Chicago

Teresa’s friend, Sarah, has been here for 3 weeks and it was time to get her back to Chicago. This time I made a trip out of it with us girls leaving Sunday..... with greyhound. Sigh. But the ride went smoothly with a longer snack break in Kalamazoo. And plenty of flaming hot Cheetos #teenlife

The first thing we did once we arrived (and after checking into our Airbnb in Pilsen) was to go straight to Chinatown Square for late lunch/early dinner at Joyees:

And since the weather was really pleasant we ended up walking downtown to check out the bean:

The first time I heard about the bean I didn’t get the hype about it. But now I always try to squeeze a visit in. It changes with you. When you walk around it, when the clouds roll in, when the lights of the city come on. And I still puzzles me how they got that giant metal sculpture installed.

Monday was Magnificent Mile day. But the stores weren’t quite open when we got there. What to do? Hang out at the beach of course. Where we were in awe of the waves...... and the footprints left behind by some woman with incredibly long toenails. Yuck:

We shopped at Anthropologie. Where we spent the exorbitant sum of 5$ on a toothbrush for Teresa! And got it wrapped up in paper Anthropologie style:

And of course we had to stop by American girl store:

Where someone (I mention no names) got ridiculously exited about their new STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) series with astronaut dolls with teeny tiny labs to bring bacteria into space. I do not agree on the PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) these dolls were wearing though. Not safe! Just sayin’...........

We also visited the Lincoln Zoo (after spending more than an hour to get to Teresa’s favorite breakfast place on Clark St. And we are bringing a new monkey home for Luca. He was on sale (I wonder why they couldn’t sell this lovely creature at full price......), and he is currently keeping us company on the greyhound bus back to Ann Arbor:

And well - we got Sarah escorted to the airport last night. There were no tears, but she was not in a hurry to get through security. Here the girls are, making sad faces on the train:

Goodbye Sarah. It was awesome having you and we hope to see you again before another 4 years have gone by❤️

Wildlife

We have one of the smallest patios ever. We live quite close to a freeway, and we don’t have any wild nature nearby. Still we have wildlife right there! If you have read along on this blog you will have been introduced to Kurt - our chipmunk. He likes to climb everything and pose like a king glancing across his kingdom. We sometimes leave food for him and he loves rolled oats. But not garlic..... (and in case you ever wondered what chipmunk poop looks like. Well. Here you go!):

He also likes succulents. And I have to admit that after he ate my newly purchased “living stone” plant I am not so thrilled about Kurt anymore. Grrrrrr

Then we have rabbits, especially baby rabbits this time of year. They are very shy but will make sure Bailey gets a little exercise.... LOL. It cracks me up every time I see chubby-dog race after a rabbit right into the bushes. About 2 seconds later the rabbit returns out on the grass nibbling away like nothing happened, while the dog still loudly crashes around in bushes.

We see squirrels, fireflies, birds, and occasionally there is skunk smell in the air. And that’s about it.

Until Friday!

😳😳😳😳

Where Bailey just would not move away from our bench. He kept sniffing and even went inside to get me to help him. There were dirty paw prints on the cushions and a very stripped kale plant above the dirty footprints. Hmmmmm. I removed the cushions and looked under the bench. Didn’t see anything. Then I slowly moved the bench out and heard a loud squeak. Turns out a ground hog was stuck. Here’s his snout:

He somehow managed to fall down behind the back. And as soon as I got the bench pulled out he managed to slide into a small hole. A surprisingly small hole considering the actual size of the animal (large cat size). And there he was. Wouldn’t come out. And Bailey guarded the patio like a wolf. A few hours later we finally managed to get the animal to leave. And despite their somewhat not-so-athletic appearance, groundhogs run exceptionally fast! I have had enough wildlife for a bit now!

Movie night at the Big House

The pride of Ann Arbor is our football stadium - Michigan Stadium. It is in fact one of the largest in the world as it holds 106.000 people and most refer to it as the big house. We live quite close to it, and in contrast to everyone else we are not super excited about game days. First of all - American football is not something we find interesting. I have tried to understand it and watch games, but the structure of it is ridiculous. You watch 12 seconds of play - then everything stops. And starts again. And stops again. Over and over and over. And the traffic on gamedays? Absolutely terrifying. We literally cannot leave our apartment on those days as the traffic chaos, once the game is over, completely blocks all exits from where we live. And we can’t go into town because it is overcrowded with football fans. But I do admit that I find the rivalry between football teams and their fans quite entertaining. And there is absolutely no limit to the extend of blue and maize (yellow - except you NEVER call it yellow. It is maize. Period!) merchandise available in this town and how far people will go to annoy the Ohio buckeyes or the Michigan State Spartans (or vice versa):

Yes that is a (Michigan) wolverine shitting (Ohio) buckeyes....🙄

And a spartan eating a wolverine. 🙄🙄🙄🙄

Anyways: the point is that besides living in Ann Arbor for 4 years we have never actually set foot inside the stadium. But that changed yesterday:

As we went to #ummovienight where they open the stadium for everyone and put on a movie on the big screens. This year it was black panther, and even though i rarely watch movies twice this is one of the few ones where I didn’t mind. We brought blankets to sit on the turf. The blue and maize turf of course..... duh.

