Christmas Time Is Here Again!

Its amazing how fast the years go by!  And we were stunned to think back and realize that this was our first visit to Virginia in almost a year!  With that in mind, we decided to make it a long one, almost two weeks, and coming to the end of that time we still haven't gotten a chance to do all of the things that we wanted to do!

Our first few days were pretty relaxed.  Nate had to work, so I just mostly puttered around the farm.  I am always surprised at the amount of activity of blue jays and sparrows, and there is something fulfilling about being the first one up and out, feeding the horses and visiting with the cows.  It puts our plans more into focus for the spring.  Once Dad was done with wine bottling and had some time extra time, we headed out to the local tree farm and picked out a cute but compact Christmas tree.  What followed was an evening of carols and ornaments, which helped to get us all in the Christmas spirit!

Then people started to arrive!  We spend some time at Little Hawk, I even got to watch some of the new fillies being ridden for the first time.  On Christmas a group of us headed out to the Virginia Art Museum in Richmond for a Chihuly exhibit, which was breathtaking!  We are now really excited to go to the Fredrick Meijer gardens in Grand Rapids to see more!  Also, Nate and Dad posed in the theme of one of the statues, much to our delight!

Speaking of Grand Rapids, Kate arrived later in the afternoon of Christmas day, followed shortly by Molly, and we all enjoyed a wonderful meal together.  We were thrilled to be joined by Tom's sister Dorothy, who has a beautiful voice and many of us joined in singing carols which she harmonized to!  Presents were exchanged and appreciated!

Now all are gathered at Holly Hills working in this year's Bell Christmas Letter.  Many of you receive this letter, but please let us know if you do not and would like to!

Love and Happy Holiday to you all!
-Justine and Nate

Thankful Thanksgiving

Dear friends and family,

It has been an uneventful couple of weeks for us, but unfortunately not so for many others in our family.  Though we always strive to be thankful on Thanksgiving, recent scares and losses have caused us to be even more thankful than we might have been two weeks ago.

Last Thursday Nate’s uncle Alister suffered a small stroke at his home in Maryland.  Luckily, Aunt Joan was there and noticed right away, and they were able to get to the hospital and get treatment very quickly.  We are especially thankful for scientific progress, as Alister was able to get a stroke-busting drug into his system right away, and has fully recovered!  There may be some continued problems with a blockage in his carotid artery, but now the doctors know that it is there and are able to decrease later problems with preventative treatment. Everyone get familiar with the signs of stroke and keep a bottle of aspirin handy!

As the wonderful news of recovery was coming in from Maryland, we got a call from Molly.  Grandma Marjorie Cope passed away in her home in Mill Valley, CA.  By all accounts she had an active and fun-filled last day with her caretaker, taking a long walk and playing games.  Then, after dinner, she sat down to watch television.  When the caretaker arrived in the morning, she found that Grandma had not gone to bed as she normally would have, but had instead passed away watching her shows.  She was just shy of 90 years old.  Though none of us could ask for more than a long and active life, and to pass away quickly, comfortably at home, it is still difficult for friends and family left behind.  We find both joy and intense loneliness in remembering all of the wonderful times we’ve had in Mill Valley.

All of this has left us with a powerful desire to let all of you know that we love and miss you and are thankful for your presence in our life.

Our addition to Thanksgiving - Pumpkin Cheesecake

We did have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  The MIBells and the Kahler clan piled into the van and headed for Muskegon, MI to visit with Steve's family.  We are back on the same schedule as Mark and Dawn and their three beautiful children; Danielle, Alexis, and Grant.  We shared a wonderful meal, trimmed the Christmas tree, and just enjoyed each others company.  We decided that we must be getting old, because as soon as the desserts were gone, all we wanted to do was sleep!

The Kahler/Noel/Bell's enjoying time together

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

-Nate & Justine

The Long Absence

Hello Family and Friends!

We start out each week with the best of intentions.  I even made a weekly to-do list a few years back that includes "Blog Post" as one of the items, and things just sometimes get so busy we don't quite make it through the list.

But that is no excuse!  There are exciting things happening here, and we want to be sharing them with you!  So this will be a post of briefs, because I think that there have been so many cool things happening that its more about quantity of news than quality of news.

