10 Things I Learned on Vacation

1. I love northern Michigan (ok, that's nothing new. It was just reaffirmed). The air is cleaner, the people are friendlier, and the water is so clear it looks tropical.
2. I don't need to wash my clothes after only one wear. I wore a few pair of shorts for up to 3 days and since I never got food or dirt on them they looked clean. Shirts are a different story, I tend to spill lots of food on the front of myself and therefore needed to change my shirt on a more frequent basis.
3. Taking a bath in a lake is refreshing but not really cleansing, especially when you have to walk in the sand afterwards.
4. I really like flushing toilets that are close by, not pit toilets that are a block away.
5. A 4 hour downpour accompanied by constant thunder & lightning is not fun in a tent from Target. It convinced me that my next tent needs to come from a outdoor store. (We learned the hard way that our fly has a leak in it and that the bottom of our tent leaks when consumed by water.)
6. My son is obsessed with becoming a Junior Ranger in all the National Parks, sounds good to me!
7. I need a family vacation that doesn't involve tents, cooking outdoors and smelling nasty the whole time. I pray that next year's vacation with a baby will not include these things.
8. I have a hard time saying goodbye to Lake Michigan.
9. The bays on Lake Michigan are MUCH more pleasant that the coastlines.
10. I could live without a computer.

A Home

To say that I want to move is an understatement. I need to move to keep myself sane! I know that God has a plan and He can make the impossible possible. I've been given this "gift" (or so I like to think) of finding great deals on anything I'm looking for. Recently it's been a blessing to find a few really great real estate deals just when they come on the market.
Above is a photo of a house we looked at today and love. Get this, it was just listed on 8/7 and I found it on 8/8. It's a foreclosure, but you can't tell by the looks of it, heck it even has all it's window coverings in it in great condition. It's in a beautiful neighborhood with houses worth upwards of $350k. This house is listed for $210k. Built in 2001, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, 3175 sf, finished basement, and it even has a fireplace in the master bedroom. Minor repairs are needed to the exterior wood trim and some painting needs to be done (the exterior trim around the doors & windows is purple so, um yeah, it needs some help from me).
So now, as we scramble to find an unconventional way to attain a home I ask for your prayers that God will bless us with a new home and that if it's meant to be for us no one will come and snatch it away before we can make arrangements!