Food for Thought

Happy (Late) Thanksgiving Everyone!

We were lucky enough this year to get an up close and personal look at our Thanksgiving Turkey.  We are going to try and make this post as friendly and kosher as possible, but be warned: Turkeys are actually birds, and they have to be killed in order for us to eat them on Thanksgiving.

Whew!  Now that that's over!

We were talking on Monday about how cool it is that having a varied group of friends allows us so many different and interesting opportunities.  Zach Miller, who Nate attended Tandem Friends with, and his beautiful wife Sarah have started an organic farm outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.  Tiber Creek Organics (TCO) is on something like 300 acres, with picturesque flowing hills.

We arrived early, but of course the farm was already buzzing and Zach was disinfecting all the equipment.  Our first task was to go get the turkeys from their pen.  TCO had some trouble ordering their baby turkeys this year, and as a result about 8 of their 30 turkeys would stay around for Christmas instead, and we had to pick the 22 largest ones to be Thanksgiving turkeys. This was the only part of the day where we found that we had a little mental hesitation; choosing the birds that would go actually felt more uncomfortable than anything else we did that day.

After they were caught and boxed (catching a turkey is similar to catching a chicken, there's just more bird to deal with), we took them back to the top of the hill.  The structure where the processing takes place is open on all four sides, like a permanent tent on a concrete block.  There were five stations: the cones, the bath, the feather-fingers, gutting and quality control.  We all started off by disinfecting our arms and basically "scrubbing in".  Killing an animal isn't clean, but we did our best to not introduce anything else into the process.

Carlos was the only one who actually physically killed a turkey, apparently the cuts that need to be made are very precise.  Nate worked taking them for the cones once they had drained, bathing them in scalding hot water, and putting them in the fingers. The scalding water loosened the feathers and the defeathering machine worked by spinning the turkey around a large basin lined with rubber fingers. Meanwhile Justine was on quality control pulling out extra feathers with pliers and fingernails and just generally checking the turkeys for anything that would be weird to munch on.

After a while, quality control was much slower and birds were stacking up so we both ended up running QA.  Once done there, we joined Zach, Leroy and Carlos taking apart gullets, which are thick muscled stomach bags that have this leathery inside that you have to peel away from the rest.  Very difficult!  Think trying to remove an old bumper sticker.  After that, everything went into the ice baths and needed to sit for a while.

We headed into town to say hello to Mom and have lunch.  Nate had his usual turkey sandwich at Bodo's, which we decided meant that this experience didn't affect our food choice too much.  We returned to the farm to pack and bag the turkeys; neck, gullet, heart, liver, put it in the bag and seal, put it in the bag and seal.  Then we bought our turkey and we were off!

Two days later, we re-explored our turkey on the morning of Thanksgiving.  Nate and I have never been the ones to cook the turkey before, so this was also an entirely new experience also. We rubbed, spiced, stuffed and put it in the oven.  Then, not wanting to waste anything, we looked for uses for the extras.  We ended up using the extra parts to make turkey stock for the stuffing, and then Nate reduced and reduced and spiced and reduced, and magically we had gravy!

We are thankful for so many things this holiday season.  Thankful to have friends who are doing great things for the world, with so much passion that we can share.  We are thankful for all of the people that we love; the family that we got to spend Thanksgiving with and also the family that we missed.  We were also lucky enough to take part in a Generation X Thanksgiving just this past weekend with Adam, Lauren and many friends and co-workers.  We are so lucky to have all of you!

Here's to another year to be thankful for!
-Justine and Nate

News from the Zoo, from the Zoo

Hello Friends and Family!

We have an exciting Thanksgiving post coming up that should have readers flocking. It has some violence, but nothing too fowl. In the meantime, we wanted to keep you stuffed with details about our lives, so here's our latest adventure!

Wednesday morning of last week, Justine woke up and looked out the window.  Not only did it look sunny, but it also looked warm, which was a welcome change.  So she hopped up, headed across the hall to Nate's "office" and declared that they should visit Potter Park Zoo after work.  Potter Park Zoo is the local Lansing zoo located right next to her grandparent's neighborhood.  It's not as large as a traditional zoo, but it has a surprisingly diverse set of exhibits and exotic animals.  And so, our plans were born. We met up with Dave and the three of us arrived around 2:30p with an hour and a half to explore. Luckily, November through April, there is no charge to go to Potter Park, and the guy who collected parking money was gone, so we got to visit for free!

We headed in and got started right away.  We should have known that it was going to be a lucky day at the zoo because we were all chatting about how Justine never, in all her years going there, seen the wolves.  As we rounded the corner, there was the wolf, peering at us with mild interest.  That set the mood for the day; perhaps due to some combination of almost having the whole zoo to ourselves and lucky timing we ended up seeing every group of animals out in the open and in top form.

We spent some time with the monkeys; they wouldn't stop cleaning their hair.  If you've ever watched How I Met Your Mother and seen the character Ted preen his hair, then you know the maneuver.  Each time one emerged from their indoor enclosure, they'd blink in the sun, sit down and manage their mop.  Next, we visited the Ostrich, which seemed happy to see us.  They all headed over and snapped up leaves in their beaks, which made a sharp hollow sound.  We are still convinced that they are actually something dreamt up by Jim Henson.  Who else would create a giant fuzzy bird with huge wings, raptor feet and a tiny head perched on a snake-like neck?

