One of the days my family were together in Michigan, we went to a local county park, Gale’s Pond. Our children used to think—and one of the younger ones asked this time—if it’s Daddy’s Pond! No, sorry; it’s named after a local family, and spelled differently.

There were a lot of redwinged blackbirds at the pond, but this was the only one I could get even a halfway good picture of. I love their song!

I learned something about cattails! Apparently, I never saw them at this stage before. The lower part is the female part of the flower, and develops into the sausage-like thing you see later in the year. The top part is the male part; it’s very spongy, and if you rub your hand over it you get a lot of pollen on your hand. The boys were getting it on their faces!

We took a family picture on this bench many years ago when we had, maybe, four children, so decided to take another. What a circus getting everyone to pose! And then, the light and shadows were too harsh, so it didn’t turn out well. Good memories, anyway!

Of course, my Mr. Intellectual had to show off how well he can shimmy up a tree with no branches.

“Take a picture of me!”

I’ve always loved standing on the road over the dam here.

These two found fishing hooks and bobbers caught on the trees and worked to untangle them.

We had fun finding Monarch butterfly caterpillars. We took five large ones home to watch them change, and found a tiny one on one of our leaves. We also found some eggs on the undersides of a few leaves—I’d never seen that before!

And then—our boys started seeing garter snakes! Some of them had been really hoping to see a snake in the wild in America, since we have no snakes in New Zealand. They thanked God that night for letting them see snakes, but now at least one of the boys is saying he doesn’t like snakes!

Within a couple of days, the caterpillars had all turned into chrysalises. We brought them with us to Ohio, so we’ll see after awhile if they survived the bumping around enroute.

One of the days that my family were together in Michigan, we went to Silver Lake, to play in Lake Michigan at the Little Sable Point lighthouse. Here are the world-famous Silver Lake sand dunes, viewed from across Silver Lake—the closest we got to them.

I find this lighthouse particularly interesting, since I once read a diary written by the lighthouse keeper’s family well over a hundred years ago. They were very isolated, and the children had to move to town in the winter, with their grandparents, to go to school.

The beach, looking south. I had forgotten how fine and soft Lake Michigan sand is! So different from our coarse sand. The lack of tides is quite different for us, too, as well as the fresh water. Salt water makes the sand really stick, even when it dries!

The children had great fun playing in the sand, and we had fun watching them and chatting.

My boys all went in swimming, and a few of their cousins. The water was too cold for them to be in very long, although it was much warmer than the waters of the South Pacific which we’re used to!

My three oldest boys are good at water fights, and they also had a sand fight. They would scoop up handfuls of sand from under the water and fling them at each other, trying to duck under before they got hit. It was pretty funny to watch.

The older children were making dribble castles, and Little Miss tried her hand at it, too.

Mr. Sweetie became quite the expert!

The lighthouse was open for climbing, so some of us bought tickets and climbed to the top. What a view!

You can just see the sand dunes above the trees in the center of this picture.

Our reason for traveling to America was to help celebrate my mother’s 70th birthday. We had been thinking about this for a year already; at first, I was hoping to be able to come with just a few children. When we were given a lot of money after Seth died, however, we started thinking it would be possible to all come, and we’re so glad we were able to. All eight of my mother’s children and their spouses, and 22 of the living grandchildren (one step-grandchild was missing) were there, for a total of 38 people. What fun! We spent about 4 1/2 days together, getting to know each other again and enjoying watching the children play. Most of the time, we were at my one brother’s house; it’s a large house with a huge lawn and a pond that the children played in part of the time. Here is Mr. Sweetie helping Little Miss ride the toy fire truck on the deck. I’m just putting in a few of the many pictures we took, mainly of my children, because I didn’t get permission from the other parents.

Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination playing with a cousin.

Decorating Grandma’s cake.

The matriarch with all her gifts.

Gayle catching up on some emails.

Remarkably, it didn’t take too much time to feed so many people; we didn’t really do any planning ahead for meals, but things fell into place and every had plenty to eat, on time, every time.

Two of my brothers and a brother-in-law getting the evening fire going.

Little Miss and a baby cousin.

My boys with some uncles, an aunt, and one of my cousins.

Ready to leave for church at my brother’s, the same place we had the family gathering. See Little Miss’s hair? She leaves it that way for a few minutes at a time!

The day after most of the family left, a few of us went canoeing. Included were our family, my sister, and one of my cousins who had come to see the family. The river was billed as quiet and calm, very safe for little children. Well, it had been raining, and was in flood, and we didn’t realize till we started out how fast and strong the current was, or how many trees were fallen down across it. It was not easy, and not safe. We all made it safely to the other end, though, thankful for God’s protection and that we all wore life jackets—and I was very glad I didn’t take my camera along! This was as we were getting ready to start out, when everything and everyone were still clean and dry and excited about the trip.

If you want to see more pictures from our time in Michigan, please visit Esther’s blog. She has some nice posts up.

During the three weeks we were in Michigan, we stayed at my mom’s house. Gayle and the boys did several jobs she wanted done, and spiffed the place up a bit. Here, Mr. Inventor is mowing areas that the lawn mower can’t reach.

They cut up a lot of logs and split the firewood, and stacked it neatly in a couple of woodsheds.

Mr. Diligence contemplating his next move.

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence in Grandma’s kitchen.

Storytime!

My mom bakes for a number of people each week. This was what she baked one day.

“See my airplane?”

My mom wanted a tree to be cut down, but it was so close to the house that they wanted to tie a rope to it to pull it in the right direction. She didn’t have a rope, so Mr. Intellectual set to work to make one with the old rope machine my dad made some 40 years ago. He had a bit of trouble getting started, but once his dad and Mr. Inventor joined him, they were able to make several 15-metre ropes without too much trouble.

