Michigan

Josh thinks that I am sabotaging his interviews. Here is why.

Remember Portland? I printed the wrong directions to his interview and he was really late. Not a good first impression. Well, now we are in Michigan and a mere 12 hours before his first interview did we realize that we were on the wrong side of the state; and in danger of missing another interview.

Both of us knew that he had three interviews in three days. We thought they were in geographical order: east to west. We flew into Detroit on Sunday morning. Since it was a red-eye flight and the plane was PACKED, neither of us got great amounts of sleep. So Sunday morning we drove around Detroit, drove to Royal Oak (where the William Beaumont interview is) and found a nice parking lot and slept in the car for two hours. By the time we woke up, we could check into our hotel room. After cleaning up we checked out the town. The main attraction: the Antiochian church. And we were SO impressed. A bit bigger than what we are used to, but a beautiful Church.

We got back to our hotel around 7pm and Josh was going over William Beaumont's information in preparation for his interview the next day. That was when he noticed the date. It said January 7th. After some major freaking out by both of us, we realized that our interviews in Michigan went in a west-east direction, not the other way around as we thought. So his first interview, on Monday the 5th, was actually in Grand Rapids, 2 1/2 hours away.

We had already paid for our hotel and we were both exhausted from the flight that we decided to sleep at our hotel for the night and just leave at 5am to make the drive to Grand Rapids.

Not a bad decision I might add.

Now, I totally will take a majority of the blame for the Portland screw-up, but definitely not for Michigan! I finally conceded to 55% of the mistake.

On other notes....

Grand Rapids is awesome! I loved that place! Josh and I got there super early and we had time to grab breakfast. We found a quaint bagel place that had fabulous coffee and great breakfast bagels. Then we drove around and checked out the neighborhoods. This is my kind of place: large brick houses with tons of character.

After I dropped Josh off I found a Y and they let me use my WA membership. This Y had a water slide in the pool. Yeah, freaking awesome. Plus a two rock climbing walls, racquetball courts, indoor track, and a basketball court.

After the Y, I found a mall and treated myself to a manicure. They are SO cheap here! Oh yeah, I needed some perfume too... I was too paranoid to bring mine on the plane and risk confiscation.

Next stop, the local library. It was huge. And everyone was so nice.

Finally, I dropped in at a ReMax real estate office and chatted with an agent for at least an hour. He totally said we could afford a nice house in Grand Rapids. You will never guess what median home prices are there. $90,000. WOW.

Now were are in Ann Arbor and this place is really nice too. We didn't get in till late, so we did not explore as much and I won't have time tomorrow. My grandmother (Jim's mom) lives in Farwell (2 1/2 hours) and I am planning a quick visit with her. Should be fun!

So far, my only complaint about both places I have been to (Portland and Michigan) is the amount of lame radio stations. I know, I know. Who even listens to the radio any more? Well, I do! Anyway, it seems every station was either country or christian. Maybe Seattle is more anti-religion and anti-redneck then I thought... no wonder it is such a great place to live!

PS I totally forgot to mention my kids! What kind of a mother am I? The kind that needs a break, apparently. Anyway, my mom flew down from Alaska and is taking care of my kids for the four days we are gone. Things are going just fine there I guess. Neither Claire or Levi want to talk to us. For Levi, this is not surprising. But Claire? She loves the phone! I know why though. On Sunday her godparents gave her her Christmas present. My mother says that it has not left her hands for two days now. The perfect gift for my Claire: a pink, singing, blinking car. Complete with little people to go in and out. She loves it.