Well....

A lot has been going on here... I started working a new show. "A Tale of Two Cities" (it's a musical... yeah I know). It is an amazing show and I am glad to be a part of it. During the last night of tech rehearsals I got a phone call from my mom. My Great Grandma had passed away. Peacefully. And Mercifully. She was 88 yrs old, and she had Alzheimer's. I hadn't seen her since I was 10 but I apparently was still very attached to her. I love her and I am glad she can be at peace now.

I found out later that night that my husband could take off some work to watch the girls so that I could go back to Northern Michigan for her funeral. So then my Mom and I began planning our trip back to Michigan. We drove. We took my Grandpa, and my Aunt along with us. We left early Saturday morning...

The ride out was fairly uneventful as far as driving goes... until we hit Michigan. There we ran into a storm that turned from rain to slush to ice and snow very quickly. And we were unable to finish driving all the way to Northern Michigan that day. But we stopped at my Grandpa's sister's house. And lucky for us she and her husband were home and took us in immediately. And wouldn't even think of us not staying the night. I had never met this Great Aunt of mine. And I am so happy that I was given the opportunity to stay with her. She has a lovely little house set back in the woods just off of Lake Michigan. It was beautiful. And she gave us the fun idea to go out and search for ice caves in the morning. Which we did but I will talk about that at another time... and put up some pics. :)

This is a pic of the Lake as we were walking out to it...

This is a pic of a small (I mean really small) ice cave.

After braving the ice of Lake Michigan we continued up to Harbor Springs... with a few turn offs. We tried to find a grave of one of my great great (etc) grandmother. This was a fun adventure...(which I will also talk about later) :) And after a few hours of driving we finally made it to Harbor Springs in the late afternoon Monday.

The funeral was Tuesday morning. And it was nice. It was good to meet family whom I didn't know. And to see family that I hadn't seen in a long time. That afternoon we went to my Great Uncle's house, to have a meal and talk with more of the family. And after we were done there we went to my Grandpa's other sister's house. And I met her for the 1st time as well. After a few hours of chatting with her and her husband, we left and I got some pictures of my Great Grandma's house and I took pictures of Harbor Springs before the sun went down completely. And then we went back to get back together with my Aunts and Uncles (who were all gathered in Harbor for the funeral too)...

The next morning we went to my Uncle's Candy Store before taking off to drive home. And we stayed there for a few hours and Grandpa made a batch of fudge before we left. It was a nice time there... I got lots more pictures, but mostly video of Grandpa making the fudge and talking to my Uncle.

Then we started our trip back. We got lost on the freeways in Illinois and ended up driving almost into downtown Chicago at rush hour... and a few hours after that when we got back onto I80 when I was driving, I got pulled over... mostly for being nervous and going 5 mph over the speed limit. (which at the time I wasn't aware of if it was 65 or 70) Anyway, I got a "slow down young lady" and I was sent on my way. Of course this was after he asked me where I was coming from. My mom said Michigan, and I said "My great Grandma's funeral".... I don't think I will ever live this one down... but hey I got out of a ticket. :) Needless to say I was very aware of the speed limit signs after that and I didn't speed at all. We ran into some fog that night... and we made it to Des Moines and stayed the night there.

Continued in the morning and made it to Nebraska with fairly good weather... but in Nebraska we ran into some more snow and drove past a scary accident that closed I80 eastbound. After that the snow got a little better... and we continued on to Wyoming where we ran into another snowstorm at Cheyenne. We decided that it would be a good thing to stop where we were and wait out the night rather than get stuck on the interstate in the middle of the night. And it was a good thing we stopped when we did because we got off the road before they actually closed it and we got a room before they had to start turning people away. The next morning we got out after they had sanded and cleared the roads and we had pretty clear sailing until we got home, Friday afternoon.