Tom & Brenda's Family Journal

We have had a small metal barn in the middle of our property here at the cabin. Tom has had plans to move it for a long time so we would have a spot to build a garage. Well this is the week the job was completed. Here are a series of pictures and a video of the process. It was hard to watch Tom and our neighbor Paul work so hard for so many days. They did all the work from emptying the barn until it was all completed. My brother and brother-in-law came by Monday evening for the actual move. The actual move did not go smoothly because of several factors. The first few feet went smoothly. The guys were able to push the building as shown in the picture below and the video. It took a whole day to empty the bar and another half-day to build the bracing inside to prevent a collapse when moving. The contents of the barn were put in the trailer and in our yard. Tim is doing the site work to make a smooth path. The move was completed yesterday afternoon. My part was keeping the work...

July has arrived here at the cabin but are continuing to have warm day-time temperatures and cool nights. It really helps the flowers gardens. They love that kind of weather. This is my backdoor shade garden. We had a 4th of July picnic at my sister, Susie's, house at Birch Point which is right on Lake Superior. We enjoyed the fellowship and the good food. After eating, we sat on the deck overlooking the beautiful lake. But the cool breezes sent us all looking for sweaters even though it was afternoon. My parents and Mary Clark stand with their granddaughter Areka and her finance Travis. Robbie, our nephew, and Tom share birthdays on the 4th. We went to two parades-Brimley in the afternoon and the Soo in the evening. The Bell Family had a float for the Soo parade. There were three generations represented here. We are having a good time here at the Cabin with lots of visiting, boatwatching and eating good food. I'll post more later.

The US Coast Guard icebreaker Mackinaw heading up the river on Wednesday Visiting with my Aunt Elsie with my parents Music in the Park is a weekly concert at the Locks Park. Almost always a great time. You may wonder what we do while we are at the Cabin. Although I often write about boatwatching, we do have many other activities that fill our days. Visiting with friends and loved ones seems to be the number one focus of our days. For example, yesterday we started our day with our normal coffee with our neighbor Lodie. After that, we had a visit from my sister Kathy and my brother's grandson. We decided to take them out to lunch because Kathy had never been to Lockview-one of our favorite spots for whitefish. And every trip to Lockview requires a trip to Zak's. Zak's is an ice cream place on Portage Avenue a block from Lockview. After Kathy and Scottie left, my niece Ashley stopped by. We took her out to Bay Mills to get fireworks for the 4th. We had to make a stop ...

We have been here at the cabin almost two weeks. What have we done in that time? We don't spend all our time relaxing but we enjoy every second we are here. Boat watching is a favorite activity. Here are two 1,000 footers out front. Graham, our cat, does spend almost all her time relaxing. She goes from window to window to keep tabs on the goings on in our yard. I have to say that we haven't had any chipmunks in our attic so far so maybe her patrols are helping. We did get to observe a lamprey release in the St. Marys River last week up close and personal. The sterilized males are released at spawning time to try and control the population. Lampreys are a big problem in the St. Marys River. We continue to work on the fallen trees and also weeding the flower beds. I am looking for another way to control the weeds in my sea wall flower beds. Every year by the time we get here, the weeds have a big head start and I spend many days cleaning them out. I am thinking of cov...

We were greeted by tree problems from the moment we drove into the driveway. A freak wind storm during May had left many trees down on our property and also on our neighbor's. In fact, two of our trees landed on our neighbor's roof. This pine tree lay across the driveway so that became Tom's first project after unloading our belongings. Tom made fast work of this one since it involved no climbing. There was another small tree down in the side yard. Tom made that into firewood very quickly. Our neighbors had taken one of our trees off their roof and left the brush which we cleaned up. The big project was the tree that lay on Nancy's roof. It was one of two that fell on her house-cracking her picture window and damaging her chimney and putting two holes in her roof. Tom studied the tree and came up with a plan to winch the tree up and have it land on our lawn. We brought out the lawn chairs for the spectators-all the women-and Tom and Rich set to work putting a chain...

You may have noticed that I didn't post on this blog too often while we were away. The problem was lack of Internet. Due to some unexpected technical difficulties, I wasn't able to have Internet often. So I will try to make up for it now that we are home. We arrived home on Monday, April 4. We had gotten on the road on February 26 so we missed the entire month of March in Michigan. March in Florida was wonderful. The temperature was in the high 70's most days. Here is a quick recap of what we did since our trip to Disney World. Car shows-a favorite past-time of retirees and we saw some good ones. Here Tom is enjoying a 1957 Chevrolet with our friend from Alto, Butch Nordhof. Butch and Sheila's place in Avon Park was about 10 miles from us and we had many fun times with them during our time in Florida. Eric was able to fly down from Minneapolis and spend a weekend with us. Here we are at Highlands Hammock State Park where we walked through a swamp on a boardwa...

We are having a great time in Sebring Florida. Our days seem full yet relaxing. On Wednesday, we traveled the 80 miles to Orlando to visit Epcot Center. March is their flower festival and as everything is at Disney, it was overwhelmingly beautiful. We went with Tom's cousin Dianne and her husband Charlie. I think that was the most fun part being with them. We hope to do more things together while we are here. This is the Canadian exhibit. We wanted to eat in their steakhouse but their reservations were taken for the entire day. We learned that you should make your food reservation first and then start doing the activities. The topiaries were outstanding. This is from the movie Lady and the Tramp at the Italian exhibit. Although this looks like an English country garden, this is the Norway exhibit. This is the week of the 12 Hours of Sebring-an American LeMans Series race that I am covering for Insider Racing News. Should be an exciting week.