A birthday party and a campus visit

As our time here is winding down, we’ve been checking things off from our “To-Do” list – doctor appointments, dentist appointments, and Casey had a spa day.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She looks like a new dog!

We’re still not sure of our destination when we leave here next week – we’ll spend several days in Kentucky, and then a week or so with Nicolas in Charleston.  He survived the torrential rain without any trouble, and it looks like our route will be clear to get there.  From there, we’ll stay in northern Florida for November and December, and then head further south after the holidays. 

Las weekend, we celebrated Bryce’s birthday with my family. 

 

My mom made his favorite dinner – ham – and I made a cake . . .

 and Jaxon brought bat cupcakes for the party.

 

Jaxon also thought that Bryce needed a birthday hat . . . and in case he didn’t have one, he brought his for Bryce to wear!

 

 

It was a fun day with the whole family – we had a good dinner, played some cards, and Tom got his “baby fix” with Graysen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weekend, we headed to the west side of the state for one more college visit – Grand Valley State University.

In addition to the undergraduate program that Bryce is looking at, GVSU also has a Physical Therapy doctoral program, and we wanted to check that out, too.

 

The Open House was very well attended, with hundreds of high school students and their parents.

We started with continental breakfast and a presentation by Admissions, followed by an information fair with the various colleges and departments.  We got some good information on both Athletic Training and Physical Therapy.

The morning ended with student-led tours.  It was a beautiful day for walking around campus, but pretty quiet for a Saturday – either all the students had gone home for the weekend, or they were still sleeping!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The campus is in a beautiful location west of Grand Rapids, and has a lot of open space around some very beautiful, brand-new buildings.

 

 

Almost 90% of students live on-campus, and there are multiple housing options for students to choose from – including traditional dorms, suite-style dorms, and apartments – and many of them are new. 

It almost feels like a huge apartment complex more than a college.  In comparison, there aren’t many classroom buildings.  Many of the colleges are building their academic buildings in downtown Grand Rapids.  So, the students live out on the main campus, but go to many of their classes downtown.

It was a pretty campus, but it just didn’t have the “college feel” that Bryce is looking for . . . and it just isn’t Michigan State!

Race for the Cure and a birthday celebration

This past weekend was a busy one! 

 

It was Bryce’s birthday weekend, and for his present, he wanted to go to the Michigan State football game.  Our friends have season tickets, so in exchange for them transporting him to the game, we bought a ticket for their daughter to go to the game with Bryce.

It was a beautiful day and they all had a great time . . . and MSU won, so that was icing on the cake!

 

 

While Bryce was at the game, Tom and Nick helped Grandpa with some yardwork, and I went to my Mom’s house to make spaghetti sauce and meatballs for Sunday’s dinner.

Sunday morning came bright and early as we drove through the fog to downtown Toledo for the Race for the Cure.

 

My sister, Tina, is a 1-year survivor, having just completed her treatment last month.

It was a rough year, but she got through it, so our family and her husband’s family all gathered to celebrate with her by walking in the race.

 

 

 

 

It was a beautiful morning, and everyone was in great spirits as we waited for the festivities to begin.

Tom was determined to photo-bomb Diane & Danny’s picture!

I finally got a good one of them, though!

Most of us were walking the 5K route, but the boys were running the race, along with Larry’s sister and a couple of his & Tina’s nieces.

While the survivors gathered for the survivor ribbon photo,

we took some more photos of our own.

Donnie didn’t want to stand between Nick and Bryce because he didn’t want to look short!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We watched the Survivor Parade,

and I just barely caught my sister in one of my pictures, completely by accident!!  I wasn’t expecting her to be in front of the person with the sign!!

Following the parade, we moved outside to the starting line,

along with the 15,000 other people gathered for the race,

and waited through another 1/2 hour of announcements!

The runners moved up to the first starting line (if I were to do this again, I would sign up for the timed race just to be in the first batch of people to set out.), and they were off!

Soon it was the walkers’ turn to get started, and although we initially moved at a snail’s pace, our group made our way around to a spot where we could keep up a decent pace.  Jeff was our “pace car” -- as an experienced marathon and ironman participant, he was good at weaving his way through the crowd!

There were lots of bands and groups cheering along the route.

For the most part, the route was pretty good . . . but there were a few spots where we had to avoid holes, uneven pavement, and broken sidewalks.

The boys were at the finish line in about 25 minutes, where they waited for us.  Before long, we could see it up ahead!

We crossed the finish line at 1:14 . . . not too bad, considering the crowd and the slow start!

 

Yeah!  Our whole team made it across the finish line within a few minutes of each other!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We picked up pink bagels and bottles of water on the way back to the cars, and headed back to my Mom’s house for our next celebration – Bryce’s birthday.

In addition to my sisters and brother, my cousin, Sue, and my mom’s twin sister joined us for dinner.

The boys played cards with their uncles while I got dinner ready,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and Bryce opened his presents.  For the last couple of weeks, Bryce has been asking Grandma for a ham dinner on Sunday . . . and he hasn’t gotten one yet!  But, he did get some ham for his birthday!

After dinner, we enjoyed the cake that Bryce picked out . . .

 

strawberry swirl cake with strawberry mousse filling . . . YUM . . . it was really good!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a nice day, and we enjoyed spending it with our family and extended family!

Here’s a collage celebrating Bryce’s first 16 years!

But we haven’t done anything blog-worthy!

Yes, I know . . . it’s been about 10 days since I’ve posted a blog!  That’s the problem with being back “home” and letting “regular life” take over!

We have been keeping busy . . .