We continued to wander around the rest of the zoo, spotting some other oddities. There was a Pallas's cat that was extremely excited about a King vulture in the exhibit next door. The cat was running in circles, climbing trees and staring intently, all while constantly making funny cat noises.  The king vulture, on the other hand, looked like a character straight from a Disney cartoon and was making comical movements with an expression of complete surprise. The two animals made for perfect neighbors!

Next up were the Meerkats.  There were about ten meerkats all chittering away while sunning themselves on a large rock.  In the center of the enclosure was a tall post, and on top was perched a lone meerkat, diligently keeping watching for danger. As we approached he snapped his head in our direction, looked us over and then decided we weren't a threat and continued his watch. Meanwhile, the other meerkats were taking turns standing up for a few seconds and then sitting down. But once we started moving again, they all stood up in unison and watched us go. It's an odd thing to have a whole colony's attention.

We had noticed the occasional peacock throughout the park, but, as we rounded a corner, we stumbled upon their base of operations.  There were peacocks above, the were peacocks below. There were peacocks on buildings, there were peacocks on fences.  The more you looked, the more you noticed hidden in plain sight. Younger males sat in the wings waiting for their iridescent plumage to grow while the older males strained to show off their brilliant displays. Meanwhile, the bright white females pecked idly at the ground, unaware or uninterested in whomever was considering themselves the cock of the walk.

So many animals were outside, but the greatest surprises awaited us in the big cat house! Earlier in our walk we had seen all the kitties outside, the lion perched on his rock and the tiger clawing at its tree-made-scratching-post.  But later, after circling the park, we went inside the cat house at just the right time.  It was just as they were being fed or right before they were being fed because the large cats were fired up!

The Snow Leopard was beautiful.  She just lost her mate this past year, and isn't a spring chicken herself, so she was pretty sedate.  She was sitting very close to the glass, so we got to get right up close to her to admire her beautiful markings.

The Tiger was cleaning himself as we watched.  We just sat for about 10 minutes and admired the size of his paws; outside we were quite far away from him, and worried he might be a bit skinny, but inside his paws looked to be the size of dinner plates and his massive build was impressive.

Last, and definitely not least, the Lion.  He was pretty antsy and he certainly wasn't shy letting everyone know!  As you can hear in the video, he would start out with really loud roars, and then would slowly wind down to grunts, eventually fading out all together.  What the video doesn't capture is how deep and primal his roar sounds.  In the movie Jurassic Park they used samples of lion calls for the dinosaur roars; after being face to face with a lion, you can see why.  Once, while Justine was sitting right up against the glass, we're pretty sure he tried to smell her hair.  It was both very cool and very scary to be so close to something with so much power.

As an added bonus, we got to share this experience with Dave, which still feels like a special treat.  Back with more post Thanksgiving!

-Justine & Nate

Doing Your Bidding

Hello Loyal Readers!

Life continues to be busy and exciting.  The entire month of October flew by for us; Nate spend probably an extra 8 hours a day programming, and I was coping with the end of a job that I had discovered that I really didn't like at all.  Luckily, we were still able to get a few extra things done, like Grandma Joy's quilt, which she wanted all of you to see!  Those are my pajama'ed feet sticking out the bottom.

November 1st was a really big day for us!  For me, it was my last day of work as a clerk at Ingham County Animal Control, which was wonderful.  I have been back to volunteer since and find that I really love working with the animals, but the position that I was in was so cut off from anything furry or friendly that I'm really happy that it was a temp job or I would be looking for ways to quit!  What am I doing in the meanwhile, you ask?  Well, that's where Nate's long hours come in.

We have started a website, which we are hoping to grow into a business.  It is:

www.freecharityauctions.com

You know you want to click the link and check it out, and we definitely think that you should!  First because, though it's still in development, we are VERY proud of what we have accomplished.  Second because you might find an item you'd like to bid on. And third, because it runs on ads, any time that someone views a page or clicks on a supporting ad, we make a little bit of money off of it.

The main goal of the website is to make money for charities.  We were working on an online charity for our local group, Mid-Michigan Cat Rescue and while searching online for a solution for a small group like ourselves, and were having a really hard time finding anything that we could use!  There is one website where it costs around $800 to sign up, and then they take a percentage of your profits, but as a group we were only making around $1000 on our auction, so that didn't make much sense for us.  Other groups existed, but they either had another up-front cost, or they wanted to take up to 20% of our profits!

So Nate, in his famous last words, said that he didn't think that it would be very hard to create a website that gave us all the functionality that we needed to run a basic auction site.  And, we decided, that if we were having this trouble, other groups must be too, so why not make it available for ALL non-profits?  So, that's what we did.

Now, if you've ever tried to do something technical, you know that things never go as smoothly as predicted.  We started the site on Google App Engine, which had a very generous free quota for anyone looking to develop and host a site.  However, halfway through development, they announced a huge price increase that rolled out November 7th.  So, we finished the site, launched it, bought hosting with BlueHost, and are now working on porting everything over to a new system that'll give us some more breathing space.  But on the whole it's been a lot of fun, Nate has learned a lot about Python and Django, and it's something that we can feel really good about.

So, please, head over to the website and help make our maiden voyage a success!  Take a look at all the items that MMCR has to offer, like this adorable kitty clock (pictured below), and please bid if you find something that you like - all profits go to MMCR who really is an excellent local cat rescue!  Or just cruise around and see what the site has to offer.

Even though I tell him all the time, I want you to know how proud I am of my handsome husband and to let you all know how hard he has been working.

If you have any questions or comments, we want to hear them!  The site gets better with feedback.

Love to all of you, and can't wait to be seeing the Bells and many of our other VA friends soon!
-Justine & Nate

Don't Be So Shellfish

Welcome back loyal readers!

