Our main goal has been to get the bus into storage before the snow hit, mostly so that we didn’t coat the underside with salt. Unfortunately, it snowed every. single. day. we were up there. Mom’s happy lovenote did not soften the sting of cold snowflakes.

I spent a whole morning catching up with Rachel, whom I was supposed to visit in September but my flights were canceled due to Hurricane Florence. And by “catching up” I obviously mean playing with J-money and snuggling the twins.

Mom had some projects for us, so we helped her bottle a concord grape blend. Nothing says vacation like drinking before noon.

Dad had a hankering for monster cookies, so I picked up some M&Ms and dug in. It’s early November but the only M&Ms option is Christmas colors.

The original recipe called for 12 eggs and 18 cups of oatmeal. Even making a half batch of cookies resulted in a massive mountain of monster cookies. No regrets.

Later in the week, Mom decided we ought to bottle her other carboy of wine as well, we called in reinforcements for that one – Kurt came over with his youngest munchkin. Again with the drinking wine before noon (none for the tiny alien, of course).

After doing chores for her, Mom returned the favor with haircuts! Well, just one. I still had to cut Kyle’s hair.

At some point, we resigned ourselves to the snow. We took the camera out and snapped a few pics until we could no longer feel our fingers. I keep a winter coat at their house, Kyle keeps a pair of boots there. Neither of us thought about gloves though.

We didn’t visit too many people this round, since we saw most of my extended family in July. We weren’t there for very long, either. The few people we did visit with all wanted to see the bus – we bought it right before we moved down to Charleston, so none of our Michigan friends have seen the camping interior that we built and installed. We made a special trip out to Bob and Rachel’s so they could see it in day light.

On the way home, Mom wanted to drive. We stopped in a church parking lot so she could take it for a spin. Of course, even in the church parking lot of a tiny village, someone stops to talk to us about the bus. After a couple loops of the parking lot, Mom headed toward the road and said “Can I drive it home?” Neither of us answered. She drove home. Fortunately I am wearing sunglasses in this photo so you can’t see the fear in my eyes. She is the only person besides us who’s ever driven the bus, and as of right now she’s driven it in the snow more than I have. We have no problem with other people driving it, but I think she’s the first one who’s asked!

That pretty much wrapped up our time in Michigan. It was way too short of a visit, originally we’d been planning on taking a long drive up in the bus and then spending several weeks in Michigan and Indiana with family, but finances kept us working slightly longer than planned, and bus work kept us in North Carolina slightly longer than planned, and between the two we’re quite a few weeks behind schedule.