March 7- It’s a blowing, cold night on the open plains of Manitoba. The lights of Steinbach are in our rearview mirror as we drive on gravel roads south towards the border, our 2005 Buick LeSabre, inherited from Grandma Jul when she passed away, fights thru drifted snow as we go. Little did Grandma know that her car, which she didn’t think could make it 20 miles to Dodge City every time she went, would now be cruising the Mennonite tundra of Manitoba and in -14* to boot.

We left Michigan on Morgans spring break last Friday, March 1, after school and drove straight thru to Madison&Nathan’s house in Altona, a 15 ish hour drive. We arrived in the wee hours Saturday morning and slept for a bit before spending the day with Nathan’s. They’d only been home a few days but had the guest room ready for us and alot of their stuff out and organized! We had a relaxing time being together and even managed to convince the guys to get us to a thrift store. Nathan toured the three of us around one afternoon so we have a better idea of where Madi is going to be now. They had a nice reception the 3rd, Sunday evening and we got to meet a lot of lovely people that they will be hanging out with. Madi and I had some good conversations and I was very sad to tell them goodbye. I have so loved living a mile away from her for the last 7 months. We left Madi’s mid-morning on Monday and drove an hour over to Morgans sister Kandis&Micah and family who live near Greenland church. We had a fun couple of days with them: took the girls to school a couple mornings, shopped and visited Grandma Bronson in Winnipeg, had good conversations, spent a happy supper with family in Whitemouth, and had coffee and talkies with Lyle&Agatha one afternoon. It was over too soon as always. So we drove home from Manitoba thru the night and got home last Thursday so we could help Dillons load the truck Friday and bid them adieu on Saturday morning. We found Black Cat Coffeehouse and Ashland Baking Company in Ashland, Wisconsin, on our way home and had chocolate croissants that rival the ones we’ve had in Europe so that was a fun stop.

Morgan says I need to write more about the mundane in between of our life and it certainly seems like it’s been awhile since I’ve written but none of it feels very mundane. Besides my sister getting married and moving away to Altona, my brother Dillon&Renae and my dear little Max and Brett left our house in the early morning Saturday and moved away from Michigan also. Basin, Wyoming, is the luckiest place. We have LOVED the last 7 months of living by them. It really was God who worked it all out so we could all spend time together yet before going to our separate ways. But oh how I will miss them all. Morgan and I are so sad but also happy for the doors opening for all of us.

In the meantime with my family gone from Michigan and Mom teaching in Gardenview, we have decided to move back to Enderby permanently this May after Morgan’s school is out in Michigan! It feels so good to say permanently. I am happy to have a place we feel is home. I sometimes worried I wouldn’t find that because of all the moving around that has formed my life so I always wondered how we’d know. We are going to soak up the last couple months we have with friends in MI and in the meantime get our bus ready for the summer road trip out to Enderby and we are so excited:)

After Dillons left on Saturday, Morgan worked at school and I did some cleaning at the house. Then we decided we were too bummed to just sit around this weekend so we drove down to Detroit.

We ate German pancakes at a place called The Pantry and explored abandoned areas around the city. My favorite building was the St. Agnes Church. There are assorted neighborhoods that are completely abandoned and the houses not demolished are grown up with scraggly weeds and trash in the yards.

The old Packard plant which went out of business in the 1950’s is due to be demolished by the end of this year so we went there too. It covers around 80 acres and is such a cool skeleton building. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, it was cloudy and very gray outside so all the abandoned places appeared even more sinister than usual and I had some questions about some of the neighborhoods we drove thru. We drove across the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor for abit because Morgan hadn’t been anywhere around there before. We enjoyed some free time while our car was searched coming back into the US and honestly it’s impressive how those border patrol men can make you feel like coming up with something to confess. Like we wanted to come clean in response to Officer Schultz’s questioning but we didn’t know what to confess to. So that was a fun side date.

Have a lovely week♡ c&m