Yesterday we visited Grandma at the nursing home and we were glad to find that she is doing better than we had expected. After dinner we went to our Aunt's house and had dinner there. Aunty gave us lots of pop cans which we are collecting to raise money for orphans. In Michigan to help prevent litter, when you buy a pop you have to pay an extra ten cents. But if you bring it back and recycle it at the store then you get your ten cents back. So for every ten empty pop bottles we collect, we have raised a dollar.

A Trip to the Gardens

Yesterday we arrived in Michigan and everyone is excited to be here. This morning our friend Christine took us to Fredrick Meijer Gardens. Our favorite thing at the gardens is Leonardo DaVinci's Horse sculpture. It is the color of dark chocolate, which is why we call it the Chocolate Horse. Here is some information about it.

The Story Behind DaVinci's Horse

In 1979 Charles Dent read about DaVinci's plans to build a colossal horse and decided to take on the project. He studied Leonardo's drawings and plans and began to create the giant sculpture, however Dent died in 1994 and the sculpture was left unfinished. When Dent's sculpture was enlarged in 1996 people realized that it was proportionally unstable and Nina Akamu was hired to make corrections. Fred Meijer read about Akamu's work and began to support the project. As work progressed it became apparent that the changes which needed to be made to the sculpture were to costly and so the statue was destroyed. Akamu then began a second sculpture of the DaVinci's horse which took almost 3 years to create. In 1999 one of the finished sculptures was placed in Milan Italy. A month later the other 24 ft "American Horse" was placed in Fredrick Meijer Gardens where it stands today.

(This information was gathered from Nina Akamu's website.)

Here are Lily and Robyn sitting on the Horse's hooves.

Posted By Angela

Our first stop in this year's journey north was in the hills of Tennessee where we spent 3 days with Hope's college friend and "kindred spirit" Liz and her wonderful family of 10 (soon to be 11). Liz's daughter have been friends and role models to our girls and her boys are a match for Lily's love for energetic games.