Exciting News!!!!

Well, the exciting news is that we just bought a house!!!! Yes the Finch Family international property portfolio has expanded to Central Michigan! I will post some photos below….. It is of course subject to us being happy with the results of a property inspection (we figured that’s a sensible idea given that it’s 130 yrs + old) and a property survey next week. Settlement (closing day) should be sometime the week of 23^rd August. Pics and more info below….

House in Summer.
Yes it�s old - really old! As in built in 1873!!! It is quite a size - it has a below ground level where the laundry is (and a better laundry is to be when our builders come on the scene and fix it up for us!) and two other huge rooms (brick floors and stone walls!) with nothing in them and then three stories on top of that. Would love to make the basement into a formal dining room kind of medieval-style as the walls of the basement are made of stones piled up and the floor is brick with the curved brick windows above ground level. I can imagine candles and a huge slab of a wooden table and wrought iron chairs! We�ll see�. plenty of other priorities before that�. These pictures were all from the real-estate agent�s website, so they are not very high-res. Hopefully we will take some more next week.  

House in Winter!
Those junky conifer trees out the front have got to go! They were obviously put in just to sell the place as they still have their price tags on them�. The weird thing is that there is this 130 year old house on the section/lot/block of land (pick your terminology depending if you are in NZ, the US or Australia - not sure what they say in the UK) and not one other thing. No garden, no proper lawn, no garage. Strange. But, as we found put the first day we went to look by knocking on the neighbours doors, it was owned for 50 years by a recluse who owned the local model/hobby shop and painted murals on the walls, had all his own hobby projects going on in various rooms and shot darts into the walls (previously) orange and green walls. So we have lots of landscaping and garage building plans for the next 18 months or so. 

Living room with cute stained-glass windows.
 

Another living area with original fireplace. There is another one in one of the guest bedrooms upstairs too!
 

Staircase with cool light at the bottom (yes it works!)
 

The kitchen has just been re-done. It has the hugest fridge/freezer that I have ever seen in my life. All American appliance seem big to me, but this is the size of my entire kitchen in Auckland! But it�s not like we would remove it and it will be good for entertaining I guess.
 

This room was described by the real-estate agent as being �a 1500 sq foot ballroom�. Im not sure how the women in the late 19th century would have got their big dresses up a narrow stairway to the 3rd floor so we think it was originally the attic that has been converted into living space. So the plan is for this to become The Man Cave and Jamie will get his move-screen size TV and hang up his Michigan State University flag etc, etc (that mysteriously moved from the bedroom wall of the Berkley estate to make way for the wall-closet on the day we returned from our honeymoon�.)
 

Here we are in Tawas�. having a wonderful time! It�s like being on holiday (kiwis - imagine being on the lakeshore at Lake Taupo except it is 1000x bigger!) Jamie�s work has the contract for radiology with a small hospital up in this part of the country and they send a different radiologist here each week. We are also back in two weeks time and are certainly not complaining about that! It is very beautiful and also they provide us with a huge townhouse/condo that the group/practice owns where we stay that is right on Lake Huron. Very beautiful and very relaxing. But unfortunately no e-mail here so I took my laptop for a drive and parked in the carpark of one of the hotels and turned on the �search for wireless internet� thing. And hey presto! I was in luck - free internet!!!! Hee hee. So I downloaded the mail and have raced home to type some emails and compose some bloggings and when I have finished I will drive back and get online again and send/post this!
 

I have even seen Jamie for lunch three days this week which is quite amazing! Today I picked up a wrap, a sandwich and some coleslaw and we sat down by the lake and ate it. I made Jamie pose for a photo just to prove it! He wanted one by the sign, so here he is in his scrubs and white coat having escaped the hospital in the middle of the day!  

There are actually two condos as generally there are two radiologists here, the one we are in this week they rent off a dentist. It is in a block of �Marina condos� and here is the back of part of them. Each one has a little pier/jetty and most people have a boat. If I was to drop an apple core off the balcony it would go in the lake, we are that close. The work condo has two bikes so Jamie�s colleague who is staying in that one said to come and get them because he is not using them. So we have two bikes!!! I went for a bike ride yesterday. Apparently there is a state park nearby with a beautiful beach so we might take the bikes and go there on the weekend as it seems that Jamie�s work might well be done by early afternoon on the weekend.
 

Here is another view from the balcony and you can see Lake Huron goes on forever. I�m typing this lying on my tummy on the balcony in my swimsuit with the laptop halfway inside on the carpet. It�s about 28 degrees C (90ish F) and I can hear the waves lapping on the beach�.
 

The coolest thing in the world!

Jamie (as one of the worlds biggest Google fans) found this cool (free) programme called Google Earth. It combines satellite images and maps and various other things so you can cyber-fly around and zoom in on anything in the world inlcuding doing this in 3D as well as rotating and tilting them. When you 'fly' from one thing to the next it is kind of like you are looking down from a satellite as you zoom around the world. It is SO COOL! I will put some screen shots from it below. I think you have to download it to use it (it's about 220MB) but it is so worth it!

This is what the screen looks like when you search for NZ. (You can zoom in further than this) They haven't yet done full detail on all the world but in lots of cities you can see the buildings, zoom in on them and tilt them sideways (eg London, Paris, Baghdad). Last night I went to the Grand Canyon and followed the river up it. Way cool! 

Our house is to the left of where it says 1245 Eaton Rd (brownish roof). The + is on the front lawn to the side of the house. 

