A flurry of friendship.

Surprise! I've snuck back a bit early to share photos from my adventures with Becca and my time on Big Star Lake. Upon further consideration, it hardly seemed fair to force the entire city of New York to share face time. So upon my return, my week in the Big Apple will get a post all to itself. Plenty of room to stretch its long limbs and breathe clean air free from taxi exhaust.

But before I hop in a van at 6am tomorrow and ride across the country, here is a summary of how I "rested up" and "prepared myself" for New York.

On Wednesday night, Becca arrived shortly before I got home from my New York pre-trip meeting. There was jumping and hugging and excitement and smiles, all the appropriate hoopla necessary for welcoming a friend you've been separated from for over a year. After hours of catching up and a couple Woodchucks, we headed to bed to get some sleep before our three-day adventure exploring the wonders of Grand Rapids and introducing Becca to life as a Turner commenced.

I took advantage of finally having an intrepid companion and took Becca only to restaurants I had never been to. I realize this strategy could have been catastrophic. Thankfully, it was quite the opposite and we enjoyed incredible food. We made stops at The Electric Cheetah, Parsley Mediterranean Grille, and Cherry Deli. The Electric Cheetah pulled ahead as the favorite in no small part due to the root beer list. Becca is quite the root beer connoisseur, so a root beer selection boasting 30+ brews from all over the country was right up her alley. Definitely recommend a visit if you're ever in the area.

We reveled in the beauty of the Lake Michigan shoreline and dared predictions of thunderstorms to come true.

We enjoyed a stroll around Reed's Lake and Gaslight Village in East Grand Rapids.

We watched my sister perform as Mayzie in Seussical the Musical.

And the next morning, it was time to send Becca off to continue her tour of the Midwest. So grateful for the opportunity to reunite with a dear friend. Hopefully I'll be able to sneak over to her new home in D.C. sometime this fall. A year is far, far too long to wait to see her face.

Right after Becca hit the road, I went into work for a short shift, came home to pack, and was off to Big Star Lake to spend the rest of the weekend with Alec and his parents at their cottage. It was just over 24 hours of great food, even better friends, beach volleyball, karaoke, water sports, and sunshine. It was the perfect way to relax and fill up my cup before embarking on what's sure to be an incredible week of spilling the contents of my heart all over some awesome high schoolers and New York City.

So glad you came to visit, Becca. Can't wait to see you again. And Spauldings--you da best.

Mmk. Time for a handful of sleep before I'm off to New York. See you in a week!

Always Gold by [Radical Face]

Good afternoon, dear ones!

Suddenly, my slow, lumbering summer has taken off at a sprint. Tonight my dear friend Becca comes to visit. She was one of my most excellent friends while I was studying in Denmark. But she's not Danish. This is typically a point of confusion as I try to explain the relationship. Though we're both from the great United States, we've never met on American soil. Hopefully she still finds me interesting even when we're not standing on cobblestone roads surrounded by gazillion year-old buildings.

She and I will get to adventure together through Saturday and then Alec and I will head to his cottage in that mysterious region all Michiganders refer to as "up north". Here we are sure to enjoy beautiful sunsets and sand between our toes.

And before I know it, at six o'clock on Monday morning, I'll be hopping on a van to New York City. This weekend, I was asked if I'd be willing to lead a week-long urban ministry trip for high schoolers. Obviously this was a question to which I responded, "yes, please!"

Just when my hunger for adventure was becoming overwhelming, I find myself poised to overeat. Extra napkins, please.

And so I leave you with a video of a wonderful song about the love between two brothers. And will return with plenty of stories to tell and photographic evidence of my exploits.

Splendid saturday.

This past Saturday night, my sister and I finally got it together and spent some time together. But not before I enjoyed a lovely afternoon of cider and homemade pizza with my dear friend, Alec.

When I returned home from Alec's, Amy, Annie, and I hit the road in search of sunflower fields in Montague, Michigan.

Of course, upon our arrival, we found only green fields for miles. It was then that I remembered the last time I had seen these wondrous flowers had been in mid-August. Spirits remained high since what this tiny country town did have to offer was just as lovely.