It seems our blog took an end of summer month long hiatus. In reality, this is my first time working a full-time job, and it’s really exhausting.  I'm getting used to the hours and the schedule, but it doesn't leave me much free time.  But we got a nice break this week to attend the wedding of Nate’s friend Jesse Drummond, and his new wife Sharon!  So we are taking time on the ten hour car ride home to check in with all of you and let you know how things are going.

The past month has been very exciting and full of new experiences.  We have been spending a lot of time with Adam and Lauren, canning produce.  One of our neighbors had some extra tomatoes, cucumbers, and grapes and insisted we harvest them.  We are taking whatever produce we can find from people, plus buying more at a local farmer's market, and combining with what Adam and Lauren have grown and found. So far we have canned a huge number of jars of tomato soup, pizza sauce, cubed pumpkins, apple sauce, and pickles.  We are looking forward to hibernating for the winter and eating from our self-made stores.

The trip out East for the Drummond wedding has been so much fun.  We started the adventure at noon on Wednesday, from my work in Mason MI, with a packed car and the metal readiness for an 11 hour drive.  We had snacks, podcasts, audio books, and were ready to roll!  The two of us took turns driving through the day, learning about the European financial crisis from NPR’s Planet Money, and, despite heavy downpours in Maryland, ended up arriving at Joan and Alister’s around 10:30 pm.  Though we had seen them recently at Torch, we were excited to get to spend the night at their home, and had breakfast and caught up in the morning.  When it started getting toward afternoon, we gave everyone hugs and kisses (including Cricket!) and headed to Glen Burnie, MD (which was surprisingly only 25 minutes away).

We were lucky enough to be the first to arrive, and got to spend Thursday afternoon alone with the happy couple. I had met Jesse in Virginia a few times, but neither of us had met his fiancee. Since Nate was a groomsman in the wedding, we thought it important to meet her and get a feel for the couple.  We got to spend Friday hanging out with the happy couple and helping them get things ready.  I hadn’t gotten to meet a lot of Nate’s childhood friends to this point, and was so excited to meet Colin, his girlfriend Courtney, and re-meet Travis.  We all blended well, and had a blast all weekend!  The wedding was small and perfect, the bride was stunning, and the bride’s mom ‘moved her body like a cyclone’ on the dance floor.  We also got to be the people that drove the new couple to their hotel, so we got to wish them goodnight and a great honeymoon on their cruise to Bermuda.  We are so excited to be seeing everyone again on the New Year in Charlottesville.

Look for another update with some new exciting website news from us in the next few days!

Love;
-Justine and Nate

Post Torch Blues, and a New Job!

Hello Loyal Readers!

We apologize for the hiatus, things have been pretty crazy around here. To the update!

The last few days up North were a blast. Right after our last update, the Ingham County Animal Control and Shelter called and offered me a job, and wanted me to start before we even returned from Torch. I explained that it would be a long commute, and they set my start date for last Tuesday.

In the meantime, Nate was randomly checking facebook and realized that our friend Duke was 20 minutes away, in Elk Rapids, visiting from Portland, OR. His father's family has a boat in the Elk Rapids marina where they stay during the summer, and he was here to visit. We called him up right away and made plans. Then he let slip that he really wanted to see our mutual friends Adam and Lauren Coulton, and so we secretly called and invited (begged, bribed) them up too! On their first full day there, we had to wait for Duke to be done with family stuff, so we went to the Hat store in Traverse City and had a very serious time.

Afterwards, we surprised Duke with unexpected friends, grilled out back at the cottage and then headed off to Elk Rapids. Elk Rapids is normally a small quiet tourist destination, but that day it was overflowing with people there to celebrate Harbor Days. There we met Duke's family, took a tour of their awesome boat, and were given tickets to ride on some of the carnival rides that had been set up just down the street. As it grew dark, we grabbed unhealthy carnival snacks and headed back to the boat to watch the event's fireworks. We had prime seats on the boat's bow and the show was spectacular. An amazing number of fireworks were shot off and the show lasted for around an hour. It was an excellent way to wrap up our trip to the north!

As an added bonus, during my morning commute I heard on the radio that Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was voted the most beautiful park in the USA this year. Very cool!

So, I am now working at Ingham County Animal Control and shelter, which will henceforth be referred to as ICAC (I say I-C-A-C and Nate pronounces it I-kak, so take your pick!). I am working full time, which is new for me, Tuesday through Saturday. I am currently in a temp position, which runs from the beginning of August to the end of October, so I may have to be job searching around Halloween, but for now it's just nice to have somewhere to be. Also, I get paid almost DOUBLE what I was making at HELP the Animals, and have a lot less responsibility, which is super nice.

This photo is one that I pulled off of my camera from work; this is Winnie, the Pekingese who was most likely a puppy mill dog. It is so rewarding and so stressful at the same time, working with animals, trying to preserve lives. I have spend the last few weeks just getting acclimated to the shelter environment and the computer system that they use, and am hoping to take on a few more responsibilities and do some grant writing in the new future.

In our free time, Nate and I are plotting and planning, looking at houses and trying to figure out where we want to live and what we want to pay for it. We are also enjoying our friends, including canning with Adam and Lauren, and playing games and having bonfires with Pete and Perkins. We keep remembering how nice it is to be near to family and to people our own age, and we are so happy!

Hope all is well with everyone! Love you all!

Another year at Torch!

Its both great and terrible that you lose track of so many things during vacation. Last week Sunday, I told myself that I would be dedicated enough to pack, make the drive, and then sit down once we got to Torch Lake and write out a blog post. It makes me laugh, to think about it now.

