The Fifty-First State

Food is love, especially when you're two hundred and fifty miles due north from home.

In the end it was decided that we would not make Cornish pasties from scratch, probably a good call given the logistics of feeding twelve children and two healthy adults, so we bought them from a shop just down the road. Pasties are more or less a complete meal, so dinner was just that along with fruit. The kids made their own lunches on Thursday night from cold cuts, bread, sun butter and fruits & vegetables. We cooked up the heartiest of breakfasts late Thursday night and had roasted potatoes, sausages, and a big omelet ready to go on Friday morning. That saved us an extra hour to two, especially because we didn't have to clean the stove--we did everything in the oven.

What did we do with all that additional time?

Three shifts of four kids apiece went out on Lake Michigan in kayaks. Nothing evokes the days of the voyageurs like watching kids dig their paddles into the cobalt Great Lake water, sun shining across the breakers, wind whipping their hair behind them. Later we went to a long soft sandy beach ten miles west of the house. We went there for sundown, and though the air was cooling rapidly, nearly all of the kids plunged fully into the cold October waters. Kaeli showed them a sandbar a little ways out and they all played there and even ventured farther out. Margaret stayed in for an hour.

Back at the house the kids played a card game while Matthew and Nik composed music for three and four hands on the piano. Then we read through the play, A Sort of Complete History of the United States of America (Abridged), together while kids roasted marshmallows in the fireplace. Some even roasted apples and oranges, just to see.

The next morning we headed further north, to Tahquamenon Falls. Here we rowed our three flagships, the Ninja, the Pina Colada, and the Heidy-Ho III, out to an island in the middle of the Tahquamenon River. We circumnavigated the island with plenty of stops to wade in the icy morning waters. Afterward, the kids ate the lunches they'd packed on the bus. We stopped off at the house to finish tidying up and to write lovely personalized thank-you letters to the house's owners.

Then we hit the Mackinac Bridge once more and travelled south. Our families greeted us back in Ann Arbor--just in time for dinner.