And had a fantastic evening where we even managed to smuggle some Danish candy inside (Teresa was very unhappy with my trick of hiding my bag under the blanket as we went in. Pfft. She is such an amateur).

But next time we will remember to bring pillows!

Hello and goodbye

This past week included two trips to an airport. First we drove all the way to Chicago:

Well - Teresa drove some of the way and then Kristian did the rest. I was busy stitching away to finish one more tiny piece on my giant cross stitch project (seriously. It took 5 hours in a car to do one knife in one hand!):

But time went by much faster with my mind being occupied by one little “pixel” at a time.And a VERY excited Teresa found her VERY tired friend:

And then we drove back. Late at night. Through Chicago in crazy traffic and then though Indiana and Michigan on roads that got quieter and quieter. And we were also kind of quiet when we arrived in Ann Arbor at 3AM......

But when we woke up it was 4th of July. And we needed to do some kind of something in the blistering humid horrible heat. We ended up going to Island Park. A very small hidden park with shallow river to lie down in. Even bailey went in voluntarily!!!!!

We had icecream, bbq dinner and then we went to two firework shows. First one in Burns park where a local guy puts on a show every year. It is not advertised anywhere but it is really impressive. We got there way too early, but at the time of dusk we were certainly not alone:

And I wish I had some more pictures but they probably wouldn’t have been good anyways. Once we were done (or thought we were done, since we left way too early apparently) we headed home for the firework show being displayed by a very local 12 year old on a very local empty parking lot❤️

And before we knew it, it was Saturday and Christine needed to go home. I hate those days. When she gets here it feels like so many days ahead of us, but when she has to leave it always feel like too few days. Luckily we still have Sarah here and she will stick around for quite some time

Staycation

With this summer being a combo of not-so-overlapping vacation days, visits from Denmark (my sister, and in a few days also Teresa’s best friend) and the first college tuition bills to be paid we are going all in on staycation. A very hot staycation...... The past few summers have not been too bad when it comes to muggy summer days, but the past few days have been close to unbearably warm and humid. I am sitting outside on an early Sunday morning writing this, and I really enjoy having a hot cup of coffee before the temperature rises to an extend where anything hot seems like a stupid thing to put yourself through

Luckily it seems like the temperature will drop a bit tomorrow. Not a lot, but I’ll take 31C over 35C at any time!

My sister flew on Monday night and true to tradition she emptied her suitcase on our dining table about 1 1/2 minutes after walking in the door:

Even Bailey seems to remember her even though she has not visited Ann Arbor in a while. Wonder why that is...... LOL

As soon as he laid eyes on the little yellow foil containers of savory goodness he became obsessed and whoever tries to sneak into the kitchen to make themselves a “leverpostejmad” (liver pate on pumpernickel bread) will have to endure the biggest, brownest, saddest, hungriest, begging dog eyes watching their every move.

It is awesome to have my sister here. We are always very - ehm - outdoorsy and cultural and make daylong excursions to the finest attractions. Such as TJMaxx, and Meijer, and JoAnns and the movie theater...... And Kerrytown. Where they have the best bibimbob it is worth waiting for:

And where they have the best yarn store. Period! She was very careful to pay while I was far away so I didn’t hear the total cost of her purchase...... But part of that was due to Teresa buttering her up very efficiently and relentlessly until there where enough skeins of yarn for a sweater for her added to the purchase.

Luca also had fun visiting the yarn store:

And right outside the store they had opened up the access to play the bells on the bell tower - this bell tower:

And Luca got to play an entire song of his choice (while being carefully watched and guided to play the entire song from start to finish:

We have been hanging out at Top of the Park (an annual summer festival in June with food tents, beer, and music/theater/events), we have been tubing down the Argo Cascades

And we even convinced Kristian that he should spend his first vacation day (and birthday) driving us to Detroit so we could visit Eastern Market. Thank you Kristian❤️

So overall summer is off to a good start. Tuesday Kristian and Teresa will drive all the way to Chicago to pick up Sarah in the airport. Until then we still have things on our highly cultural to do list such as visit Barnes and Nobles, go hang out at the pool (some more), and have icecream at Blank Slate Creamery. Stay tuned. It will be highly adventurous!