Busy!! ,

We have been so busy with things to do in the UP. We headed up to the UP shortly after we got back from Europe. We celebrated the Fourth of July, and shortly after that Brian's dad passed away. I headed back down state for that, and Jeff was busy working at his mom's house with his brother. I flew back here on Friday night, and Saturday, we got up and met Scott & Jill for picking strawberries. Jeff's mom and Jill's mom also came along. We had a lot of fun! Sunday morning was spent canning fresh jam, and for the afternoon we took off to Minocqua, Wisconsin (about 1 hour drive). It is a touristy area with lots of beautiful lakes, and a cute downtown. We had dinner overlooking a lake and went to a water ski show. It was crazy! I had never been to one before. Just before we left, Jeff's brother, Scott, predicted Jeff would say "I can do that," after the waterski guys did a trick...sure enough, he did...after the trick that they switched from a slalom ski, to a regular canoe paddle. For those of you who don't ski, skiing on a canoe paddle behind a boat going 30+ mph would be a huge feat, apparently one that he wants to practice on. We'll see how that all works out. We had a good laugh about it anyways. Today we took off for the Porcupine Mountain National Park. We started at Presque Isle River Falls, and hiked there for a couple of miles, then hiked in to a lake for about 5 miles. We then drove over to the Lake of the Clouds, and spent some time on the beach of Lake Superior. Beautiful scenery! I came home and made a couple strawberry rhubarb pies (Jeff's favorite) with our remaining strawberries and some rhubarb we took from Jeff's grandma's garden. They look good! I will post some pictures as soon as I can.