Michigan Vacation pt. 1

Rather than reposting I’m going to redirect you to the Eric Barz Photography Blog to see pictures and a brief recap of our vacation to Michigan.

Update

Quick update with photos for everyone.

We are officially in the home stretch for the school year, now that spring break is over the countdown to the end begins. Personally, I cant wait.

Nothing extremely exciting going on at the homefront except a little bit of travel. Over last weekend we took a mini-vacation with our friends Kayla and Santi to California.
Liz and Kayla had been planning this as a suprise for us guys since just after Christmas, and if you know Liz, that is quite a feat for her to keep it under wraps for that long. I was kept in the dark about everything except the date until just days before we left.

The main purpose of the trip was to catch a soccer game in LA, the LA Galaxy against San Jose.
This was the home opener for the Galaxy and a real treat for me to see players like David Beckham and Landon Donovan in action. We ended up with great seats to catch the action.

Here is a wide view of the Home Depot Center in Carson, CA. Home of the Galaxy

Liz and Kayla enjoying the game

David Beckham taking a corner kick

A free kick later in the half

The final score, Beckham and Landon Donovan scored in the 1st half right in front of our seats it was pretty awesome.

The rest of the time there was for some R&R, and just exploring. We visited where LA all started as well as Chinatown and also spent time exploring old town Pasadena, where we stayed.

All in all, a very nice time. We did this as a bit of an early anniversary get away and realized that it was our first non family visiting vacation since our honeymoon….
Note to self, do more travel with just the two of us..

The Countdow is On

As nice as it is not to have problems like snow and ice storms here in Arizona, I am officially excited about being in Michigan soon. My short visit in November for hunting season was the prefect primer for my excitement about coming home for Christmas. I can say with confidence that I am ready to see some snow and from what I understand there has been plenty to go around compared to last year. Couple the prospects of a white Christmas with my being fed up with work, it makes for a level of excitement that borders on obsession…

The countdown to travel day is on and it sits at 7 days. . . . come quickly!!

Happy Holiday Season & a quck update

As difficult as it is to believe (particularly when temps are just dipping in to the 70’s) the holiday season is upon us.. As my wife will tell you, I have a bit of a love:hate relationship with this time of year. I enjoy what the traditional meanings of this season stand for, but often lament the way that they are celebrated in culture today. I enjoy Christmas music as a general rule, but loathe it before December 10. I enjoy that people are often motivated to be charitable, but wish that it didn’t take a special season for that to happen. There are many more but I don’t want to Grinch out any one’s holiday zeal.. Just a number of thoughts that struck me today that I thought I would share..

On a more practical update note.. Some excitement of our own lately, I traveled home to Michigan for 5 days to do some hunting w/ my dad and will have venison by Christmas at the latest 🙂 Liz had a visit during the same time from my mom, who spoiled Liz rotten and enjoyed a girls day at the spa. We spent turkey day with friends Angela & Kyle who prepared a masterful feast, it was great to hang out with them and their family and friends, thanks for opening your home to us. Liz was a mad woman and went shopping at 6:15 Friday morning “just for fun” particularly as we have completed most of our Christmas shopping already. I will never understand the “fun” in that experience. And the countdown is on for the return to Michigan for Christmas, the report is that snow is falling regularly and we cant wait, only 22 days.

As always, check out the latest in photos at our family flickr page
www.flickr.com/photos/barzfam
or Eric’s portfolio page
www.flickr.com/photos/ericbarzphotography

Update

Well with just over 8 weeks gone in the school year, I figure it is about time to do an update. I had one of these started about 6 weeks ago but never got around to finishing it so if you are seeing this it means I actually followed through (yeah for me!!).

Since our last update, we have been doing a whole lot of the same and have settled in to a pretty good routine and toss in some spice here and there. Generally, we are diong the work, home, sleep, wake, work…. routine but the exciting bits are the best part.. I have been continuing to meet with a group of developing worship leaders at the church and attending practices on Thursday nights which has been such a blast getting to know such a talented group of people. Liz continues to meet her need for animal indulgence at the Arizona Humane Society at least 3x a month where she has moved up from dog walker to adoptions (quite a promotion). Together we continue to get to know our new church family and get to do fun stuff like cook out, have parties, and generally find any excuse to be with our new friends. Also, thanks to a new season in the life of our worship minstry I am getting the chance to lead worship for the Saturday night community and co-lead Sunday mornings along with our awesome worship leader/pastor Gareth (shameless flattery, but he may read this). This has been a neat experience and I feel privilaged to be a part of what is going on at Joy during this time.