It should be noted that all of these pictures were taken over the course of about an hour during which Amy was driving I was occasionally saying, "Ooo! Pull off here!" at which point she would drive the car into the tall grass on the side of the road causing me to open my door and become immediately surrounded by field. Eventually, she decided she would be better served turning around so as to pull off on to the shoulder of the opposite side of the relatively deserted country road where the grass was shorter creating a more obvious landing strip. At least, this is the line of reasoning I had assumed she was employing until she abruptly turned the wheel and drove straight off the road and into a rather deep ditch. She promptly threw it in reverse and tried to get out, as anyone would, but it was immediately obvious that we were pretty securely lodged in this particular roadside depression. By this time, truly not even five minutes after we found ourselves in this predicament, at least four vehicles had pulled over to help us and several more had slowed down to make sure we were well attended. Within the next ten minutes, we had been successfully pulled from what could easily have been the pit of despair by a very kind-hearted gentleman with a pick-up truck and tow strap. We have both concluded that the country is da best.

I decided to spare my sister the embarrassment of having her folly recorded in sharp detail so I didn't grab Annie, but I'm not above instagramming her failures. Interested parties can find what they're looking for here.

At this point, we decided we deserved some food after what we had been through.

We followed up dinner with stroll around the nearby park and marina.

And then we made our way home. Of course, not before stopping to pick up some ice cream.

Hope your Saturday was as lovely as ours.

Doomsday.

I wish I was an inventive person.

As creative as I may be and as capable as I am of finding a solution to a problem, I will always hold in my heart a burning candle of love for parameters. Just enough instruction to empower me to take it from there, but not enough to crush my soul. This is why I love craft projects and recipes and instruction manuals. A box to check? For me? You shouldn't have.

But tell me to write four pages of fiction or to paint one square-foot of still-life and you will find me in a rather unpleasant mood.

This is my long-winded way of explaining that any story I write to you here, I couldn't make up if I tried.

Thus, I begin to recount my most recent Thursday.

It began like any Thursday might. My mother, having the day off, suggested that we ride our bikes to a neighboring town to enjoy some pizza together. Looking forward to 26 lovely miles together, we set off. The trip out was uneventful and the pizza was delicious.

About a mile into our return trip, my mother's best friend's son called to inform us rather nonchalantly that his mother had sustained a head injury and extended a cordial invitation for us to join her at the nearest urgent care center. Upon further questioning, we surmised that there had been blood but the bleeding had slowed to a trickle and a concussion was unlikely. Apparently there had been an incident involving a bike and hook and a garage and lots of awkward maneuvering. We waited to be picked up, loaded our bikes into the mini van, and made our way to the urgent care center.

According to the professionals, minimal damage had been done, but five stitches were in order. We were glad everything was ok, but disappointed our afternoon of bike riding had been derailed (pun intended). We returned home with just enough time for me to shower, become presentable, and head off to work.

Not even an hour into my shift, a woman sitting on the patio fainted and vomited. The order of these events remains unclear. What was most certainly clear was that she required medical attention and a fire truck was there ten minutes later. We cleaned up the mess, made some margaritas to calm the nerves of her excitable friends, and assumed that if each shift were a fireworks show, we had already seen the finale on this one and could now enjoy some time lying in the grass until the parking lot cleared.

Instead, the vomiting turned out to be a relatively exciting opening number for a police drama in which somewhere around the seven o'clock hour, two unmarked police cars, a K-9 unit, a police hummer, and what appeared to be a UPS truck painted with the police department logo pulled up and proceeded to raid the house across the street. Men in helmets and absurdly thick Kevlar vests with guns of a size I didn't know we'd ever need in western Michigan poured out of the UPS truck. A man with a megaphone began shouting commands (i.e. "get down", "put your hands up", things that seem simple but I imagine become less so with a gun in your face) and we decided to evacuate the patio. We rushed around, handing people glasses of water and cashing out customers so they could go home to their theoretically criminal-free neighborhoods. Around eight, four brave souls decided to risk sitting outdoors and, until they left around nine thirty, someone got arrested every time I came out to check on them. We decided I was either a harbinger of justice or doom, depending on your perspective, and should never come to work again to prevent the entire neighborhood from going to jail.

True story.