We had talked about going home today. It was to be our mid-vacation break from our vacation (if that makes sense at all). It’s a long drive from Muskegon to Cleveland, five and a half hours on a good day. But we had been away from home for 6 days now. 6 days is a long time to spend in someone else’s home. People have a way of doing things in their own home and so do you. We had planned our trip to stay in Muskegon until the 27th, then head back to Cleveland for 3 days and then back to Muskegon for a New Years eve party at the Keefe’s (Erika’s sister).

However, staring at eleven plus hours in the car just to come back to where we were today. I figured my time would be better spent working from the Steinberg basement, running on the snow covered roads and hanging out with the two best girls in the world. Erika agreed as well. We’ll call it a calculated risk.

So, why is this post entitled a visit to the Aldrich’s? Good question. Erika’s cousin, Ashleigh, was in town. Ashleigh’s family is from Kalamazoo and we had planned on stopping by on the way through to Cleveland. Now that we weren’t going back, we still wanted desperately to see Ashleigh. Ashleigh used to live with us when we first moved into our home in Lansing. She’s been an intergral part of our family for the last 10 or so years and she just moved to Portland. We realize that we really won’t get a lot of chances to see her and we weren’t about to let this one slip by. Actually, this worked out better for us because we would be able to see her whole family and stay longer as we didn’t have to drive to Cleveland after the visit.

Ashleigh’s father and his wife Sandy live just Southwest of Kalamazoo. Asheleigh’s brother Adrian was also there with his wife (Jackie) and two kids (Caden and Addison). You should know that Addison is just a baby and only a few months old. MIra hadn’t gotten in the door before she started screeching, “Baby, baby. Baby mommy! Baby Daddy! Take it! Take it! Take it!” Yes, we were all thinking the same thing. Take what? Take the baby? Take it where? We weren’t really sure what she was talking about. But she calmed down a bit when she got to hold baby Addison. Here’s a great shot of that:

Mira and baby Addison

We got to hang out with the Aldrich’s for an hour or two and Mira started to get a little bored. We improvised and created a modified tent/tunnel out of the coffee table in the living room. It worked great as Mira and Caden got to crawl around that for another half hour or so whilst we caught up with the Aldrich’s. What does a modified tent/tunnel look like? Here’s a sample:

Mira in the Aldrich Tunnel

We had thought that we might head up to Lansing if we had enough time. So, we volunteered to take Ashleigh over to Soccer Zone on the east side of Kalamazoo where her boyfriend Eric was playing in a soccer tournament. We weren’t 2 feet in the door when Mira started crying and wanting to leave. Lucky for Mira that Erika and I just hadn’t gotten to talk with Ashleigh enough yet. So, we took shifts and one of us would walk around the building and the other one would chat.

Probably into our second shift, one of us was clever enough to drag Mira onto one of the empty soccer fields. That was all it took. Once she realized that she could run and chase balls indoors, we had to drag her out of the those empty soccer rings screaming when we wanted to leave. Suffice to say, we stayed at Soccer Zone and let Mira play to her hearts content. It’s tough for her to get out at the Steinbergs where they measure snow in feet and not inches during the winter.

We left shortly after Eric’s 2nd soccer match and stopped at one of my favorite restaurant’s of all-time: Bilbo’s Pizza. We got some pizza and bread sticks just like the old days in East Lansing. It was wonderful. We didn’t have enough time to head over to Lansing, so we went back to Muskegon and Mira was sound asleep shortly after arriving.

Great day, lots of visiting with family and friends. And of course, we got to spend a ton of time with cousin Ashleigh (who we just adore)…