Encounters with Sustenance: August Road Trip

Early in the trip we had nice short stints in the car from one location to the next. This was another of those where we could take our time from Cleveland to Flint (less than a 4 hour trip)! By this time, Jason was becoming an expert at repacking all our things into the car, and I was starting to recognize the joy of driving more than I normally do (foot room and no bags tucked all around my feet).

We had savored a several day visit from Ryan, Janie and their kiddos last year and so we were eager to finally get to be with them in their home and see the many things we had only heard about or caught glimpses of on social media. This was another CJP alum visit, but Ryan had also worked with Jason next door at Hickory Hill Farm and Janie had been my colleague at CJP. Since returning to Flint, Ryan had helped start a crepe restaurant and Janie started flower farming - check out Flint Crepe Company and Twig End Farm. We got to feast our bellies and eyes on their endeavors!

It's getting harder and harder to limit the pictures on these posts, but we did our best. Enjoy some of these family favorites and snippets of our time there.

We took our first tour of the flower farm before we even unpacked. WOW, so many beautiful flowers...

...and grasses! Sea oats pictured here (which Janelle especially loved...hoping to plant some at Tangly Woods next year; Janie promised to send some seed!)

A farmer outstanding in her field! Janie in one of the many rows of flowers.

After unpacking it was off to the Crepe Company for a private after hours restaurant experience. This evening has been named one of the trip highlights by many in our family!

While we hung out inside, we could hear the sounds of the first ever "810" celebration outside and multiple people tried the doors of the restaurant thinking it might be open (810 is Flint's area code and it was 8/10).

Ryan made crepe making look easy!

Terah says, "It is not!"

But Ryan was a patient teacher and any of us that wanted to got a chance to make our fancy dessert crepes.

We made crepe EATING look easy!

Once again we needed to act like tourists at least a little bit of the time.

Hanging out with full bellies! One of the first of MANY rounds of Spot It is being played in the background. And one of the many times Kali got pounced upon!!

On our first morning we got to enjoy the antics of the cat siblings (Luna and Cassie live inside and Phoebe lives outside, but they still manage to find each other).

Before we headed to Juniper's theater performances, some of us got to watch Janie work her flower magic on a few orders.

Between the two performances, we went and ate lunch on a very climbable bench located on the front lawn of the local library.

Thanks to rapidly approaching thunder, our attempted walk through the neighborhood that afternoon to a local park was abandoned in favor of sheltering under the front porch. From there we could stick our hands out and catch the hail that was soon falling from the sky. Ryan told us multiple times that he just couldn't understand why we wanted to turn back in such "ideal weather"(complete with tornado sirens)!

Predictably, Ransom Notes made an appearance again and was thoroughly enjoyed by all...

...and if you are ever being trampled by a donkey, feel free to use any of our suggested texts to inform a loved one.

After a slow paced morning on day 2, Janie shared with us several buckets of "old" dahlias and snapdragons to play with (not marketable but they got a lot of oohs and ahhs out of us).

Phoebe joined the fun and is currently getting some awws from Alida from the couch!

No caption needed!!!

Janie extends the flower season by doing a variety of dried bouquets in the fall/winter. This is the attic space above the garage where she dries her flowers.

Both of the parental units got to read two novels on the trip. After Janelle finished her second romance novel, she promised to not crack another one open until we got home so that she didn't disappear into a book during our family time.

The second attempt at a walk to the park was much more successful. Some of us enjoyed the street hockey court...

...and some of us enjoyed the bike garden. Janelle stayed home with one of the aforementioned romance novels and Alida and Juniper made chocolate muffins.

"Why are you wasting precious blog space on a laundry photo!!!!!!" squawked Alida. "It's all because of Mommy!" (It's true, Janelle loves the look of laundry and this was a fun pulley line)