I've been vacationing in Michigan this week. We like to choose somewhere that we haven't been before -- or that one of us hasn't been to :)We started out on Monday(after a stop to visit my parents for a day) in Ann Arbor. We visited the very famous Hollanders (not just a paper shop) and my favourite store, Found. Then we hit some of my favourite US only stores -- Trader Joes, Target and Joanne's -- we stocked up on some yummy food for our hotel room (couldn't open our Trader Joe's wine though -- no corkscrew, lol). Then stocked up on some flip flops and some basic fabric (flannel for pjs).
On Tuesday night we headed to Kalamazoo and Portage to visit with Joanne Thieme Huffman!
(here we are in Joanne's beautiful yard -- picture taken by Joanne's lovely daughter Becky!)We had great fun ( Yummy restaurants!) and visited the Kalamazoo Institute of Art (Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit), a great fabric store and yarn shop -- and visited Hobby Lobby and Harbor Freight (just like our Princess Auto -- is it related???).
Joanne and I played making Suzi Blu sketches -- I think that I'm getting better. For those of you who complain about the big eyed, crooked head girls... well..... maybe someday I'll try to make them smaller and less crooked :)
I'm just loving the little girl with the freckles in the bottom picture, lower left corner.Joanne has the most adorable little pug dog named Cookie. She is the pretties little girly dog ever!!!! I am so lame that I forgot to take a picture.
On Thursday (after Joanne graciously put us up for 2 nights) (THANK YOU JOANNE!!!) the sun finally came out so Ray and I headed to the beach and camping. We travelled an hour west of Kalamazoo to the beach town of South Haven. What a lovely town!! Some very nice antique stores-- AND I found some most wonderful Keen shoes for $40!!! (They're about $140 here) (funny, I bought my last pair last summer in Burlington, Vermont). Oh, and if anyone finds a really cool vintage children's book in a restaurant called Capn Nemos in South Haven, that book is mine. I didn't mean to leave it on the table when I left......
We camped in Van Buren State Park. It was a nice park -- we'll go back. BUT I got a sunburn. I had loaded on the sunscreen. But I was wearing a dress and was reading on the beach lying down, and I guess that my dress was hiked up a bit so I am totally burned on the backs of my upper legs. ouch ouch ouch. Not nice for the 7 hour ride home.There were lots of bugs:
Some fallen trees:
The walk TO the beach was fine. The walk back to camp sucked. Ray said that it was good exercise. I said that if he carried me it would be GREAT exercise.
Somebody made this cool driftwood beach "installation"
We were so happy to get to the border and find no line ups!!! BUT (there is always a but) we got a random border check -- but had very nice border checking people who were very patient with me while I rummaged through stuff to find receipts. Well, they knew that I was totally cheap when they said "Oh, you bought some wine" (we had declared no alcohol). I yelped (really, it was a yelp) "No, it's empty -- I just wanted my dollar back!" Then they said thank you have a nice day. Whew, no duty on the 6 pairS of flip flops. ( totally kidding here -- there would have been no duty)Andy was a very happy puppy upon our return. We were very happy to learn that he was a pretty good boy while we were away. He only ate one flip flop. (are you understanding now why we purchase flip flops in bulk? -- It's because some of us here forget to put their flip flops in the flip flop basket when we leave the dog home alone in the house. not naming any names.....)
I managed to get away from report cards for a weekend, and have a fabulous time with 4 other wonderful women! 
