Rebecca Homecca

Here is our camp site at Tubbs Lake. We camped on the island, which we later figured out is where people go to not only camp, but party. We heard loud music and loud talking until all hours of the night. The spot we picked was a walk up site. Which meant we had to walk up and down this hill with all of our gear.

That is our car with the Kayaks strapped on top at the bottom of said hill. There were 2 walk up spots on top of the hill. The other was empty, so we had the whole hill to ourselves. I took to calling it the duplex. We stole the other sides picnic table to put under our tarp, so we had one under and one out.

The reason we took the walk up site vs. a more accessable site was the view.

It was the only site that had a clear view of the lake. It was really awesome at night when the almost full moon was reflecting off the water. As a matter of fact, the moon was so bright you hardly needed a flashlight to find the bathroom.

Tubbs Lake is part of the Martiny Chain of Lakes. It is several lakes all connected by channels. We had a boat launch just down from our duplex and could get right in the water. We went across the mighty Tubbs in the morning, down a series of channels and back again.This area was all no-wake, which was nice.

In the afternoon we went the other way around the island through the channels and a couple of smaller lakes. There are channels going every direction and you could spend days out there are still not see it all. And get lost if you are not paying attention.

We saw quite a few different kinds of birds and plants while we were out. It was really nice kayaking and like I said, you could take different routes and see different things. The other nice thing is you can paddle back and don’t have to worry about having a vehicle at the other end.

Once we got back to camp we had dinner and Hubs kicked my butt in a game of war. Then we crashed. It didn’t take long to fall asleep after all the paddling.

Even with Sweet Child Of Mine blaring from the other campsite.

Yesterday hubs and I went on a Parade of Homes thing that was all downtown condos. It was fun just to look around at all the different buildings.

It is amazing how different the downtown area is now vs. when I first moved here. There used to be nothing down there other than a few restaurants. Now we have an arena, a new art museum, a ton of places to eat and there is always stuff going on. Back in the day no one wanted to live down town because there was nothing there! Now they are putting in all kinds of condos and apartments.

One of the units we looked at was an apartment that had the most amazing views! If that was there when we were first married, we probably would have rented there.  It was so cool. The building isn’t actually finished yet, and they already have apartments rented.

The one we liked the most was actually off the beaten path a little. It was within walking distance to downtown, but slightly outside it. There is a park right across the street and then the river so it has a nice setting.

It is in an old  building and had a lot of character features you don’t usually see in condos. There are original brick walls and huge old wood beams. One of the units we looked at was really cool because it had an extra little sitting room that used to be the elevator shaft!

The other cool part of that building is you can basically put walls where ever you want in your unit and make whatever floor plan works best for you. Each unit is unique.

We talked about what it would be like to live down there. It would be quite different from our big house on 3 1/2 acres in the woods, that is for sure!

I had another class for my nature program today. It was all about identifying trees. I took a Naked Tree class this winter (the trees were naked, not the people) and it was the same instructor.  He looks (and sounds) like he is  Jeff Daniel’s close cousin.

I forgot my camera, so there are no pictures. It was at the same nature preserve as the Wildflower Class, so it was interesting to see how the park has changed in a months time.

It’s a pretty cool place, there are some HUGE trees. Some of the Oak trees are estimated to be a couple of hundred years old!

I took a ton of notes because there was so much information, there is no way to retain it all. Thankfully, somethings from the winter class came back to me when identifying the trees. We just have so many kinds of trees here in Michigan and then it gets all mixed up with trees that were brought over from Europe.

The main thing we are learning though is what kinds of things to look for, and the method for identification. We learned the first thing you look for is if the leaves are opposite (grow directly across from each other) or alternate. If they are opposite, that narrows the list right down.

If they are alternate, then you look at things like leaf shape, leaf edges, bark, habitat, etc. There are some trees that have obvious characteristics but some look similar to each other and that’s when you need all information to narrow it down.

Habitat is a good one for determining the difference between two similar species. If they generally grown in wet or damp conditions, they say the trees have “wet feet”. I find that endlessly funny.

You know, tree humor.

We had bad rain storms yesterday.  I was worried they would still be hanging around this morning, but the weather was perfect. It is such dense shade that it didn’t really get warm until the very end.

After class I had to run home and get cleaned up for my Nephew’s open house. After that I took a nap!  It has been a busy day!

Saturday’s Beth Moore lesson continued on that tree theme, but in a little bit different way.

We were in Matthew talking about recognizing trees by what kind of fruit they bear.

