Summer Fun with Strings!

For the last two weeks, Emma has been participating in a camp at the Flint School of Performing Arts. The camp was called "Summer Fun with Strings" and is about as old as me! In fact, I remember helping with registration and such when I worked at the FSPA in high school! ;)

Last Monday, the first day, Emma went to camp and tried each of the stringed instruments: violin, viola, cello and bass. After trying each of them, she decided on the viola. I have to admit, though, that I sort of put the idea in her head ahead of time...but she knew she could pick whatever she wanted!

Last Friday, before going up north, I was able to pick Emma up from camp. She took out her viola and played "Mary Had a Little Lamb" for me! After only 5 days! Needless to say, I was impressed and very proud!

Today was the last day of camp...they had a little recital for the different age groups/classes to perform what they've learned. Knowing that these kids have never touched an instrument before 10 days ago, and seeing them play songs today...WOW. :)

My great grandfather played violin in Russia....I play clarinet...maybe Emma will continue in our footsteps??? My only hope is that she at least has an appreciation for music! I think we've got that covered!

Up North!!

What a fabulous weekend we had! The four if us went up to Beulah on Platte Lake and stayed with our friends, Justin and Sara, at their family cabin. We went kayaking, canoeing and had a great time!!! Emma and Bradlee loved being out on the water, as did Tony and I! On Sunday, before we headed home, we took a side trip over to Sleeping Bear Dunes. We had read the book, "The Legend of Sleeping Bear" to them before we left and they were quite excited to climb up "Mama Bear"!! Both kids made it to the top!! It was a great family weekend...

Power Outage 2012

We made it through the storm! Last Wednesday, as most of you probably know, we had a massive storm that came through! I was awakened around 4:15am to the sound of wind, only to discover that one of my bedroom windows was open. When I got up to close the window (since we had the AC on), I noticed how windy it was. Fifteen minutes later, the power went out. I waited....waited...waited.....nothing. So I went downstairs to get my cell phone to set the alarm! Glad that window was open!

We did not recover power until the next day, about noon.....which left our fridge and freezers off for 32 hours total. We lost about 75% of our food! :( Here are pictures of our nicely stuffed freezer and our not-so-stuffed freezer....

We are able to make a claim with our insurance company to get some money for the food we lost...so that's good! I'm just glad we were all okay and our power went on much sooner than some people's!!!