The Spivey Ranch (Andy’s parents’ home) in Dowagiac is a little piece of heaven for me. Not only is it beautiful here, but we all have a familiar room, the kids love exploring the farm and the best things are that I get to sleep in and Nonnie always feeds us so well!

Lily helped me wind my yarn skeins to take on the trip, since I don’t plan to bring my yarn swift along and didn’t have time to wind them before we left home. I have a few loose ends to tie up (mainly to test out mobile blog posting) while we are here with Wi-Fi.

We went downtown today to get Twistees and explore the museum. It’s always funny to me to see anything with “Doe-Wah-Jack” because I once pronounced it incorrectly and will never live it down. Today I learned that it was the fictional Chief Doe-Wah-Jack from the Round Oak Stove company that was created to help people know how to say Dowagiac phonetically. And Andy has classmates from high school pictured in the museum, so I have a new retort when he picks on me for being older!

We visited a yarn shop, and I miraculously didn’t buy anything, although that alpaca was speaking to me. I already have a ridiculous stash to work through and wonder if I’ll even make it through the projects I packed for the trip. We popped into a couple other stores, and enjoyed our ice cream treats.

When we got back, the sun had sapped us. I took a snooze on the couch, and I’m pretty sure Andy fell asleep on the floor! The kids were begging to go to the lake, so we mustered up the energy to go with a set time limit of 45 minutes to be back for dinner. The lake water was warm, but it was still refreshing to swim out to the dock. The renters at the cabin let the kids use their little kayak, and that was a big hit!

Andy and Dadoo worked on setting the hitch up on John’s Suburban. The kids and I got washed up and Nonnie read with them a while. She is such a blessing to them, and I love to witness the special bond they have. I hope to have that with my grandbabies someday! I laid down with Lily to put her to sleep, and well…it was goodnight for me, too!