We have had a great combination of families up here at Torch. Nate and I were very excited to be able to spend the full two weeks up here, relaxing and hosting, and we've gotten to be a part of the familial comings and goings. First, on Monday, Tom and Jennifer arrived in the motor home (and had quite the adventure trying to get it back down the cottage driveway) before settling into their spot in Barnes Park. Tuesday, Joan and Alister arrived, with Cricket in tow, and the next day Graham and Kate appeared. It was a lot of fun to be a part of the arrival of so many people who had never been at Torch, and experience the view of the lake and cottage for the first time again with them. We have gone on all of our normal, yearly adventures twice; once with the Bell/Newtons, and the second time with the Kahler/Brett/Smith group.

Wednesday night, hours after they arrived, we packed Graham and Kate up in the car and took them to Interlochen to see The Decemberists in concert. Nate and I were excited to see them because we love their songs, but were ecstatic to discover they put on an AMAZING show. Graham and Kate, who bought their most recent album only the day before, also enjoyed themselves despite not knowing most of the songs. We were already planning how to attend another show when we discovered they would be playing in Charlottesville, VA on August 3rd. Nate sent a text to Dad letting him know and his reply said they bought tickets to see their second show! Last night we got a call from Dad where, faintly in the background, an enthusiastic rendition of The Mariner's Revenge could be heard playing. We're so proud of the new groupies!

But back to events in July: Thursday we took the Bell/Newtons to Sleeping Bear Dunes. When planning the trip, they expressed that they had seen dunes before, and was this really what they should do while they were here? No, we explained, these are REALLY BIG. We did the driving tour, hiked the Cottonwood Trail, and generally enjoyed the day hiking on sandy trails, learning about the park and watching people attempt to scramble up breathtaking slopes. We closed out the day with pizza and a well deserved rest.

Then, on Friday, we took the day off to relax in the sun and swim. Tom and Alister (with Joan squeezed in) took turns sailing around the lake and Tom and Graham tried out a friend's jet ski. We tried our best to delay their departure, but eventually Joan and Alister had to start their trek back to Maryland. For dinner that night the rest of us went to Pearls, a local Cajun restaurant with long waits, but excellent food. That night we also said goodbye to Tom and Jennifer. 

That weekend we had a major switch; the Bell/Newtons headed out, and Anna and Chris came in. Then we added Todd, Jenny, and 16 month old Claire to the mix, and the mornings got a whole lot more interesting. The first morning that Claire was here, I was in the lake with her. Swimming. At 9 am! Who would have guessed? But we've had a great time with Claire, and it's been a real educational experience, spending so much time in such close quarters with a baby. Luckily, she is very personable; we went for dinner at Pearls again, and Claire made friends with everyone on the patio while we waited for our table. Last night we baby sat for Claire, Sammy and Elliot (nearly 4 and 2.5 respectively) so their parents could make a trip out to Shorts for beer, pizza and some long needed adult time. It was an eye opening experience, albeit a fun one. We played trucks, airplane, croquet, changed diapers, had successful bathroom breaks and watched videos. It was a fun (and exhausting) time and interesting to see the kids in their various stages of development and see how much difference a year makes!

In the time that we've been here, Nate and I have read Outliers (Nate), The Omnivores Dilemma (Justine), and Justine just started Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. We've been trying to eat local, which is a lot easier around here. We picked raspberries at King's Orchards with Graham. We made our own salsa, with the intention of canning salsa at the end of the season if we find a recipe that we like – PS Graham: you left your Salsa recipes book. We are putting it to good use, and will send it to you soon! We're also planning our garden for next summer.

The last few days have been cloudy and rainy, so we've spent our time reading, working (Nate) and willing the clouds to pass. Today things are sunny once again, so it's time to get back in the sun and water and celebrate Anna's birthday!

We have a few updates from friends to pass along:

Jay and Kyla Pitts-Zevin, who's wedding we told you about in January, are expecting a baby in late February! We are looking forward to a baby shower, and hopefully to getting to travel down to see their current home that weekend. We are so excited for you!

Ashton and her boyfriend are either still on Croatia or have just returned, and are having an amazing time. They just added a second kitty to their family, little orange tabby Mango, who helps mom with the dishes. She loves her job, working for former Congressman Benjamin Gilman, and she's starting her Masters in World Politics in the fall at Catholic University. She and Mladen say hello to everyone!

If you feel motivated, send us a little snippet to share with everyone!  We are excited to share not only our news, but yours as well!

Also, read my posts at examiner.com (http://www.examiner.com/animal-advocacy-in-lansing/special-programs-at-ingham-county-animal-control).

Love to you all!  Everyone travel safe!

-Nate & Justine

All work and no play....

Hello family and friends!

We are anxious to hear about how things are going with all of you! If you would like to send an update on your lives to publish in our blog, we would be happy to do so! We're counting down until we get to see many of the Bells in the next couple weeks!

This week was kind of a down week for us. We are trying to finish up a number of projects before going up to the Lake, and so we've spend a lot of time sitting in front of our computers. Nate is working on a website for Franklin County Humane Society, of Franklin County, Indiana. When they took over the shelter 6 years ago, the county was euthanizing 100% of the 700 animals that passed through the system per year. Since then the FCHS has been chipping away at their numbers and last year they only lost 15 adoptable animals. They are such a wonderful group of hard working people! We hope their new website and online application will be the push that the public needs to adopt those remaining 15 dogs and cats this year. Helping to make their county 100% no-kill is an exciting thing to be a part of.

