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I was walking in downtown St. Louis last week when I looked up inside the half dome above an inset doorway.  It was stunning.

My best friend Susan and her husband came to visit me for a few days the week of the fourth.  We had a marvelous time. I was too busy watching them enjoy themselves to take many pictures, but I have a few to share.

I took them to the Cherry Festival, shopping in downtown Traverse City, and at Nawbin Beads.  We saw a baseball game, and went hiking at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  We drove scenic M22 (M22 is to Northern Michigan as Highway 1 is to California) and stopped at Fishtown for a bit...

I took them to the old Northern Michigan Asylum which is now the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, where we took the twilight tour into the steam tunnels and an old building which hasn't been renovated yet.  We also toured the botanical garden now located at the old Asylum's barns.

 I spent last week at the office, trying to catch up on paperwork.  I also got a bit of work done on the mini house, I'll post progress pictures tomorrow probably.

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I'm back from St. Louis.  I came home from the company meeting to a sick husband and an empty refrigerator.  I also came home as head of a month long research group.   I'll talk to you all again in a month.

View from the top of the Gateway Arch...

...and inside the caves at the City Museum (which is not a museum)...

I did go visit my mother today, before I start my research.  She has a fluffy, snuggly kitten named Jack.

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There were four in the courtyard of the hotel I stayed at....the guy at the front desk was too busy to ask....thought I could figure it out via google, but it's eluding me....

I had the cabinetry built Saturday by noon, except for the door and appliance fronts, which I could have finished that afternoon had I not got badly sidetracked.  I got it into my head that a stainless steel stove, oven, dishwasher, sink, faucet, and laundry machine might be too much stainless for one kitchen, so I decided to use the white sink from Shapeways that I didn't use in the bathroom because it was too large.  It isn't a square sink, it's rounded, and angular, which demanded complicated cuts be made to inset it into the counter and jutting from the cabinet face a bit.  I spent the whole afternoon trying, but couldn't get it quite right enough to meet my standards.  All I accomplished was ruining three pieces of wood (now I have to buy more) and exhausting my vocabulary of curse words.

I bought tickets ages ago for Husband and I to see Umphrey's McGee in concert Sunday night at the outdoor amphitheater at Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids.  We left after breakfast Sunday, made the two hour drive, visited the Grand Rapids Art Museum, checked into our hotel, then ate a fantastic meal at Gravity Taphouse Grille before attending the concert.

Monday we spent five hours at the Gardens and Sculpture Park before we drove home.  If you live within driving distance of, or are ever in the area of, Grand Rapids, Michigan, I highly recommend you go.  It was great.

This post is about to get picture heavy....if you're not interested, you can stop now, there is no more talk of miniatures....if you are really interested (or very bored) you can click here to see all 325 pictures I took.  I'm a bit camera crazy.

At the GRAM....

Umphrey's McGee, my favorite band to see live....

At Frederick Meijer Gardens, in the Sonaran (North American) desert conservatory...

the Kalahari (African) desert conservatory...

the carnivorous plant room...

in the Victorian conservatory...

the tropical conservatory was my favorite...

outside...

in the Japanese garden...

There were lovely waterfalls, streams, and ponds all over the park...

zen...

part of the bonsai collection...

the Michigan Farm Garden...

I thought the farmhouse looked too fancy to be realistic, but they said it's a 3/4 scale model of Lena Meijer's childhood home.

The animals were all bronze sculptures, which seemed fitting...

Does anyone know what this plant is?  It looks like a rose, but it is most definitely not.  There was no tag, and google has been no help at all.

in the woodland shade garden...

we probably could have spent another hour touring the children's garden, but we only took a few steps in before we turned around because, well, children...

gorgeous flower beds with great color combinations...

A couple of my favorite pieces at the sculpture park...

I will end your brief tour at the koi pond...

The last of the pictures taken at the Grand Rapids Art Museum...

Monday afternoon Kate and I went shopping at a huge mall.  I tweaked my knee on the stairs in the parking garage and it pained me all afternoon.  I did quite a bit of sitting on benches in the mall while she shopped.  I didn't do any shopping, since I just spent a small fortune on new furniture earlier this month.

Tuesday morning we went to the Grand Rapids Art Museum before we drove home.  They had a very interesting exhibit by photographer Edward Burtynsky about water.  Kate and I enjoyed it very much.

"Over the past five years, Burtynsky traveled across the globe, weaving together an ambitious representation of water’s increasingly fragmented life cycle and the roles that it plays in modern life: as a source of healthy ecosystems and energy, as a key element in cultural and religious rituals, and as a rapidly depleting resource. These images—sometimes elegant and sometimes haunting, many bordering on the edge of complete abstraction—hover between the worlds of painting and photography, forming a compelling global portrait of water that functions as an open-ended question about humanity’s past, present, and future relationship with the natural world."

Lots of pictures of my favorite room at the Grand Rapids Public Museum...probably too many....

The Grand Rapid Public Museum is in a different building than it was last time I visited.  The new building is a great space, very modern and up-to-date, but the exhibits were pretty much the same.

The old-town street is kind of neat, but the cheap accessories make it very fake....surely they could purchase more realistic fake vegetables and chickens.  And hide the modern lights, for goodness sake.

The plane and clock made me think of Brae, and how spot-on accurate her miniatures are....

Quilt pictures for Susan....the detail is amazing...

One room in particular amazed me, lots of pictures of that one room are coming in the next post.

I will close this post with Susan's gratuitous polecat picture...ha ha ha ha ha, I crack me up.

First the good news...my daughter passed the exam, she's now a Registered Nurse.  She got her license in the mail earlier this week; we celebrated with pizza, champagne and brownie cheesecake.

Now the pictures....

We stayed at the JW Marriott downtown.   The hotel was fabulous, though the room service food could have been better.  We especially enjoyed the dual massaging heads in the large walk in shower, and the separate soaking tub....luxury hotels are wonderful.

The view out the window at night....

Looking back at the hotel from the other side of that blue bridge....

I lived in Grand Rapids for a decade, before I moved back home 15 years ago, so I wasn't going to go to the public museum, since I've already been more than once.  I did end up there though, because I'm not as travel savvy as I like to think I am. I didn't check the hours of the art museums I had planned to visit Monday until that morning, then discovered that's the only day of the week they're closed.  So, while Kate was taking her test Monday morning I walked over to the public museum, since it was just the other side of the bridge, there wasn't a good movie on HBO, and the hotel spa was out of my price range.  I'll put those pictures in the next post; I've been told posts that are too long and picture heavy aren't the best for followers who read this blog on their smartphones.