Hello! My name is Crystal. Thanks for checking out our family’s blog. To get started, I wanted to give everyone a quick introduction to our family and share the reasoning behind creating this blog. Let’s get started!
My husband, Chris, and I have been married for 6 years. We have 2 beautiful daughters: Morgan (6) and Jenna (2). We also have 2 dogs who are each 7 years old: Dale (Golden Retriever) and Luna (Siberian Husky).
Chris and I have both grown up in the suburbs near Detroit, Michigan. Chris is from Royal Oak and is a Licensed Builder and owns his own company. I am from Berkley and am a Sales Account Manager for an automotive supplier. We’ve both lived near our hometowns our whole lives, but have always dreamed of moving farther away and having more land/space.
When Chris first started his business, he was doing a lot of work for his best friend’s parents at their cottage up north. (About 2.5 hours away from us.) From there, he started working on their coffee shop, ice cream shop, pizza shop and rental home. He quickly grew familiar with the area and started to get to know a lot of the people living in the area. We also vacationed up there several times over the years.
A few weeks ago, Chris and I were up at Houghton Lake with friends and heard about a new home that was just listed for sale in Lake, MI. (This is where he was doing all of his work for his friend’s family.) We decided to take a look at it on our way home and quickly fell in love. It came with a lot of land and was exactly what we wanted in our forever home. So we decided to pull the trigger and put in an offer.
That brings us to today. We are closing on our new home in several days and ready to list our Royal Oak home for sale soon. We are so excited to start our new chapter and move into our dream home.
But it’s not all rainbows and butterflies. We (I) do have some concerns about this change. For one, it’s much more remote than the area we’ve grown up in. There are not tons of chain restaurants, shopping malls and grocery stores on every corner like we are used to. And I can’t get instacart deliveries to our new home – seriously?! Secondly, I’ve struggled to find a lot of activities for the kids. For example, Morgan is currently in swim class and both girls are in gymnastics class. I haven’t had a lot of luck finding things like this near our new home. (Send some recommendations if you know of any!)
However, we believe the positives highly outweigh the negatives and we can’t wait to begin “raising the kids rural”. We hope you’ll follow along with our journey as we make this transition. I plan to share lots of stories of our experiences and will definitely be asking for help/recommendations as we make this transition. If you know our family, you already know that we will have some good/funny stories to share in the upcoming days!
Thanks for reading!
xoxo
You need to check out art classes in Clare, for the girls. we can talk more about that in person. Also, Mount Pleasant has a lot to offer as far as chain restaurants, Axe 🪓 throwing and fantastic restaurants that aren’t chains. You will also be close to Alma, Cadillac, Big Rapids, Ludington and Travers City. Day trips are much easier, being up this way. Oh and Leelanau for all the wine tasting. Lol. There is so much to explore and so much that you already know up here 🙂 I feel that you will love it!!
We are so excited to explore the new area! We definitely need to talk about those art classes! Morgan LOVES art, so this would be right up her alley!
So excited for your new adventures! 🤩
Thanks! We’re so excited too! Can’t wait for you to come see the new place!