Nate wants it stressed that the website is still being developed, but I think it looks great and wanted to share it with all of you! http://members.petfinder.com/~IN19

We've spent much of this weekend recovering from seeing the midnight show of Harry Potter with some friends on Thursday night/Friday morning. Though, in our exhaustion, we were still able to have Birthday cake with Adam and Lauren on Friday night, and enjoy a quesadilla filled evening last night with Dave, Matt, Pete and Sara.

Adam and Lauren

The fabulous Cake! (It's bigger on the inside)

Much to Nate's chagrin, I have been spending time at local animal shelters and rescues. I really wish that there was a way to make a livable wage by working for them, because I find I really do love it. And here, I am only working with groups that either 1) Only have executive boards, or 2) Do not have boards at all. Live and learn, right? But I spend all of Tuesday vaccinating kittens and taking videos of cats with Mid-Michigan Cat Rescue, and a joyful Friday helping out at Ingham County Animal Control. I think I really have a problem. [No new animals yet, so I haven't had to stage an intervention -Nate]

We will be updating next week on the first day at Torch Lake! Yay!

All our love!

Gimme That (Boom Boom Splash)

July 4th is a very interesting holiday here in the Bell-friends clan. Last week we went with Pete and Dave to Ohio to get fireworks, so we were ready! We had 11 tubes and about 150 mortars, and a whole lot of fuse, random smaller fireworks, plus sparklers and our friend Sara brought five containers of glow sticks. I would have been impossible NOT to have a good night, though we did exceed every possible expectation of fun. We set off all of the mortars except about 15 which we packed away for next year. We all put on glow-stick jewelry and danced and boogied. With Sara's stop-motion camera setting, we got really great photos like this one:

Also, we learned something very interesting. If you're in the same yard as where the fireworks are going off, the coolest thing that you can do is lay down on a blanket, on your back, and watch them explode above you. Very intense.

Friday we had another fun adventure; Nate took the day off and we went with Pete and Sara to Michigan's Adventures! Turns out that Pete had never gone down a water slide, and Nate had only gone down the ones last week at the East Lansing water park, so Sara and I had a BLAST (pun intended) showing them around the water park. We were there from 12:30 to 4:00, before the lines started getting a bit long and we decided to go home. We had a really great time conquering rides; from the Lazy River to the fast and dark Snake Pit!

One more fun and interesting thing: I am putting my liberal arts education to work! I got a part-time job as the Animal Advocacy writer for Examiner.com. You can visit my page and see my articles here:
http://www.examiner.com/animal-advocacy-3-in-lansing/justine-bell

The articles are supposed to be 300-400 works in length, which is like 10% of a paper at Earlham, so they are super easy and fun to write. I get to be more exciting the more people read my pages, so please click the link above and read! I just started Friday, so there is only one so far. Thanks!

Hope things are going well with everyone! We are getting more and more excited about the Kahler-Bell Torch adventure every day!!!!!!

Loaner Kids and Fireworks

Hey All!

What a fun (and full!) week we've had.  We were so excited to see so many of you, and are looking forward to seeing many more of you soon!

Tuesday we spend the evening at Sleepy Hollow State Park with Grandma and Grandpa Giddings.  I was telling Nate on the way in that it seems strange that we have spent so much time together and shared so much, and there are still pieces of our lives that the other knows little about.  I went camping at Sleepy Hollow many times as a child, and the park still feels like a second home to me.  Nate and I took a walk with Mom and Dad down to the beach, and got to tell all sorts of stories of how I was as a kid.  It was great to have three generations together to talk and play games!

Wednesday, when Nate got off work, we headed down to Ohio with Dave and Pete to buy fireworks.  Now, a little less rich but a little more excited, we are ready for Monday and will be exploding our almost 100 mortars with a vengeance!

Thursday night we spent time with new friends Adam and Lauren, and old friend Nathan Gray and played all sorts of fun card games before retiring to watch HIMYM.  It is great just to have time to hang out in a relaxed atmosphere, and Adam and Lauren share a lot of the same interests that we do.

Then came Friday - BABYSITTING NIGHT!  Our friend Cassandra has two adorable children, and we volunteered to watch them so she could have an evening out.  This was thrilling for all parties - we were thrilled to get to spend time with adorable children, Cassandra was thrilled to get away from her (mostly) adorable children, and 4-year-old Scarlet and 5-year-old Nicholas were thrilled to have new victims in myself, Nate, and our dog Sara.  And thus, Mom left and the evening commenced.

Nate and Nicholas spent a lot of time play with Legos and talking about Star Wars.  I'm not sure if it was Nicholas or Nate that was more excited to build a Lego Starship! (I swear he suggested it without coercion on my part! -Nate)  Scarlet and I played with her Play Dough Ice Cream Party set, and made ourselves delicious Sundaes.  She told me that she was going to help me with mine because she wanted to be like the Care Bears - super cute!  I think that when we have kids, this blog is just going to be videos of them and a typed litany of all the hilarious things they say.

Later in the evening, after swinging, driving around the yard, and playing piggy-back tag, we settled down to watch Horse Land.  Scarlet went to get her markers, and wanted to draw on the couch.  We quickly veto'ed that idea, but offered up Sara as an acceptable substitute, and thus Sara's Crayola Makeover began.  When Cassandra came home, she declared her to be a Paint By Number Puppy.  Luckily, Sara loved the attention and the kids loved the adventure.  And, at the end of the night, we were exhausted but excited to watch the kids again - after a long nap!

