Michigan, June, 2021

 Dean flew back out to Michigan right after we closed on the cabin.  June 10.  I had a few things, like unpacking from the cabin, and some financial things related to the closing that I had to take care of.  I Flew out on June 16.  To be honest, this was one of the hardest months we have experienced.

It seemed like everything was going great, until we started seeing what this renovation was really going to take.  The house was in much worse shape than we thought.  Time to make this decision a good decision....and that is going to take a ton of work.

One of the first things Dean did when he got to Michigan was buying this beauty of a truck!

 We took off the blue siding, only to find yellow siding underneath...and rotten plywood underneath the yellow siding.

On Father's Day, Mike and Amanda and their kids, and Min and Mary and their kids all came out to play in the lake.  Times like this are why we bought this property!

We took off the roof, which was always part of our plan.  While we had the roof off, we had crazy rains.  Our neighbors assured us that this was not normal for this area!  On June 26, out of nowhere came a huge storm...right after Dean had shot himself with the nail gun!  While we were in the Emergency room, there was a tornado warning for our township!  We knew we had piles of plywood piled on top of our house, and we hurried and covered up the house with a tarp before we went to the ER.  We had no idea if that was going to be enough, or if our plywood would be blown all over the neighborhood.  That was a horrible day.

We tried to pull the nail out of Dean's hand.  We couldn't get it to budge.  

Because it was in so deep, they did X-rays, and then sent us home.  We expected to hear from them, but we heard nothing.  Dean can move his thumb, so we are assuming everything was ok in the x-ray.

We got home a couple hours later to find everything fine at our house.

We ended up needing to stay at Amanda's house much longer than we had planned.  Snuggling the kids in the mornings is amazing, but we needed to give Mike and Amanda back their house, and their privacy.  They have been awesome to make us feel welcome.

The reason we bough a house in Michigan is so we could be close to some of our "Grands".  Even though things were not going as planned on our house, being by Amanda's family has been great!  We got to watch swim meets and soccer games, take walks & talks with Nora ( which may be one of my most favorite things ever!), and just hang out with the Francis family.   

We often get people stopping by to see what us old people are up to.  One couple, Janine and Jeff, stopped by on June 29, and asked us about the house.  They were super nice, and seemed really interested in our project.

The next morning, Janine came by again.  She told us they were going out of town for the 10 days, and wanted to know if we wanted to stay in their house so we didn't have to drive back and forth to Amanda's!  She had known us for less than 12 hours, and offered us her house to stay in!  We were so discouraged, that this act of kindness was huge for us at this time!

She did ask us to feed her cats and let them out in the mornings.

This is Fern and Pumpkin, our housemates for the next 10 days.

We ended June feeling very grateful for kind people.

Selling the cabin. 6/2021

We got back to Utah on May 19, and had our first showing of the cabin on May 21.  We got a full price offer, so I guess this is really happening!  We called the people that were scheduled to come see the cabin on Sunday night, and told them we already had an offer.  They still wanted to see it.  After they went through, they gave us an offer above our asking price.  The first offer had asked us to let him know if we got another offer, so he could have a chance go beat it.  We wanted to avoid a bidding war, actually, we wanted both parties to have the cabin!  We ended up going with the cash offer, so there was less risk of the sale falling through, even though the other offer was for more.  We made a few repairs, had some family come down and say goodbye to the cabin, and are ready for our next adventure! 

Had to have one more "safety third" experience!

There were a few trees too close to the cabin that had to come down.  That was sad, but safe.

Our good friend Ren from down at the cabin helped Dean take down the trees and cut them up.

The deer came by to say their goodbyes/

Caitlyn and her friends Tressa and Juilanna made it a party!

Cristian, Hilary and Curtis spent a few hours there with us.

Wayne and Dorleen spent on more night down there before we turned it over to the new owners.

This was my dad's first time back since he had Covid.  I was really nervous about having him down there as his lungs haven't fully recovered.  He didn't die, so that was a great thing!

Braden's family also came down to say their goodbyes.  So many great memories with great people!

Each evening we like to walk "the loop".  This was our last time.  Its hard for me to keep looking forward.  Change is hard, but good.  I'm so glad I married a super positive guy to help me deal with change.  Because of that, life has not been boring, nor is is going to be.

All packed up and ready to leave our cabin.  When we come back, it will be to show the new owners all the things.

 

This is us, June 9, 2021, after closing on the cabin...and here are Mrs, and Mr. Hales, with their new cabin.

Girls camp june 8, 2021

 During this crazy time in Utah, I also had girls camp!  I was helping my friend Alisha, and together we were having fun seeing what we could come up with given the current pandemic.

Because of Covid, we had planned to do a camp in our own backyards.  We were not sure what would be allowed, so we planned incase nothing had opened up.  We thought it would be fun to float the Jordan River, have other activities in our backyards, and not do an overnight this year, as things were so unpredictable.  We were excited about our plans despite the pandemic!

We had purchased a bunch of rafts for the girls to use.  Dean and I decided we should do a trial run, to see where we would need to help the girls get in and out of the river, and also time it, so we could plan the other activities around that.

So on June 2, Dean and I floated the river.  Total FAIL!  Dean popped his raft within the first half hour.  He had to keep his finger on the hole and try to navigate the river.  These rafts were too hard to control.  Because we are in a drought, the water level was super low!  A lot of the time on the river was spent carrying our rafts.  We banged up against the rocks most of the time.    We finally gave up, and had Braden come pick us up.

Now I'm in full panic mode!

What am I going to have all those girls do for ?!  How are we going to change all our plans at this point?!

I had called Dean's sister Nancy, to see if we could rent her kayaks, thinking those might work better than these rafts.  She suggested a lake out by her.  She knew a "secret" beach, that our girls could use, and we would have it all to ourselves.

Alisha and I jumped in the car, met up with Nancy, and checked out the beach.  It was amazing!  Once again, we were excited, but only after being super stressed!  Nancy also offered her water toys, her beach games, and her snowcone maker!  It was going to be a party after all!

The lake was awesome!  We had a great time, and then went back to my house for games, dinner, and a meeting around a campfire...minus the campfire because of the drought!

Alisha was amazing!  Even when things were really stressful, we were still laughing, panicking, and having fun....kind of. 

(Me and my cute friend Claire)

Its over!  And it was a success! See, all that worrying totally paid off!

Girls camp on the 8th, cabin closing on the 9th, and Dean flies back to Michigan on the 10th.

Our lives are crazy right now!