Category Archives: Vacation

Vacation 2012: Day 1

November 10, 2012VacationCadyLy

Saturday, my first official day of vacation! Whoot! Let me say that it was rather like a typical Saturday and rather low-key. I slept in, I read a little, I spent most of the day in my PJs. 🙂

I made Lemon Rice soup for lunch, too. I’ll give that it’s own post, since I’ll include the recipe and maybe some photos. It was yum! Next time, I may add some veggies and chicken.

About 4:30 pm, I got a knock on the back door and opened it to find my neighbor-across-the-street’s daughter. It turns out that my neighbor, whom I’ve known my whole life, died on Monday. As of right now, I anticipate going to the viewing/reception on Monday. I made sure to call to let my parents know.

I quickly took a shower, as I was STILL in my PJs, and found my friend, Terry, waiting for me in the driveway after I had dressed. We went to dinner, but since I was still rather full from my lunch (after not eating much for the past several weeks being sick, I can’t eat too much), I ordered a small side salad and a sundae (and only ate about 1/4 of the sundae, to my disappointment).

We then went to the AMC Star John R movie theaters and watched Flight with Denzel Washington. It wasn’t quite the movie that I anticipated it to be, but still very well done! It focused more on the pilot than the flight. It was a more sober movie than yesterday’s but it gave me a lot to think about and I was glad to have seen it.

Here’s the trailer for this movie:

I know. So far it seems like my vacation is all movies! 🙂 But that’s not a bad thing, is it? 🙂

I’m ready to see what Day 2 will bring! 🙂

Vacation 2012: Day 0

November 10, 2012VacationCadyLy

Friday. My last day of work before vacation! It went by sooooo slooooooowly. Brutal.

But finally 5 pm came and I was FREE!!!

I was getting low on gas, but gas in Ann Arbor is more expensive than gas in Plymouth, figure that. I stopped by church on the way and called a friend. See, I have an it to LEAVE TOWN! It’s practically a moral imperative. I spent the better part of the day looking for air fare online to see where I could go. Nothing seemed particularly affordable — I guess that’s what you get when you try to book last minute.

Anyway, a trip out of state is planned and mayhem will commence shortly! Keep watching! 🙂 Maybe I’ll even manage to surprise you!

After planning, I spent some time in the church, before heading over to the movie theater in Canton to watch Hotel Transylvania. It was so cute! I have to remember to buy a copy when it comes out on DVD. 🙂

Here’s the trailer. If you haven’t seen it yet, you totally should! 🙂 ❤

After the movie, it was late, but I hadn’t eaten yet. I went through the drive-thru of a fast-food place. The guy taking money at the window recognized my credit card and said the he had been in the Navy, also, as a corpsman. 🙂 Made my evening. It’s probably one of the few situations where someone can call me ma’am and I won’t get upset….

South Haven 2012

August 12, 2012Day Trip, Photography, Travel, Vacationasparagus sandwich, blueberry, graffiti, lighthouse, mass, Mom, Paw Paw, Phoenix Street Cafe, pier, sand, seagull, South Haven, spinach burger, St. Mary's Catholic Church, wavesCadyLy

Yesterday was the family reunion, and from the time that I heard it was going to be so close to Lake Michigan and South Haven, I wanted to take some time and head over there. I love being by the water and 15-20 miles is NOTHING to me! 🙂 The only question was if Mom would go for it.

We spent the night in Paw Paw. In the morning, I dragged her to St. Mary’s Catholic Church for Sunday Mass. It was a cute little church right by the court building that we had looked at yesterday. All around the church, the sidestreet parking was clogged. We managed to find the last parking spot in the tiny parking lot, but people were already creating a middle line of cars where it wasn’t legal to park — just to be able to get in to Mass! A good sign, right? 🙂

We were a little bit late, and so we took a seat in one of the back pews, like any good Catholic would do. After Mass, I snapped a couple pictures to prove I was there and grabbed my Mass ticket (parish bulletin). I was surprised to find that it was only 4 pages long! At both my parishes, it’s usually more like 12!

Next, we headed out of town. I didn’t have a lot of charge on my phone, so instead of using the GPS, I just found my way to M-43 and headed west. I wasn’t going to stop until I hit water! We had heard that there was a Blueberry Festival in South Haven this weekend and thought it would be good to check that out. We pulled into town and ended up on Phoenix Street. Just past the downtown area, right before the road dipped down to go towards the lighthouse, there were barricades for the festival. Luckily, there was also on-stree parking RIGHT THERE! We couldn’t have asked for a better spot!

We were on the southwest corner of the intersection, and on the northwest corner was this sign:

I liked looking at all of the boats in the marina. If I could, I would love to live on the water and have a boat (or two or four) of my own!

As we were walking down to the pier, we saw this big, pink flower. It was huge! Probably 7-8 inches in diameter! Even though it doesn’t really look that big in the photo.

And, finally, THE BEACH!

And the lighthouse:

With sailboats on the water!

We read all of the graffiti on the lighthouse. I saw one that said “Hannah was here” and wondered if it belonged to Hannah Ekblad…

I even got Mom to take a picture…. And she was happy that I didn’t push her in the water! 🙂

I tried taking a self-portrait, although it turned out a little funny because I kept squinting in the bright light.

We didn’t take the time to actually swim on the beach, but I did sit down on the edge of the pier and dangled my feet over the side!

More pictures of kids playing in the sand:

Seagull footprints:

Even though I had my good running shoes on, I still walked across the sand to take pictures of the waves. These are tiny compared to the waves of the ocean, but I will take what I can get! 🙂

All of the water and boats actually looked like this:

I added contrast to most of the other shots, but it was kind of cool as they were normally, with almost nothing to tell you where the sky ended and the sea began….

Like me, you might be wondering why my mom was looking at her feet so intently. Well, it appears that where she was standing, when she took a step, the sand would shift and “crackle out” about 12 inches away from her foot.

The Ubiquitous Seagull Shot:

Another look of the beach, pier and lighthouse:

I took pictures of some treats for Erwin:

And for Lindsay:

Amy had suggested that we eat at the Phoenix Street Cafe while we were in town. So, after browsing through a couple of neat little shops, we did just that! I’m not sure if my brother or my dad would have enjoyed it as much as we did.

Here is Mom’s Asparagus Sandwich:

And my Spinach Burger (no meat was harmed in the making of this burger!):

Right next door to the Phoenix Street Cafe was The Blueberry Shoppe. I got 5 pounds of blueberries to take home, some mix to make Blueberry White Chocolate cookies, blueberry jerky, blueberry truffle, and we each tried a blueberry drink.

Mom got the Blueberry Lemonade (which was the better-tasting of the two):