Saturday we had a wonderful sushi lunch followed by a family trip to the local water park. It also turned out it was Nate's first trip down a water slide!  So we spent all afternoon dragging tubes up a flight of stairs so that we could spin and slide our way back down again.  We also made plans to go to Michigan's Adventures, and eventually Blizzard Beach to continue his water slide education!

Big stretch after a long week!  Hope all is well with everyone!  We love and miss you!
-Justine & Nate

House Hunters - Lansing Edition!

Hey all!

What a fun and exciting weekend we've had! We spent last night at the U2 concert, taking tickets and then enjoying the show! The stage looked really cool, check it out!

The show wouldn't allow any sorts of containers past its gates, including purses. This woman brought her Coach purse, and then seeing that she would have to surrender it, she gave it to me! So I have a new Coach clutch, which just also happens to be in my colors! Very cool!

We spent this weekend babysitting a kitten, who we've named Oli. Video of him below.

We also went house hunting for the first time! We looked at five houses, and eliminated one right off the bat (totally outdated, single floor without a basement and weird layout).

First we went here:

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4375-Willesdon-Ave-Holt-MI-48842/74056175_zpid/

It has a big back yard, which we liked. The upstairs has a great kitchen and a beautiful bay-window. The rooms weren't huge, but the basement was finished and had a lot of great storage, bedrooms and hang-out space. All in all, there were technically FIVE bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths and the price is good (89,900).

The second house was:
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/6029-Ellendale_Lansing_MI_48911_M40965-59015

This house was a quad-level, with a beautiful covered back porch and great spaces. The kitchen was great, with lots of counter space, and down the stairs was a great hang-out room that already had a bar (spurring Nate to decide that, whatever we buy, we have to have space for a bar). The draw-back to this house was that the bedrooms were TINY. The master would be fine, but the two guest-rooms were practically closets.

The third house was Nate's favorite, and getting to the online listing is complicated, so I saved the photos and will post them here:

Back Yard

Entry Way

Beautiful Kitchen!

Four-season sun porch!

There is a lot of open space in this house, and the master closet is HUGE (which I adored). The back yard was beautiful, and I loved the sun-porch. Draw-backs: there is no bathroom on the main floor, and the listing says 2 full baths, which is technically true, but the second bath is in the basement and it's more of a wash-room with random toilet and shower tacked on. The cost for this property is $114,900, but some of the listing photos were taken when there was snow on the ground, so we think they would accept a lower offer. Also, mom pointed out that the neighborhood wasn't one where kids could just play outside.

The last property had 'character,' which I loved:
http://hometour24-7.com/5114GrapeArbor/5114_Grape_Arbor,_lansing_mi_48917.htm

The house is beautiful and the neighborhood was great; there was a bouncy castle down the street and it looked like all the neighborhood kids were running around and playing. The yard is fenced and beautiful, and the house is nice and big with a great bay window! The drawbacks here were that the space inside the house was cramped feeling and a little bit awkward, with a lower-level that had a fire-place but really no other definition (office? second dining room? What are you, room?) But the porch on the back of the house was BEAUTIFUL, with space for a bonfire, grilling, and plenty of grass to play. I really liked everything about this house except for the strange room sizes.

So! Let us know what you think! We're not sure that we've found the perfect home yet, and will update you as we keep looking, but we want to hear what you like and don't like about these!

Love to all! Nate & Justine
(Ticket Takers!)

Part One - Looking Back

We wanted to take some time to look back on the last five years and figure out what it meant to us, as well as welcome a whole new batch of Richmond people to the blog. It’s easy to catch up when we are living right down the street, but now that we’re further away, we wanted to include you in our updates!

Getting things wrapped up with the house was at the same time frustrating and rewarding.  We have spent years doing things the ‘right way,’ meaning for instance that instead of just painting over previous layers of paint and wall paper like the previous owners, we would take it ALL down and then paint. We had to repair and replace so many things, it felt weird at the end doing work we came to refer to as Good Enough Work. Will the buyers really care about this? No? Then skip it. Even though we felt like we were skimping, taking a last look around the house we were very proud of everything that we had accomplished. The house also taught us a lot of things; dry walling, plumbing, how to remove wall paper, how to install laminate, and mostly not to buy a house that was built before 1950.

Nate's action shot!

 Both of us came to Richmond because of Earlham, and at first were deeply surrounded by the so called "Earlham Bubble". Your inital interactions with Richmond as an Earlham student are limited to trips to the local grocery store and crossing 40. That is to say the interactions mainly involved loud cars, hoots from their drivers and the occasional thrown object. Richmond's reputation is not held in high regard among the students. However, as we moved towards graduation, and lived further from campus, we began to meet and interact with the real Richmondites. We were pleasantly surprised to find caring thoughtful families eager to welcome some outsiders into their community. We settled into the Old Richmond area and soon learned that off the beaten path of 40 and 27 there were gems to be found. Places like Little Sheba's and Joe's Pizza offered local food and RCT provided the flair.

We both found places that we felt at home - Nate started at Ray Ontko & Company/Doxpop, and loved it. It was so great to feel like part of a business family right away, and he was eager to start learning hands on skills. While college had been an excellent experience, the scope and breadth of knowledge he has gained in the last six and a half years has been fantastic. Now, as he is training a new employee who's starting out fresh like he did, he's getting a new perspective on just now much he has learned. The opportunity to expand his skills and work with such great co-workers will make Doxpop a benchmark for future employment.