Basically, look at things in your life and see what kind of fruit they are bearing. If it is an activity that bears good fruit, feed that and nurture that. If it bears bad fruit, starve that and kill it.

The other point of this that I thought was good, was that it takes time to bear fruit. So something might seem like good fruit at first, but it isn’t because it hasn’t had the time to make any fruit. Given some time, it may turn out that thing may actually be producing bad fruit.

Is this making any sense or are you just getting hungry for some apples?

Well, it makes sense in my head. I guess that’s why Beth Moore gets paid and I do this for free.

If what you are doing is good, good things will come from it. If it is not good, bad things will come from it.

Well, I guess I could have just said that in the first place.

The other part of this lesson is that our personal fruit, the fruit we will bare, comes from what we store up. What we take in. If we are not taking in good things, we will not produce good fruit.

And that bad fruit will come out, it will show itself to others. You can only hold on to false front for so long before what is in your heart comes out. Or maybe we don’t even put up a false front and just spread our bad fruit around.

The same is true for baring good fruit. If you are storing up good things, if that is what is in your heart, people will see that too.

Those are the things I took away from the conference. I’m sure all 7200 of us would have different posts about it.

Beth Moore had said that when she was studying and working on what to talk about at our conference, she kept coming across these passages that involved trees in some fashion. They stuck out to her and when Travis called her to see what the plan was, she told him it was going to have something to do with trees. He was kind of like, Um…OK…

So before they headed to Michigan she did some research about our state. She said she knew about all the economic trouble we were having just from watching the news. But what she didn’t know was that 50% of our state is covered in trees and we are one of the biggest growers of Christmas trees.

So she called Travis back and told him, These Michigan people, they know trees.

So that was our theme. Trees.

The first part we talked about was from Judges, and how we have a need to ruled over and sometimes we try to find things other than God that rules over us.

She talked about The Olive Tree, The Fig Tree, The Vine, and The Thornbush and what those things might represent in our lives. Things that we look to to rule over us.

When she got to the thornbush, it started to hit home. She mentioned that it could be any number of things, this thornbush. It could be anger towards someone, it could be just being in a bad situation, like a bad job or something else that just takes over our life.

Wait back up…a bad job that takes over our life…
Been there.

When I was at my old job it was not a good situation and it was taking over my life. It was affecting parts of my life that had nothing to do with that job. It was ruling over me.

Which is why I left. When people ask me how my new job is going, I tell them not only is my job going well, my whole life is better.

Not coincidentally we have started going to church regularly again too. That was by no means the only thing affecting that situation. But I can tell you, I was so exhausted from dealing with that job that I didn’t have the energy for another thing.  At that time church just seemed like another thing I would have to do. Another thing I would have to deal with.

But once I was could see straight and didn’t have that negativity consuming my life, I wanted more positivity. I needed to find a church to go to every week.

That’s the thing negativity breeds more negativity and the same goes for positivity. But more on that later…

What if instead of 2 or 3 there are 7200?

I attended the Beth Moore Living Proof Live event with some friends this weekend. They had predicted 4000 people would come.

We were actually part of a crowd of 7200 women and a few brave men.

Friday night opened with some great worship led  by Travis Cottrell and the praise band. It was pretty awesome to hear 7200 voices singing to the Lord. It was also a little strange because when it’s all women singing, there’s no bass, no low notes.

Then Beth came out and she is a high energy sassy Southern lady.

Did I mention high energy? Because she is Energetic with a capital E.

I had heard of her and of Travis Cottrell, but I wasn’t really sure what to expect. It was a big ‘ol bible study. We didn’t know that so none of us brought bibles.

Oops.

So Saturday morning -bright and early (which did not effect her energy level. May have even brought it UP a notch)-some of us remembered to bring our bibles.

I was not one of them.

Did I mention the bright and early part? On a Saturday? I’m glad I remembered to bring myself.

We weren’t sure what one person could talk about for 3 hours on a Friday and another 3 hours on a Saturday, but she has so many words to get out she actually ran short on time.

There were some great lessons (more on that later) and something for everyone. There is no way you could come away and say none of that applied to me.

The other thing I liked is that it isn’t a canned, over rehearsed thing. She has new lessons for each event she does and goes on tangents depending on how things are going. It seemed a little all over the place at first, but after a while you get it.

I wasn’t quite sure if a big thing like this would be for me, but I was with a great group of ladies and as one of them said- It’s pretty awesome to be gathered together with this many believers.

I got my packet for my first Master Naturalist class! My first class is next week. It’s an intro class, so I’m not sure how much outside stuff we will be doing. I think it is mostly explaining.