Grandma and Mr. Inventor gave a rope-making demonstration to my brother and his family.

My little people got to see their first toad.

One Sunday afternoon, while the big children were at the state park with their aunt, we gave Mr. Imagination and Little Miss a wading pool. They had fun—until, “She got me wet!” “He got me wet!” And just what is a wading pool for, pray tell?

I took a walk with my mom, and Mr. Imagination and Little Miss, that evening as well. We walked back a lane just south of her house, between orchards and woods.

This groundhog was pretty intent on watching us.

At the end of our first week in Michigan, we took my mom and sister to a memorial service in Traverse City; the woman who died was a sister of someone I’ve known all my life, so we attended the service as well. Afterward, we drove to Sleeping Bear Dunes and had fun exploring a little around there. Our children had never been there before, and neither had Gayle. We all enjoyed seeing the beautiful scenery. This first photo was at the edge of Traverse City; there were a couple of railroad overpasses with bridges like this.

Grand Traverse Bay was beautiful, and there were a lot of sail boats on it.

As far as we know, this is one of the “Tall Ships”, replicas of the sailing vessels used on the Great Lakes a few hundred years ago. It was sailing across Grand Traverse Bay.

The Traverse City area is famous for its cherry orchards.

The highway between Traverse City and Sleeping Bear Dunes is straight and flat, compared to what we’re used to at home!

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore! There are two inland lakes, and the dunes are on the other side of the overlook here.

Lake Michigan is off in the distance.

See the Manitou Islands off in the distance? There are two of them. The story goes that a mother bear and her two cubs were swimming across Lake Michigan to escape a forest fire in Wisconsin. They were almost to land when the cubs tired and drowned, forming  North and South Manitou Islands. The mother reached land and laid down to watch for her cubs, forming the sand dunes.

The drive we took through the park wound around through forests like this.

A favorite stop along the way is this overlook. You’re not supposed to go down to the lakeshore here, but many people do anyway—and then have to climb the 300-400 foot, steep sandy slope. We didn’t allow our boys to do it.

Our little people loved playing in the sand dune above the trail. Mr. Imagination slid down on his tummy several times! I took his clothes off and shook the sand out before we got in the van again.

Grandma noticed that this large boulder beside the trail was actually a huge Petosky stone. This particular type of fossilized coral is the Michigan state stone.

This is the D. H. Day barn, a historic building.

It is an enormous task to prepare to take a family of nine from New Zealand to America. It did help that I made lists, over the last couple of weeks, of jobs that needed done before taking off, and on Saturday before we left we started a list of what needed to happen each of the last three days. On Monday, I finished the sewing that had to be done, while Gayle and the boys got things done outside. There were also a lot of little jobs to do, and nearly everything was accomplished. Tuesday, I thoroughly cleaned both refrigerators, and we packed clothes. It took about three hours to do that, even with all the older children packing their own! Then, we left the suitcases open so we could put things in as we remembered them. Wednesday we cleaned house and did all sorts of other miscellaneous jobs to get ready. By evening, everything felt ready to go; it sure helped to have done the packing a couple of days ahead of time. I was relaxed enough that evening, feeling like everything was ready, that I was actually able to sleep that last night! Here is our lineup of suitcases—and Little Miss dumping mine!

We had six bags to check at the airport, so took a picture of them in case it would be needed. Thankfully, nothing got lost!

Taking off on the first flight!

It was clear when we took off from Christchurch, and we had a beautiful view of the Waimakariri River from the air.

There was a heavy cloud cover at times, but I believe the sandy area in the lower right in this photo is where the boys and I went to a beach with our homeschool group a couple of months ago, near Amberley.

The Kaikoura Mountains were spectacular! I think this sharp-pointed one is Mount Manakau, which we can see all the way from Christchurch.

This is near Blenheim.

We enjoyed seeing Picton from the air. We’ve been on both sides of the peninsula sticking out in the middle of the bay in the center of the picture. You can see a log yard on the closer side of that peninsula, and on the other side, the big white things are the ferries that go to the North Island.

The Marlborough Sounds from the air.

A mountain on the North Island.

Sunrise over the Pacific. There were clouds below us all the way across. It was beautiful, with a full moon shining on them, but the sunrise was even more beautiful. This flight took 13 hours, which seemed to be about forever. The three youngest slept fairly well, and I think Gayle got some decent sleep. Esther and I only slept an hour or two each, and the three big boys didn’t do well at all. We were all glad to land on the ground in Houston!

Mexico

We had seven hours in Houston. Some friends who live about 2 1/2 hours from there met us at the airport and took us to a park, where they fed us. It was so good to get out of the airport and have fresh air and room to move—not to mention the wonderful fellowship!

We spent a day in Ohio resting and recovering and spending time with Gayle’s family, and then took off for Michigan! We have been loaned a van to use by a family who are serving as missionaries in Africa, so we have our own transportation, which is wonderful.

The children enjoyed seeing sights that are so different from New Zealand. We don’t have barns and silos like this back home!

We saw a couple of large wind farms in Ohio and Indiana.

Michigan! For you in New Zealand, these are typical highway scenes in this state.

Mr. Diligence has had some culture shock. He was only four when we moved to New Zealand, and hadn’t been back. He is marveling at the large vehicles, and the tall buildings we saw in Cincinnati, and the tall electric poles. We keep telling him, “Everything is bigger in America!” He also had a hard time adjusting to being on the other side of the road. I’m not having much trouble driving here, although I told Mom yesterday that her car likes to go the New Zealand speed limit, which is a bit higher than the speed limit here. We are loving being with our family and getting to know them again.