Justine started at HELP the Animals before graduation, and in it found a place that she could use and develop all of her skills in an environment that she loved. She made it all the way from cleaning kennels to working as acting manager, learning and growing in each position. Unfortunately, the end of spending time at HELP the Animals went poorly, but as always was a learning experience. She made some life-long friends, and will always work in her free time to help animal rescues and TNR. Luckily, after HELP, Justine got a chance to serve on the amazing board at Richmond Civic Theatre. What an amazing group of people with an amazing group dynamic and work ethic.

Thank you all for the relationships and experiences! We have loved the time that we spent in Richmond!

Part Two - Moving Forward

Being in Michigan has been wonderful so far, we are enjoying spending time with family and friends.

Here is how our week went:

• Monday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, watched Beer Wars together on Netflix
• Tuesday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, evening spent working on projects (games, websites, etc.)
• Wednesday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, then square dancing in Dimondale and the Green Lantern movie (an early private viewing) with some friends
• Thursday: Dinner with Mom, then a Poker night with new friends with a $2 buy-in where Nate took the pot!
• Friday: Took the night off to relax and recharge
• Saturday: We hosted a barbecue with many of our friends, all sat around the fire and we just talked for hours

Whew! It was a great start to our new lives here, and followed by a week of sushi, game night, helping friends roof and an upcoming U2 concert Sunday.

Here is the plan for the next month or so:
Both sides of the family are coming to Torch Lake starting at the end of July. We don't want to go looking for jobs before then, because we want to be able to be there the entire time with our family, so we're putting everything on hold until we get back from the Lake mid-August. So Nate will continue working remotely at least until then, and I am spending the extra time doing some fun projects and learning HTML. We will be staying at my parents until we go to the Lake, and then (if we don't get any offers on the house between now and then) we'll start looking for a place to go.

My Mom delights in telling everyone she knows that we have moved back in with them. I have to follow up with “for a month, before we find our own place” quickly because I’m afraid that people will think that we’re bums. I think Mom is tickled that we are back (so are we!), but I want to be careful not to let people think that we are part of the Boomerang Generation – moving home to live with Mom and Dad because they have no other choice. In the past we haven't been very good about taking time to relax, so we're treating ourselves to a low stress break before diving head first into our next phase.

One of the things we were afraid of in moving to MI is that we would go to the entire other end of a spectrum – instead of having virtually nothing to do, we would find our schedule filled to overflowing and would have not times for ourselves. Luckily, we seem to have struck a good balance between time out and time at home. It is very important to use this as a growing period, and I’ve spent my mornings catching up on work and reading about future opportunities. We have done a lot of talking about what the future holds, and are considering some webdesign freelance just to see how it goes. Could be a fun experiment that'll give us some experience and (hopefully) some extra play money.

So, things are up in the air and we're just enjoying ourselves for now, but it feels like the right place to be. Family, friends and fun: it's a great combination!

A Weekend in Lansing

Hello Loyal Readers!

This edition comes to you from the car on the way home from a fabulous weekend in Michigan. We are so excited to be heading North permanently in the next few weeks and are blessed to have so much love in Michigan – friends and family are a gift that should never be taken lightly.

What an exciting weekend. We got in Friday night, unloaded some of the car and played with the dogs for a bit, then headed straight to Maru Sushi! We got to sit at the sushi bar, which was really fun. All of their sushi rolls are almost a work of art, so we enjoyed watching them get made! We chatted with the people who were seated next to us, and decided that people from Michigan are definitely more friendly. :)

Saturday, we didn't have anything to do until 6-8 pm, so we headed out for some adventure. We headed straight over to Mid-Michigan Cat Rescue to drop off some donations. We came home, readied ourselves for the day, and went to the Lansing City Market! The new building is very nice, and we browsed and chatted with the people working there. There have places for lunch, and also farm-fresh produce and flowers and artisan work. It was beautiful.

Next, we drove around downtown Lansing, and checked out Cooley Law School, but they were having a memorial service, so it was a bad time to ask questions. Instead, we headed to the Michigan Historical Museum, which was FINALLY open during a time that we were there. We had tried to go twice before, during holidays, and it had been closed both times. We were there almost two hours, learning about Michigan and the history of the state. It’s interesting how we really had three separate economic times; mining, lumber, and then cars. Everyone was really friendly and we had a great time.

That evening we went to a birthday celebration with our friends Pete and Sara, who are dating and have birthdays very close together. We were supposed to have a bonfire, but anyone in MI this weekend will know that it was a bit rainy and cold. So instead, we went out to dinner and then came back and played an epic game of Apples to Apples. As an aside, Apples to Apples is a really fun game and everyone should try it if they have the chance.

Today, we had lunch with Trevor, Courtney and Dave, and then went to see Thor. We had P.F. Chang’s, (try their lettuce wrap appetizers, they make a great light lunch) and got to catch up with everyone.

After the movie, we headed home and hung out with Mom and Dad for a while. So many people blame things on their parents, but I gotta tell you, mine are just the coolest. We talked though a lot of things that we had gone through in the past week, and made future plans for the next few months. Nate will be starting to work “remotely” on June 1^st, and then we'll be free to go where we please (as long as we can find an internet connection). We hope to move out of Richmond soon after. Yay!

We're so excited for the life changes that are coming, and are looking forward to seeing family at Torch Lake in July!

Love to you all!

-Justine & Nate

A House in Many Pieces

Hello Everyone!

So, this is the part of our story where we get to take some time to brag about all of the things that we've done.  I know that every time that we write, there is some new project, and we thought that we might show you the fruits of that labor.  This does not, of course, mean that there isn't still work to do (because believe us, there is!), but we wanted to take you on a tour of a few of the high-lights of our renovations...right before we move.