And shopping.

They give you a notebook, but apparently they have supplemental items for you to purchase (aka bring your wallet!)

There are also varies apparel items for sale (aka bring a full wallet!) including the new “10 Most UnWanted Invasive Plants” t-shirt.

I find that a little silly. But I might want a hat or something to wear while we are out and about.

There will be a snack provided (good to know) but no coffee (especially good to know).

I just realized I haven’t blogged in like five days. Other than vacations and holidays I don’t think I’ve ever gone that long!

We have been very busy. Doing what? I have no idea!

We did have an unexpected adventure last night. Hubs saw a thing online that the Historical Society was putting on, so we went.

It was really interesting. There was a man who had taken a bunch (like over a 1,000) of pictures during a certain period in the sixties and used to give presentations of them. Now his son (who is very old himself now) does it.

Apparently, what we know as downtown used to be plagued with urban blight. So our fearless leaders decided to do an Urban Renewal Project. This consisted of tearing down a bunch of buildings and building some new (and uglier) ones. It sounded like there was some shifty back door dealings going on and a lot of things that would never happen today.

Like just taking homes from low income people and making them move, where?? I have an idea…Probably where the most recent clean up of urban blight took place.

Another shifty deal was  one of the buildings they tore down was actually a registered historical sight and had won a bunch of architecture awards. It was beautiful. Now it is buried somewhere on the west side. It was disgusting.

I had never really seen any photos from this time period. He took pictures of the buildings in the area as they stood, as they were being tore down, and the empty lot that was left. Some were left empty for a while, some had new buildings built, and he took pictures of that too.

I am always very interested to see the changing landscape of my town. Right now there is a big building boom going on around the hospital. Towers are going up all over.  He had pictures of that street too, and it looked very different for sure!

I was afraid it might be kind of boring, but he was very funny. And it went very fast, we saw 280 slides in about an hour. That’s a lot of history!

I have another big adventure tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Hubs scored free passes to the Home Show so we went down to check that out today. We spent quite a bit more time there than we had planned on.

I mean we do have actual remodeling to do. We don’t have a lot of time to go around and get MORE ideas.

We have quite a few big projects on the horizon that we will likely have to  hire out. So we sent up about a bazillion appointments with window people, tree people, roof people, gutter people,  I don’t know who all.

We figure if we have a few quotes it will help us to prioritize and set a plan.

Or we will just sit in the corner in the fetal position crying our eyes out at how much money everything will be.

Six of one…

We already know the tree people are first in line to get our money. There are some big trees a little to close to the house that need some work (we can actually here branches hitting the house when it’s windy), not to mention the ones that are actually touching the power lines.

The landscaping people definately have the best displays. They have huge trees, waterfalls, and brick patios all set up inside. They even had a huge play set for the kids to climb on.

They even had a shamwow guy there, but not THE shamwow guy.

I have been having knit-nite with some girls from work lately (even though I don’t actually knit) and we have a lot of fun hanging out. One of the other ladies at work wanted to hang out too, but she doesn’t craft. So she suggested we go to dinner and a movie. This is inspired some other non-crafty girls to come hang out too.

So Thursday night 7 of us met up and had dinner and it was so much fun! It was so great to sit around and laugh and talk about stupid things. One lady has a new boyfriend so there was much talk about that and you would have sworn we were all 15 again.

Then we went to a movie. Well, except the pregnant gal, she went home. Something about being all tired from creating a life or something.

We saw The Secret Life of Bees. I was little worried about seeing this movie because it is one of my favorite books of all time. I did not see how the movie could possibly hold up to that!

I could feel another White Oleander situation coming on. Awesome book, terrible re-telling of the story in movie form leaving me confused and unsatisfied.

But Bees did not disappoint. It was so good! It was very close to the book and was able to hit on all the important parts while maintaining good flow (unlike White Oleander). The actors were amazing.

Dakota Fanning plays the lead and I’m telling you, if she can stay off the smack, she is going to grow up to be an amazing actress. She is so good for her age, not like that kid that played Anakin Skywalker.

Queen Latifa plays the other main character. She is exactly like I pictured the character in my head when I read the book. She stole the show for me in Chicago and just keeps getting better I think.

The other two main characters were Alicia Keys (who is GORGEOUS) and Jennifer Hudson (who just broke my heart every time I saw her because all the personal stuff she has going on right now) and they were both so great.

It is a little sad in parts and some people (you know who you are) may have cried their faces off. But there also some really sweet moments. Whether you have read the book or not, I recommend seeing this movie.