I, Justine, have taken a new job since we spoke last.  If we haven't spoken in quite a while, than I've taken two jobs!  First I've taken on the manager position at Simply Bliss Spa.  My boss is great with massage, waxing, all of the skills, but wasn't as excited about the business end of things.  Our personalities are similar enough that we get along really well, and our skills blend perfectly to run a great business.  So I spend 15-20 hours a week calling clients, scheduling and overseeing all of the business responsibilities.

Second, I am doing 15 hours a week for Capital Area Humane Society as the Outreach Coordinator for their Petsmart Grant.  They have chosen two zip codes in the Lansing area, 48911 and 48910, and they have a certain number of cats that need to be fixed so that they can expand the grant into two more zip codes.  So, between now and September 2013, I have to help find and schedule 1,311 cats.  Its a challenge I am definitely up to!

Nate is busy with work as usual. He's just wrapping up a project to create a widget that lets users search for their upcoming hearings.  The idea is county officials can add some HTML to their website and possibly save themselves some calls from people asking the time of their next court date.  It was a fun project with many challenges to work around and gave Nate a chance to better learn a language called Javascript.  Once it gets released to the production system you'll be able to see it in action here. The widget only requires one line of HTML to be installed, which Nate assures me took a lot of work to implement and is very cool. He's also working on his game in fits and spurts when social fun and exciting new cooperative games (see: social fun) don't claim his free time.

Things are going well with the house.  We've been putting up insulation in the garage; the last people to live here had no insulation between the house and the garage, and one of the pipes burst.  Instead of putting up insulation, they opened a heating duct to the garage and heated the garage!  We opted for the more-expense-now-less-later insulation route.

We ordered our first piece of furniture, a dining table, that wasn't owned by anyone else before us!  It was an oddly adult experience walking into the store, browsing tables and chairs and picking the one we wanted. We were sort of giddy about it, wondering how many pieces or furniture we'd have to buy before we feel more adult and less like kids pretending to be adults.  Its a dark wood table that seats six when closed, but hides three leaves and opens to seat twelve.  We bought six chairs and two benches, so bring on the family holidays! We love it!


We couldn't be happier about the results of the election!  Things have been busy, and we didn't get to volunteer with the campaign as much as last time, but luckily the nation stood with us in choosing equality.  While watching the election coverage with a group of our friends, we couldn't help reflecting on four years ago, watching the election at Joan and Alister's, right after Mommer got sick.  We remember hearing about how she was excited by the coverage, and that she waved to Obama in the hospital.  It seems like a long time ago, and at the same time, as if it was just yesterday.  We both miss her very much but think she would be proud of her family and country.

Love to you all,
N&J

Gone Fishin'

As the temperature dropped, leaves started to change and birds bid the North adieu, we began our first
fall adventure. The shinook salmon are busy spawning and many can be found in active little clusters in
the Betsie River. So we climbed into our car, with Juno, and made the 3 hour drive North to Grandma
and Grandpa Noel’s cabin on the Betsie River. On the way there we enjoyed the splendor of the leaves
changing colors. The maples are every color from green to red, often all on the same tree, and the
landscape has a picturesque quality, especially with the frequent water backdrops in this area.

Once we arrived, we found Grandma and Grandpa in the cabin and cousin David already in the water
fishing. Grandpa fetched a couple pairs of waders from the shed and we set to struggling to get them
on. Being taller, I had an easier time getting mine on, but Justine’s waders were a more…comical fit (not
that any fit of wader is less than comical).

(Justine channeling clown attire)

Costume malfunctions aside, we grabbed our poles and waddled down to the river to begin fishing. Our
bait was small ‘spawn bags’ containing salmon spawn. The salmon are primarily there to reproduce, but
every now and then they get a bit peckish and will eat some of the spawn. Our goal was to present them
with that opportunity, with some strings attached.

The three of us, David, Justine and I stood each a pole length’s apart while Grandma and Grandpa sat on
the dock with Juno watching. The first catch of the day was a tree branch, but that was soon untangled
and we’ll chalk that up to rusty casting skills. After that, the fish weren’t biting for quite a while and
eventually David climbed out of the water. After about an hour’s wait, the female salmon started
spawning and getting the males whipped into a frenzy. We had one female followed by a train of four or
five males. All of a sudden we started getting nibbles and then bites and then I managed to hook one!

It had been a long time since I fished, much less hooked a fish, much less a fish so large, so I wasn’t
completely prepared for how much strength a salmon has. There wasn’t enough drag on my line, so
for every foot of line I reeled in, he seemed to pull away two. Justine, meanwhile, threw down her pole
and rushed for the net. She raced, (again, in waders so adjust mental images to match), ahead hoping
to catch up to the fish, but he was pulling away quickly. Unfortunately, the banks of the shore sloped
steeply, and Justine tripped and got her waders full of water. Not too long after that I felt the rod go
slack and reeled in a broken line.

