Delayed reaction

It takes a lot to get me back to this blog, and I fear this will be a short update today, but here I go anyway. There has been a lot going on, and that keeps me from writing as well. The last I wrote was right before my family took a trip to Michigan to visit my Mother-in-law and her husband. Anyone reading who doesn't know, my wife's Mom is re-married a couple times, and her current husband of 20 some years is from a marriage after my wife was out on her own for a couple years. So not really Dad, or even step-dad. Vis-a-vis, that is why I say Mother-in-law and her husband. He's a great guy though, so nothing disparaging intended.

Just prior to the trip we decided to pull out some extra cash and buy everyone in the family a MP3 player. I had done some hunting around online and found a good deal on SanDisk Sansa Clips. These one in particular were 2 Gig size units. They hold roughly 500 songs. The thought was each one of us could have our own tunes to listen to in the 6 to 8 hour drive up north. We decided to buy them and surprise the kids, instead of telling them we bought them, we revealed them once under way. We spend a few hours picking out music for them that we knew they liked and loaded up their new player. It was a great success, and took up a lot of boredom time with playing with the new devices.

It was a rainy day leaving town, but according to the forecast it was going to be sunny up north, so we were looking forward to busting on through. It was to be nice the whole weekend. Traffic was pretty light, and the trip was mostly uneventful. Seemed to go faster than I remembered. We arrived there in the late afternoon and had time to hang around and relax. The in-laws had paid for a hotel room for us so we could have our own space while visiting. It was a great place at Thunder Bay Country Club. The room was large and had a bedroom for the kids, and a living room with a Murphy bed for my wife and I. It gave us a kitchen and a great staging point for the next several days.

During our stay we rowed on a little lake next to their house. The kids and I played hide and seek in the woods. We had a cook-out by the fire. The temperature was mostly cool, but nice weather for a hoody and we had no bug issues, which is common in the much warmer part of the year up north, and specifically off a lake/marsh. They also had a new big screen TV and I brought our PS2 up there to play some games on the 48" screen, but surprisingly we had so much fun doing other things we hardly even looked at the TV. This is a very good thing.

Alright, more later, I thought I wouldn't have much to say, but now I'm out of time again. The next part of the trip we went to the Mackinaw Bridge, and to the UP. I also have to get some pictures added. More to follow.