Hello from Michigan!
I flew north on Thursday, and I’ve been spending the week with my family. It is lovely chaos around here, beautiful and sweet and overwhelming all at the same time. I haven’t been in Michigan in June in a long, long time, and the weather has been absolutely gorgeous. We’ve been enjoying dinners eaten on the deck and an impromptu waterslide party. My niece Lydia and I are the first ones up in the morning, and we wake up with computer games (for her) and some puttering and coffee-drinking (for me). My nephew Devin is a handful in the best way, ever so determined to keep us chasing after him. He does this hilarious thing where he tries to wear everything as a hat—a bright orange colander, a tiny wooden bowl, a slice of banana, pieces of turkey. And everything is funny to him, so it’s hard not to laugh with him. I sometimes feel like being with these kids is an all-or-nothing proposition. I’m either here with them, completely absorbed, or I’m trying to catch my breath and take a break for the next round of fun. It’s wonderful and completely exhausting.
Tomorrow my sister-in-law and I are hoping to take the kids to a waterpark, and tonight we’re grilling dinner out on the deck. Dinner plans include these awesome chickpea burgers and grilled peaches, along with grilled veggies and perhaps some burgers for my more carnivorous family members. I’m happy I have one more full day in Michigan before it’s on to the next leg of my summer travels—Chicago! I am not always the most patient or graceful of travelers, but I am always glad I dared to break my routine for a few days. I’m such a creature of habit and order that I can’t help but think it’s good for me to shake things up every couple of months.
It’s good to remember that the world is much, much bigger than my little corner of it.
5 comments:
ah, glad to see you're out enjoying time with the family :) i'm heading up to see mine on friday for a week--should be fun!
Yay for good times with your family! I wish that I could see mine this summer, but it's not in the cards.
Also grilled peaches sound amazing to me right now.
Sounds like a great way to spend a vacation! And I bet that cool Michigan weather is a welcome change of pace. :) Enjoy your time!
Oh, Shannon, how wonderful! I hope you are having a blast with your family.
Raquelita, I'm sorry to hear about not being able to visit your family. Believe me, I can empathize. I know that it will be hard for me in September to NOT be taking a trip up to Michigan. {sniffle sniffle}
Ah, Chrissy, the weather played tricks on us! It was nice and cool for the first half of my visit, and then the temperature skyrocketed into the 90s and 100s. Eek! On the day I arrived in Chicago, the weather (among several other things) made me cry. I'm such a wimp sometimes.
Also, about those grilled peaches? YES! They were delicious. I sort of winged it, not being a grillmaster myself, but if you do want to throw some peaches on the grill, try to get freestone peaches that are easy to pit and try to place them on indirect heat if you can. I also grilled some nectarines on (what I think was) direct heat, and I burned the skin. Oops :-(
Also, get yourself some vanilla ice cream (or your favorite creamy frozen treat--I bet coconut ice cream would be insanely good with grilled peaches) and serve a scoop alongside the grilled peach halves. Yum!
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