The next few weeks should be pretty exciting. This Saturday, Liz’s aunt will be traveling from Michigan to stay with us for a few days. We will be hitting the Grand Canyon and Sedona as well as all of the local attractions while she is here. Also, while in Sedona we will be meeting up with Kevin & BethAnn Shoemaker, our pastor and his wife from Lansing. They are visiting for a conference in Flagstaff and will be meeting us on their drive up north from the Phoenix airport.

This coming weekend also kicks off Liz’s fall break so she will be out of school for 2 weeks. October 15 begins Eric’s lowly 1 week off but we already have another trip to Sedona planned with the Ozorios so it should be a great start to a relaxing week.

For those who want to know (you know who you are) Roxy is doing well, she is on a plan to get some of her summer weight off… Opposite process of Michigan winters.. the dog doesnt like walking in the heat so she put on some pounds over the summer instead of an inactive winter.

Wedding Image..

So our long awaited new computer has arrived and is functioning awesomely.. This also means that I have been going crazy working with images from vacation. One that I was blown away by today is from the wedding we went to on our way home.. Here is the beautiful bride Kim looking radiant.

Hope you like it.. look for more to come.

Michigan Recap

So to resume where the rest of the vacation recap left off.. We spent a great week or so with my parents in Mt. Pleasant and got to hang out with my sisters and parents which always proves interesting.. One of the fun things we did was I made my sister and her friend do a fake portrait session with me.. Here is one of my faves from that. My little sister Leah. looking totally rockstar…

Also during our stay there we took a couple of trips.. First to Michigan State along with Leah, and Liz’s sister Jenny who will be following in the proud footsteps of their siblings (us) at the greatest university in the state.. We walked all over campus and showed them around and stopped at the ever famous MSU Dairy Store where they make their own ice cream from the dairy research done on campus.. Our second trip was with the whole Barz family and we went to Grand Haven/Grand Rapids..

We did one day at PJ Hofmaster park between Grand Haven and Petoskey (photo of the gals on the beach) and then the following morning we went to Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville and heard an awesome message in a new series called “God is Green.” To check out what its all about see Dr. Matthew Sleeth’s book called “Serve God, Save the Planet.”

Liz and I were fortunate enough to celebrate the 4th of July with fireworks twice once at a phenomenal show in Bay City with friend Noah and Sarah and the second time in Lansing with the Doby family. Here is Liz w/ her family checking out the sweet fireworks in Lansing.

After a couple more days with the Dobys we headed back to Lansing for the weekend to stay with our friends Vicki and Deej. They have been some of the closest people to us from our days at Michigan State and it is always a joy to hang out with them. One of my highlights from the weekend was getting to go fishing on Saturday and catch a bunch of bass particularly with Deej because he is such a knowledgeable fisherman and was the person who got me interested in bass fishing. Also, Roxy had some new friends to play with during the time with Vicki and Deej.. They have two black labs Cooper and Chief who by the end of three days were fast friends.

Our last leg of vacation took us to Kokomo, IN where we were attending the wedding of one of Liz’s college roommates Kim. They had a beautiful ceremony and a rockin‘ reception afterwards and we had a blast seeing all of Liz’s friends from college there after a year of everyone being spread across the globe.

One of the pictures from the wedding…

And now back to regular life… School starts again in less than 2 weeks…

We’re Back!!

So we have officially returned to the AZ, got in last night and are starting to get used to living out of our own home again..

Updates from the rest of our vacation will follow soon but wanted to make sure those waiting with rapt excitement knew we were back in town. Give us a call if anyone wants to hang out.

Michigan Update

Some people know about my ever growing photography hobby (addiction) and so my lovely wife let me upgrade my camera to a semi-pro level DSLR (for the non gadget folks, thats pretty nice). So I have been documenting our life since about a week ago today when my new toy arried so here are some pictures from our time here so far.

Liz w/ Roxy doing a fake portrait session for me.

At the Ann Arbor Summer Festival for an outdoor movie.

And right by Liz’s parents house was the Michigan Challenge Hot Air Balloon Event which we went to a bunch of times to see cool things like this:

We also got to go to the Detroit Zoo and see tons of cool exhibits but the most well known and unique is the polar bear exhibit and we got to see him up close.

We capped off the week with Liz’s sister, Jenny’s graduation open house. Here is Jenny (far left) with some of her friends celebrating.

This week we are hanging out with my family and maybe making a few trips to visit friends as well.. Stay tuned. And as always check out more photos on Flickr using the link to the right.

Home at Last

So after two excruciating days stuck in the car, we have finally arrived to Michigan. Pictures and more updates to follow. Thanks for all those who prayed for safe travel.. It was long but we are glad to be home.