The weekend

I was just writing to Maria about the weekend so I thought I would 'borrow' from what I wrote to her and paste it in here! We had a nice but busy time and now we are back at the hotel and focusing in on the house-finding project... (more on that later probably once we are closer to making a decision)
It was nice to have 3 nights at home this weekend (even though Jamie had to work til 10pm so we didn’t get home until midnight on Friday). It was so VERY hot at home though (I think we are getting a little too used to the air-conditioned hotel!) and when we got there it was 87 F - that's over 30 deg C in the house! It was such a humid weekend so we were feeling quite drenched whenever we moved around. Thankfully we have a little air conditioner in the bedroom as well as a ceiling fan. After church we did the usual lunch thing with the crowd (yes Jim & Beckys house has an airconditioner!) until around 6pm then went home for a while before going out for Indian around 9pm but the food wasn’t that good (not like I've had in Auckland, Sydney or London anyway), but maybe I just don’t know what to order here. The lentils were very pureed and quite sweet, the cottage cheese spinach dish had the cheese mushed in it rather than in squares and was quite rich and the korma was more tomato than creamy, although it was nicely spiced. But it was nice to get the general gist of the flavours as it has been so long since I had Indian food! The entrée (appetizer) samosas were very yummy and the mango chutney was phenomenal though. I was glad that we went even though Indian is not exactly Jamie's favourite option. On Sunday we went to a friends house who was having a candle-lite party (same kind of concept as Tupperware but candles) so we purchased quite a few. Then we were to meet someone at the airport and were going to take her some hummus and tabouli to snack on (aeroplanes here very rarely provide food - even on my 5-hour to LA you only had the option of buying a sandwhich!!) but her plane was delayed and so she didn’t have time to come through security and see us so we went to the Lebanese restaurant anyway and had hummus etc in her honour which was most delicious. Monday morning we went to visit Jamie's parents on our way back here to the hotel in Saginaw (it's not really on the way - it's about 90 minutes in a different direction to get there and then a different 90 min drive to get back here!) but at least we got to see them as we had not visited for 3-4 weeks.
So now we are back and installed again. Next week we will not be here, we will be in Tawas as Jamie works there for a week and the company has a condo near the Lake Huron that we get to stay at. So that will be a change of scenery! I'm not sure if we have internet, and less sure whether there are internet cafes so we may not be able to update the blog until we are back.

River views! In Sequoia I had managed to find us accommodation right in the park, but in Yosemite (being the first week of the summer school holidays) there was none, so we got the next best thing - 1 mile outside the park entrance and literally RIGHT ON the Merced River as you can see from this picture! When you went onto the balcony, the roar was literally deafening and you could not hear anyone else talking. Thankfully the windows were double glazed! 

The last snow had fallen in early May (quite late) this year (and there was some lying around here and there as we drove around) and the week prior to our arrival had brought really hot weather in the 80's and 90's F (late 20s-early30's C) so it had melted a lot. This meant that the waterfalls were more spectacular than they had been for a long time. 

Yosemite was amazing! The pictures don't really do it justice. (No we don't know the random people in the foreground of this photo, but we were getting completely drenched with water taking the photo so couldn't wait long enough for them to move!) 

Before leaving Sequoia to drive to Yosemite, we went to Crystal Cave - a collection of limestone caves described as "decorated with curtains of icicle-like stalactites and mounds of stalagmites". It reminded me of going through the caves at 'Cave Stream' when I was a teenager in the South Island of NZ (although without the getting wet wading through the river in the pitch darkness), Waitomo Caves and the Jenolan Caves in NSW near Sydney. Very cool but rather chilly inside!  

A fruity adventure! Jeremy had told us to fly into either Visalia or Fresno airports to that they could pick us up from where they were staying. The best deal was Fresno and even though the California guidebooks said there was nothing to see there, I remembered from school that it is the major place where fruit is grown. It is particlarly famous for Sun Maid rasins and other dried fruits (about 200 different varities in the San Joaquin valley if I remember correctly). I thought that it was unlikely that we would be visiting that part of the world again so it would be good to see some of what goes on there. I phoned the Sun Maid raisin factory but was told that they did not do tours. Listed directly under them on on my internet search was a place called 'Sun Empire Foods'. So I phoned them. The man that answered the phone was wonderful and invited us for a tour of his factory where they process dried fruits into chocolates! (Candy here in the US). Much more exciting! But, we were to be there on a Sunday. Not a problem to him - he would open the factory especially for us! WOW!!! I will link their website in another posting so that you can have a look (and even order some) at the yummy and cool things that they do. This pic is of the almost 100 yr old copper bowls they use for coating some of the fruits and nuts. Apparently these work better than some of the newer stainless steel ones they also have. 

Sun Empire Foods

Here is a link to Sun Empire Foods (www.sunempirefoods.com) where we spent a delightful and fascinating afternoon (and some money acquiring a few purchases!) with Phil and Sandy Dee
We learned about how they make everything (see below) and bought some chocolate dipped and yoghurt dipped yummy things as well as plenty of dried fruit for our journey with Bec & Jeremy. It was the highlight of our time in Fresno! Have a peruse of their wares on their site!

Break in blogging

We haven't blogged for a while so apologies for that. I had not yet finished writing about our California adventures when we got the news that my grandfather (Grandy) had died in New Zealand so I zoomed over there for a week and then have been stricken with a nasty winter bug I managed to pick up somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. It has just been a cold/cough but it has been rather lingering and I have now passed on a slightly milder version to Jamie. So we have been coughing and spluttering here together with not much energy to do too much. So I shall attempt to do some backdating with a bit of help from Rebecca's blogsite where she also documents and links to some of the places we saw (thanks Bec!). This one has a link to the cool lodge we stayed in in Sequioa and here is a picture we took of Bec & Jeremy at the Moro Rock lookout.