Hello!

Well, I haven't had too much to write about since our trip to Lake Huron, but thought I might need to post a short update. The last two weekends here were fairly quiet after the frantic pace of memorial day weekend, and the weather was kind of drab as well. It got beastly hot here early last week, up to the mid 90's and very humid. Thunderstorms rolled through Wednesday night and broke the heat, bringing temperatures back down into the 50's! I keep asking people if this is normal for Michigan, and the most common response I get is that if I don't like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change!

Poor Chelsea had the most excitement this past week, and not of the kind that she would have liked. I noticed Wednesday afternnon that she had a bloody spot on her right hip, and upon close inspection it looked as if one of her fatty cysts may have ruptered. It's happened before, but this time the cyst felt quite hard and large. We drove down to the veterinarian's office about 2 miles from here, to see if I could get an appointment to have her seen, and they had me bring her in right away, and the doctor took a look at it. Something was definitely going on, and they did a needle aspiration to check for infection, which they did find. So she came home with us and was given antibiotics, and an appointment in the morning for surgery...they wanted to get in and see what was there, and clean it out to prevent any further infection and rupture. And they did find a tumor there, and removed the entire thing, cleaned it out, and sent it off for a biopsy. We are optimistic that it will return as benign, like her other cysts have always been that we've had tested, but we sure could use a few extra crossed fingers out there! She is doing fine, though, but seems quite embarrassed at her shaved hip, and is also a bit annoyed that she's not allowed to go swimming until the stitches come out next Monday.

We went grocery shopping yesterday, and as I'm sure many of the women out there can relate to, when Al accompanies me shopping I always seem to end up with more items in the basket that what is on my list :-)! He found a Ghiradelli fudge brownie mix that he had to have, and while I was at work yesterday afternoon he made up a batch. They are fabulous, but now we had more brownies than we could possibly eat, so what were we to do?? Well, I figured maybe Lorraine and Doug hadn't made plans for dinner and would like to come and have hamburgers with us, and brownies for dessert. Lorraine works with me in the store, and Doug is a daytime ranger, and they live next door to us in their Challenger motorhome. They were delighted to come, and gave us an excuse to get our first campfire going since we've been here :-)

This  weekend Lorraine is making some strawberry shortcake that we are going to have as a special in the parkstore for Father's  Day, and we'll see how that goes. Tomorrow, Al and I leave for a three day "weekend" trip to Mackinac Island and Saulte Ste. Marie. I hope to have many pictures and stories to tell upon our return. If I don't get back here before Father's day, everyone have a great one!