 The photo above is a picture of our guest room when we first moved in.  Now, to our credit, we had a roommate living with us and this is all HIS stuff (except the bed), but notice the Model-T's on the walls.  Also, one of the strange things about the house when we moved in was that so many rooms were painted in dark colors; this one was yellow and maroon.  We did away with that, as you can see below!

The idea for the curtains going to the side instead of splitting in the middle came from our bedroom, but we love this nice guest room instead of the old one!  Lighter colors, more light in the room, and less overall mess. Also, the quilt on the bed is from Olive (a good friend of Tom and Jennifer's who has passed), and the blanket at the foot of the bed is thanks to Miss Emma Olsen!  Just seeing it makes everyone want to come stay with us - right!?!?!?!

The other room that we wanted to show off in this "issue" of Bell World Weekly is the room we're most excited about lately; the bathroom!  This is our before:

Yum!  Notice the paneling on the walls - the carpet had gotten wet so many times that the walls were rotting away at the bottom, and so they put up paneling to try and hide that before they sold the house.  Also take a close look at the shelf and cabinet door above the toilet - it's not even cut evenly!  Nate says it looks like a "My first Jigsaw" project.  We don't miss it, let me tell you!

We LOVE this tile floor, and we got the tiles for free, which made it even better.  One of the advantages of having friends who are roughly 30 years older than you is that they have the money to re-do their houses, and then you can gather what they have left over.  But it all looks so beautiful, and we are so proud of it!

Stay tuned for the next episode!

Love you all!
-Nate & Justine

Sorting, Selling and Pitching

Hey All!

I hope that everyone else's Sunday is as beautiful as ours is here!  Today in Richmond is 70 degrees and sunny, and it feels like Summer has finally poked its head out to look around!

Life is busy here at the Bell household.  We have filled two plastic tubs with things that aren't essentials, but that we want to keep, and are heading up to MI to store them next weekend.  We're so excited to be home again, and get a few more dogs situated - Toby, our Aussie, is going to a new foster home there.  We're finding new homes for the books and odds and ends we have lying around the house that we never use. We just finished up five more Ebay auctions and are working on getting all of that sent out, as well as monitoring our Amazon account.  Not only does it make it so we don't have to move those things, but it's also great because we can make a little extra money on the side while I'm not working.

Working on a tip from a friend, I've found a place to try to sell my quilting creations!  Check out my new website here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/71873579/quilted-bag-sunflower-haze

Speaking of, we're working on re-homing and moving around all the dogs and cats in our possession as well.  Today we had a bit of an adventure - we've had this dog with us for the last few days.  He came to us as a stray, via one of the little girls who lives down the street.  We've been calling him Zach, or Short Round:

He seemed really eager to head out, and being a hound, we figured he might know where he's going. So today we put him on a leash and let him take the lead.  For all of you that have walked a hound, he was so excited to go it was almost painful on our hands.  We wandered down to 7th street, down three blocks, back to 6th and then he started acting funny.  He kept sniffing at porches, one, two, three, then he turned and beelined straight for a house and headed up onto the porch, so we knocked on the door.  We asked the woman there if she knew him and, amazingly, he had taken himself home!  His name is Burt, turns out, and he's 11 years old.  She bottle fed him from an infant, because his mother (a Bassett/Beagle) was impregnated by a St Bernard/Golden, and didn't survive the birthing.  She was working with a vet at the time, and took Burt as her own.  What a great story, and we're so happy to have him back home (and out of ours)!

More to come soon!  We're hoping that next week's edition will be before and after photos of the house, so we'll see how well that pans out.  Love to everyone on this wonderful day - now we're going outside!

-Justine and Nate

Frozen to Thaw

 Hey All!

What a whirlwind time it has been, and this will be a very to-the-point update because there should be updates coming more frequently based on some of our more recent news!

We survived the ice storm here, the radio announcers called it Snowmageddon, but as you can see it was more of an ice problem.  Nate was off work two days during the week, which was a lot of fun for us!  Also, we spent one of the two nights of storm sleeping at the shelter, to make sure that if the power went off we would be there to switch it over to the generator.  Luckily the night passed without incident, and we made a little extra money for our effort.

I finally, finally quit my job.  As many of you know, it had been a real emotional drain for a while.  There was a turnover in power on the board, and Nate and I decided that it was time to head out.  We still maintain the website, do the newsletter, and I am able to volunteer there when I want to, which works out well for me.  As for getting another job?I'm not looking for one, because.....

Nate and I have decided that it is time to move.  We really aren't finding anyone here in Richmond that 1. has the same interests that we do, and 2. is roughly in the same age group.  We found that we were enjoying our visits to Michigan more and more, and planning them more often, because we found it much easier to find like minded, age-appropriate friends.  So, we're headed back to the big M I!  We are not sure if this will be a permanent move or a stop-over, but we're excited to try to find a group of people that might be interested in working with Nate on the game he is making, and MSU is a much better place to find those people than Earlham (Nate's computer science graduating class was four, including himself).

Hannah and Sara rest Ying-Yang style after a long day of cleaning!

So, in the meantime, the question you'll hear most around our house is "Is is worth moving?"  We're getting down to the bare essentials, eliminating a lot of clutter, which feels really nice.  We are making good use of Ebay, Amazon, and Goodwill!  We also have a list of what needs to be done before we go, so we're working diligently on getting the house ready for potential renters.

Stay tuned here for more updates as things progress!  Also, now that I am unemployed, there is no excuse to not be sending weekly news!  :)

Love you all!
-Justine and Nate