave and I could have some time.
It was a long, quiet drive for us. Not having the girls was odd. They were great on the trip to Ohio. The further north we got, the colder it got. We got checked in the hotel then drove around for a bit. We finally had Applebee's for dinner at 10 pm! Ours have all closed, so it was a nice treat. Coming out of the restaurant it was COLD!!!!
We woke Monday morning to storms and some pretty loud thunder. I'd planned on doing some exploring but the weather did not cooperate. I really didn't do a whole lot. I went downstairs and had breakfast with Dave and then came back up to nap once he left for his class. I spent my afternoon doing some work. When he got back, we left to go explore the mall and just drive around to see what was here. Again, storms were coming so we couldn't really do anything that involved being outside. The mall was pretty big, and we found some dresses for the girls that we got.
This morning we woke up and went down to have breakfast. I then dropped Dave off at his class site so I could have the van to get out. After a shower, I took off to get my hair cut and find lunch. Got back in time to watch DAYS and wow....major boo hooing on my part today. Sami's daughter died and oh my. I hope I NEVER have to go through that.
I'm not sure what this evening holds for us. We plan on going Thursday night to Lake Michigan. It's supposed to rain again tomorrow. I want to get to downtown Grand Rapids too.
It has been very cold here! Yesterday was warm, in the 70s, but otherwise nope. It is jeans and long sleeve weather! I love it, but in the evenings and mornings it is almost too chilly! I haven't been around temps like that in two months or more!
Well, I think they are about here to clean the suite, so I am going to end this. Maybe we'll do something fun tonight and I will have a picture to put on here.
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