As my weekend in Michigan slides away into the archives, I’m realizing that if I don’t record our last morning in Traverse City, it’ll be forgotten. So here it is.

We got up Monday morning and hurried to get our things packed the rest of the way. We had a quick breakfast, and then we were on our way to do the last of our shopping. My goal was to get to the bead store, Nawbin, to see if I could find any beads made from petoskey stones. Since I’ve been having fun making jewelry, I thought that it would be perfect to have some unique beads for making gifts and as a souvenir for myself. My mother’s goal was to find a thrift store. One other goal was to find the health-food store that had some locally-roasted coffee that my uncle heartily recommends. So off we went on our errands.

The funniest part about the morning, in my opinion, was how often we got lost and turned around. We had a map that my uncle had drawn, and we had the map of the city, but somehow we still couldn’t find the stores we wanted. After a long search, we finally got our bearings and realized we had been very close to the health-food store all along. While we were there, my mother asked a clerk for a map to the thrift store. After leaving that store, we headed back to Nawbin since they were now open, and we had a marvellous time there. That store is so unusual! There are gobs of beads, rocks and fossils, and there are animal skins and dreamcatchers and rugs for sale too. The children were fascinated, and the staff there was very kind in answering all of their questions. I was delighted to find that Nawbin has many options for purchasing petoskey stones, and I finally settled on just exatly what I had been hoping for. Laura and Isaac discovered a pile of rabbit skins for sale, and I told them they could choose one each. They were really wishing I’d agree to buy the fox skins or the coyote skins, but after reading the price tags, I declared that the 2-for-$5 rabbit skins were right in my price range.

While we were at Nawbin, my mother asked the clerk there for a map to the thrift store. Now my mother had three maps in her pocket, and the official city map as well. We left Nawbin and headed toward the other side of town to find the thrift store. Again we were misdirected, but this time I don’t think it was entirely our fault. I’m guessing that one of our mapmakers got a street name wrong. Anyway, after driving out of town, and then turning around and heading back into town, we stumbled across the thrift store we were hunting. We felt that we really didn’t have much time to spend there, but we hurried in anyway to enjoy what we could. It was such an interesting place, and all of us found some small treasures to carry out with us.

Once we were done there we got on the road and did our best to make good time heading home. We were so surprised, as the day went on, that we were actually making record time! Later, as I thought back on our day, I was glad that we did every one of the errands we wanted to do. Even with all of our stops and mixups, we still got home before dark.

So, now you know the rest of our story.

The last few days at home have been so nice. The weather has been gorgeous, the children have loved playing outside, and I’ve really enjoyed just being home. I love my house, I love the yard, and I’m eager to get going on some of our projects here.

When I arrived home there was a beautiful pot of blooming spring bulbs waiting for me with a note from the church. The flowers bring me cheer every time I see them, and I’m so grateful for my loving church family.

While I do grieve for the child that we had so briefly, I am also intrigued that for the first time in a very long time, we don’t have a baby in the house. Judah will be two years old in a few weeks, and I’m not even pregnant. Before long I’ll work on potty-training Judah, and then I won’t even have someone in diapers. I’m trying to think of what fun things we can do as a family this summer that we might not have been able to do if we had a baby. For instance, we can have a lot of fun at the pool or at parks or the zoo or the children’s discovery museum. I hope I can take advantage of these ideas while our family is in this unusual stage. Do you have any suggestions for us? Leave me a comment! I love hearing from you.