I went to help Justine and amid gales of laughter we navigated our way back to the dock. Her waders
were about a foot too tall for her, which was workable until they filled with water. Afterwards, once
she got them out of the water, the extra weight made it too hard for her to lift them and she ended up
in a wet heap on the dock stairs, laughing at her inability to climb them. I helped her climb out of her
weighted wader prison and turned the waders upside-down; at least 30lbs of water poured out of them.

After all the commotion, wetness and trudging through the spawning ground, we figured that was a
good time to call it for the day. We changed into dry clothes and drove down stream to a dam to watch
the salmon jump. After seeing how much strength and energy it takes to get past the dam, I felt more
respect for the salmon that got away.

The next day we awoke to a neighbor’s dog wandering around the cabin barking at the fish jumping
below. We had breakfast together, and then split into activity groups. Grandpa went out to teach
Justine how to split logs (she was very excited to learn), David and I grabbed our bows and practiced
target shooting, and Grandma and Juno took pictures . Justine turned out to be a natural at splitting
wood; before long she had a nice stack of perfectly quartered logs. I tried my hand at one and managed
to make a small pile of kindling. David and I worked at trying to adjust our sights and then hitting
the target. My first few arrows totally missed, but as I got more comfortable with the bow I started
striking near to where I was aiming. After a few rounds we were getting pretty good at clustering our
shots tightly, so we stepped back, shot from 20 yards and still did pretty well. We both appreciate how
Grandpa is always willing to teach us a new skill.

After tiring out our arms, we ventured back down to the water once more. This time Justine fished from
the dock. The fish weren’t as active today and I only got a few glancing bites. When my hook got caught
on an underwater log that required far too much activity to dig it out, we figured that was a good time
to call it a day and get packed up. We’re on our way home now for a brief respite before we make the
drive to Pittsburgh to stay with John and Judy for a week.

Thanks, as always, to Grandma and Grandpa Noel for a fun weekend in the woods and water!

Nate and Justine

Long Lost Bells

Hey Everyone!

Grandma and Grandpa Giddings have been reminding me about once a week that we've not posted here in a while, and they are totally right!  Things have been rolling along - we're getting everything unpacked in the house but every time we empty a box, Mom and Dad send another along from their house.  We've been using the "one thing a day" principle to get things done, and that seems to be working.

I'm trying to remember all the things that we've done in the last month.  Last weekend we had our first houseguests; Sarah and LaWanna and their boys Samuel (not Sam OR Sammy!) and Boots.  They came into town for Melissa Giddings and Dan Whittaker's wedding, which was beautiful and fun!

A few weekends ago we met some of our college friends outside of Pittsburg for camping and a Zombie 5K.    Nate has been doing the "Couch to 5K" program this summer, and was really excited about the race.  It turned out the be very different from a traditional 5K, mostly because the runners were being chased by Zombies throughout the race.  He said that they would run like hell in large groups through the Zombie sections, then walk in the in-betweens.  There were various obstacles on the path like a large slip-and-slide down what seemed like half a mountain, and an army crawl under an electric fence.  Nate swears that it was fun.  Check out the before and after:

Life is never calm around the Bell household.  We have a litter of almost 5 week old Redbone Hound puppies.  They came from Ingham County Animal Control, where they don't have the space to keep pregnant females or girls with litters, and they are rarely able to find a foster that is willing to take the whole group, so ultra-pregnant Saffron came to us to have her babies.  She and her brood (Oregano, Tarragon, Coriander and Basil) are doing great out in the barn.

Next week we are heading up to fish Salmon at Grandma and Grandpa Noel's cabin, which is going to be a lot of fun!  Look out for fishy photos soon.

-Justine & Nate

Why Life is Like Monopoly...

We are homeowners... again!

We would like to welcome you all to our new home!  Please change our addresses to 8272 Braden Road, Haslett MI 48840.  The house is on 13.6 acres, which we will be sharing with our friends, the Coltons, who will be building on the back half.  Above is a photo of the front of the house.  It is two stories, with the garage on the bottom floor as well as two large rooms and a storage space, and then most of the living space is on the top floor.

