Up North, Out West, and Laid Up

We are back home from our weekend jaunt to Michigan's northern hinterlands. While the weather was beautiful for our stop in Holland on Friday, it became progressively worse on Saturday. Our plan was to spend the day cleaning brush from the farm property, but it was raining hard when we woke up that morning. And it was cold - brrr! And windy. The rain stopped long enough in the afternoon for us to move four trailer-loads of underbrush, branches, and such, but when it commenced again, we quit. The weather conditions were not much better on Sunday.

Adam called from Oklahoma yesterday to wish me a Happy Mother's Day. There are no tornadoes on the immediate horizon, but I think the VORTEX2 group is on the move today, trying to position themselves for anything that may arise during the week. Adam is taking lots of pictures and has promised to put them on a photo sharing site soon. He said that the fleet of radar trucks, mobile mesonet vans, and other weather vehicles parked in the hotel lot(s) is quite a sight!

Also on Sunday, Jim got a call from Bev's assisted living place that they were sending her to the emergency room. We rushed to the hospital before we even went home last night, and found out that she had another bout of congestive heart failure. When we got to Bev's room, her condition was stable, and she was in a fairly good mood, even joking about passing out at the dining room table that morning. Today, however, she kindly phoned Jim to let him know that she is in the hospital, as she has no recollection that we had been there yesterday. Sigh.

Here are some pictures from our weekend trip. Hopefully, I will have some VORTEX2 photos to share in the near future.

No, I have no idea what "Fatballs" are.

The wooden shoe factory.

Some cute babies in their Dutch outfits in a park.

Jacob liked this Lotus parked in Holland. Notice the costumed people in the background.

We actually did do some work at the farm.

Jacob did a lot of driving on the cowpaths.