Nicolas has been attending his Navy DEP meetings, trying to figure out what he needs to take with him when he goes to his “A” school in South Carolina, and shopping for a car.  If he ever settles on one, I’ll probably be able to get a post out of that!

Besides being back working on school and preparing for the ACT, Bryce finished up segment 2 of Driver’s Ed last week, and now he just needs to take his driving test and then he’ll get his Level 2 license (assuming he passes the driving test!!)

He’s consumed with college football right now, and next weekend he’ll finally get to go to East Lansing to see his favorite team play live!

Tom’s been busy shopping for a motorhome, and lining up a workamping gig in Florida for this winter.  He’s got a couple of good possibilities, so hopefully we’ll have that ironed out soon.  He’s also been helping Nicolas check out the various cars he finds.

I’ve been helping Nicolas get his financial accounts in order, setting up a budget for him, and teaching him to do laundry and iron (he’s going to need to take care of his own uniforms!).  We met with our financial planner once already, and we’ve all got doctor appointments coming up in the next few weeks.

See . . . lots of normal, boring stuff!

My mom and my sister, Deby did come out to the campground one afternoon last week, and we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner, and took them over to Caulder Dairy for ice cream afterwards.  Our friends, Roger and Joyce, are also camping here for the month, so we sit and visit with them frequently, too.

On Sundays, we go to my Mom’s house for dinner and Nicolas and I do the laundry.  This weekend was my brother’s birthday, and we had his favorite cake . . .

 

angel food cake! 

He was hoping it might fall off the plate!

The family joke is that since his birthday is the last one in the year for us, my mom always ran out of ideas for birthday cakes, and he was stuck with angel food cake every year (so HE says!!)

. . . so he HATES angel food cake!  When we found out he was going to be there today, we made sure to get one!

 

 

It was a nice day . . . the rain held off until late afternoon and I got my sheets mostly dry out on the line!  We had a good dinner, although it wasn’t quite the ham that Bryce has been waiting for . . . and Grandma got a break from washing dishes!

So, that’s what we’ve been up to . . . we’ve got a couple of things coming up this week that are blog-worthy, though, so you’ll be hearing from me again!

Olympic National Park–Crescent Lake

With all of our parts on order, we were free to leave Brazel’s RV for several days while we waited for the parts to arrive.  We made our way north through the capital of Washington, Olympia, and continued on US-101 to the coastal town of Port Angeles.

 

The road was narrow and winding in many areas, and we crossed many bridges.

Port Angeles is a small town on the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, a major shipping channel from Seattle out to the Pacific Ocean. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s also the location of the ferry that travels from the US to Vancouver Island, BC.  We arrived at the Conestoga Quarters RV Park and got parked for a few days.

We’re supposed to get some true Pacific Northwest weather this week, we were hoping to have at least a couple of clear days for visiting Olympic National Park.

 

Later on Friday afternoon, we were starting to see a few peeks of blue sky, but it still looked pretty overcast on the mountains, so we decided to drive west on US-101 to the Lake Crescent area of the park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lake Crescent is a 624-foot deep glacier formed lake, with crystal clear blue water.  It’s surrounded by mountains, and is stunningly beautiful.

We were having a few minor “Friday the 13th” moments, including forgetting both my purse and our National Parks pass, but fortunately the Ranger Station was closed on Friday and they were not checking passes or collecting fees!

There was only this guy to greet us as we arrived, and he wasn’t looking for money!

We decided to take the 1.5 mile hike to Marymere Falls.  We passed the Ranger station and the lake,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and set out on the trail.  I had debated whether or not I needed to change into my hiking boots and bring my hiking pole, but if the entire trail is like this, we were going to be fine.

We passed by the lake again, and Bryce found a few good skipping stones.

It really is a beautiful lake!

 

There’s so much moisture in the air here in the Pacific Northwest that all the trees are covered in moss!  We’ve seen this all over in Oregon and Washington . . . it’s quite the contrast from the dry desert of Arizona!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We continued along the trail, marveling again at the magnificent tall trees . . . all of these seemed to be some variation of fir.

 

We were also surrounded by ferns . . . it really did almost look like a rainforest!

I guess all the water makes some of these plants grow really big!

As usual, the boys enjoyed climbing on logs and rocks,

We followed the trail along the stream, and soon reached a couple of bridges.

The first was a long metal bridge that looked fairly new,

and the second was a log between two railings that was a little more rustic!

 

 

I got a picture of the boys on the log bridge,

and the stream flowing from the waterfall.

After crossing the bridges, there were a series of steps to take us up to the waterfall view. 

We were making our way up, with the boys up ahead and me lagging behind, taking pictures as usual, when suddenly we heard this loud “Crack!”.  Bryce yelled “Watch Out!” from up above, and as we all looked up, we could see a very tall tree falling towards us!

I was just coming around a corner on the steps (this very same corner!),

when I saw this tree coming down, and I hurried to catch up with Tom and Nick, hoping that we wouldn’t get hit! 

 

We had no idea where Bryce was on the trail, and it turns out he was just on the other side of where the tree fell across the upper trail and took out several smaller trees!

Whew!  Talk about another “Friday the 13th moment!” . . . that was really close!  Some people behind us on the trail heard the noise, and ran up to see if anybody was hurt.  Luckily, nobody was!

 

 

 

A little bit further, and we reached the top of the trail at Marymere Falls . . . it was definitely worth it!  what a great waterfall!

 

It was a lovely hike, and a great way to celebrate Nicolas’ 18th birthday!

We hiked the same trail back to the Ranger Station (with no more incidents!), and went back to the RV for his birthday dinner, stopping at Baskin-Robbins to pick up an ice cream cake for dessert!

It was a beautiful day!