The house is 1850 square feet, with three bedrooms and two full baths.  The master has a great suite attached with a walk in closet, Jacuzzi tub, and double vanity.  This is the view from the master bedroom into the master bath.

We closed last Friday, finally, after pushing the closing date back twice due to the bank.  The house was a foreclosure, but was built in 2001, so none of the appliances are more than 11 years old.  Also, the selling bank provided a two year warranty on all of the appliances, which is great since the air conditioner doesn't work.

This is the front, main room.  The open door you see across the way is the master bedroom, and next door is the second bedroom (and the second bathroom and third bedroom are tucked around the corner).  We love all the wide open space!

The kitchen is one of our favorite things about the house!  Very open and lots of space!  We love the island for preparing, and with a couple of stools, it will be the perfect place to have a relaxed dinner just the two of us, or with a few guests.

 As an added bonus, the pole barn actually is a barn!  There are stalls!  It sounds like the previous owners would go out west, buy mustangs, break them into riding horses and sell them.  Rumor has it that this may have been part of the reason that they had to foreclose, buying too many horses.

The house hasn't been without its challenges, already.  We had four things that we needed to get done within the first ten days post-close, in order to officially close it as a FHA loan; putting in a floor in the second bedroom, patching up some drywall, putting in a new vanity and replacing some shingles on the roof.  Due to the time constraint, we went straight over to the house with the intention to start working, but there was no power!  It turns out that Wednesday night there had been some strong storms which had brought down a number of trees all over the area, and it has snapped some lines down the road from the new house.  Couple that with a heat advisory warning, and we had a pretty sweaty couple!  Luckily there wasn't any damage to the house and we got some good work done despite the heat and lack of power. 

We'll report back soon with pictures of our progress.

Justine and Nate

Summer Sun Freckles

Greetings Friends and Family!

We’re checking in with you from Grandma and Grandpa Noel’s cottage on the beautiful Betsy River.  We’re here for the Memorial Day weekend with Grandma Joy, Grandpa Gale, Cousin Ben and his girlfriend Megan.  We’ve had a blast so far, just taking time to enjoy the sun.  It’s wonderful when you can put life on hold for a few days, and just relax.  Until I opened my computer to write this, I had no idea what time it was, and that felt great!

We were only able to come up for two days, but we’ve packed that full of a lot of fun and relaxation.  Early (for a Saturday anyway) yesterday, we packed up our car, grabbed Juno and drove 3 hours North. It was an easy uneventful drive, save for the clouds in front of us growing darker and darker. The weather forecast we checked earlier had told of blue skies and sunshine, but the rain said otherwise.  We pulled up to the cottage in the middle of a rain storm to find the rest of the crew immersed in a lively game of Yahtzee.  After the game, we sat and chatted and listened to the rain.  Luckily, as the afternoon came around the torrent ended and a beautiful sunny day followed.  We piled into a car and headed to local Frankfort for some shopping and fun!  There were a bunch of stores to checkout, and we tried some new looks – see what you think!

This morning we were awakened to French Toast and sausage, and then Nate got a lesson on how to shoot a bow and arrow from Grandpa.  Every arrow hit within a small area on the target, but Nate claims that’s due more to the bow’s fancy features than latent Katniss-like skills.  After that, Grandpa gave us two inner tubes, drove us down the road and abandoned us by the river side, telling us that we needed to find our own way back!  Luckily, the river wound lazily back to the cottage, carrying us right along with various wildlife like a Merganzer duck, river otter and a turtle sunning itself on a log. It was a beautiful ride down a fresh, albeit brisk, Michigan river.

We also have some exciting news – we put in an offer on a house, and it was accepted!  We are now in the no-man’s-land of paperwork that it takes to buy a foreclosed home, but we are REALLY excited!  It’s a beautiful place, built in 2001, with a master bathroom suite, finished basement, two car garage and 7 acres with a pond!  It needs a little work, but it’s in great condition, especially for a foreclosure. And after years of working on an old house, we’re excited about the possibility of maintaining and improving a house with modern amenities!  While located just outside town in the country, there is only a 10 minute drive to town. It’s the perfect place to bring up kids, though we’re still in our ‘not ready yet’ phase.  We’ll keep everyone updated as we learn more!

Love you all!

 Nate & Justine

A Dash of Christmas

Hello Family and Friends!

We're sorry that we haven't written in a while; we are on the brink of some really cool news about a new house, we hope, but of course everything is always more complicated than it needs to be, and so instead of putting this off any longer, we decided to send y'all an update!

During the unseasonably warm weather, we shipped out with Mom and Dad for a fun day in Frankenmuth.  For those of you unfamiliar with Michigan, Frankenmuth is a German themed town.  It is home to Bronners, the largest store in existence where it is Christmas 365 days a year!  What better way to celebrate the warmth than by going to a place with fake snow?

We went to Bronners first when we arrived, but they were closing for two hours in the afternoon, so we headed into town for some German themed food!  As you can imagine, it was just the Wurst!  We enjoyed every bite of these German dishes!

Next we wandered around the town, taking in the sights and snapping photos.  We went to various cheese and meat stores, found a place that sells herbs and seasonings, and scoped clothes and jewelry.  The weather was great, and made for good walking weather.

Last, we went back to Bronners.  Its an amazing place - it's so huge that we actually got lost for a little while, wandering among the ornaments.  There were ornaments for every country, occupation, and relative.  There are sections for every specific hobby and food preference, and in case they didn't have what you were looking for, you could personalize just about anything.  We wandered about the store, gaped at the ornaments, and got our photo taken with Santa:

All in all, a fun family adventure away from the norm.

In other news, we were surprised this month to see that the Louisville Guitar Society has signed up and begun an auction at FreeCharityAuctions.com!  This is the first group that has found us independent of our soliciting them, and we had a little dance party when we discovered that they were there.  Also, the MMCR auction, which Justine sets up and runs, is in its final weekend and has already raised over $1000 dollars!  Head over to www.freecharityauctions.com/mmcr to see if there is anything that you might be interested in!  There's a certain Virginia wine that has quite the bidding war going!

So, life continues to flow by.  We are looking forward to warmer weather, planting our garden, and hopefully our first crop of raspberries this year!  Wishing you all a berry sweet spring!

Love you!
-Nate and Justine

PS: It is rare that we talk with anyone, family or friends, and they don't ask how everyone else is doing!  If you want to write a short message about whats going on in your life, we would be happy to share it!

Sweet Home Michigan!

Hello Family and Friends!

This is going to be mostly a photographic post, but we'll get a few words in as well!  We had a fun visit to New Orleans, though the weather didn't really cooperate.  When we got there, we realized that there was a tornado watch, so we went straight to the aquarium and spent the morning there.  We had a great time talking about biology!  After we headed to the French Quarter to just wander around.  Nate wanted to make sure to have some authentic Crawfish Etoufee while we were there, so we found a restaurant and settled in.  While we were there, it poured and poured!  We didn't mind that the service took a long time because it looked terrible outside.  After we headed back to the car in the rain, and we had to roll our pants up to our knees because there was flooding!  We would run a ways until we decided that it was too wet, and then duck into a souvenir shop and try masks on each other.  And with all of these adventures, this is the only photo we took:

The next day we headed with Grandma and Grandpa to Bellingrath Gardens.  I want you all to know that I am not really a fan of flower photos (I have been teasing mom and Anna about the number of flower pictures that they take for a long time now... I think they are going to pay me back after this post!), but there were so many beautiful flowers that I couldn't resist snapping pictures, and I felt that I had to share them.  Aunt Joan, these are for you!

We found a little friend among the orchids!

Justine rocks the Rhododendrons!

Spanish Moss - Our first sign that we were South!

One of our favorite things was the Mardi Grad parade that they had in Gulf Shores.  We got there early and got a good spot!  Little did we know what we were in for!  The people on the floats would toss, no fling (hurl?) the beads to the passers by.  Nate and I honed our Ninja skills, because everyone thought that Grandma was the cutest in her wheelchair, and we had to catch all the beads so they wouldn't hit her!  It was a real-life video game with sparkly ammo.

Float in the traditional Mardi Gras colors!

Lulu's was one of the best places to eat in Gulf Shores!  Think fried green tomato BLTs!

This was the most detailed float that we saw.

Grandma with all of her bling!

I think that we are making it sound like we had nothing but adventures, but we did spend a lot of time just lazing around and exploring the beach.  We happily collected shells and walked up and down the beach.  We took advantage of the weight room and the hot tub a few times.

Last Thursday, the sun set beautifully on our time in Alabama, and we headed back home.  We were so excited to stop and spend some time Contra Dancing with Sarah and Lawanna on the way home, and then we were even more excited to see our dogs!  We are happily settled back at home.

Love you all!
-Justine and Nate