Getting settled and beginning to explore

The first few days after my mom's passing were mostly a blur. Thursday night we went over to Uncle Nick's place to have dinner with the family and just be together after our loss. The next day on Friday the 16th, Katie and I went discing with Uncle Gerry and Sam at Cass Benton. Afterwards, we picked up Russ and headed downtown to eat lunch at Lafayette's Coney Island and Katie got her first taste of a real Detroit Coney Dog! That night we went to see Toy Story 3. After that it was down to business. We were busy gathering pictures for the boards, setting up the arrangements for the mass, and other things of that sort which took up most of our time. We had around 700 people come through the funeral in total. It was amazing to have everyone around for support and I am eternally grateful for everything. After the funeral mass on Monday the 19th, we started out on our exploration of the Detroit area! The first spot we went to was Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. This place is stuffed in the back of 2 mini malls in Farmington Hills and was an awesome find! Russ had always wanted to go there and we made the most of it for his debut. He changed in $20 for quarters and we spent the next 2 1/2 hours doing everything from fortune tellers to the Simpsons arcade game. Marvin himself was even there looking on as we played all the old mechanical machines. There was also a tic-tac-toe playing chicken that I battled for the coveted prize of 100 tickets. Each game we played ended in a cat's games, but in my defense, the chicken didn't play by the rules. After we left the arcade we went out to Walled Lake and had dinner on the water at Bayside bar and grill. On Wednesday the 21st we spent most of the morning cleaning up the house and getting it in order again. Katie cleaned out the fridges as well as the rest of the kitchen, Russ did the vacuuming throughout the house and I cleaned the bathrooms. The house was virtually spotless by the time we were done... Mom would have been proud. That night we had the family and a few close friends over to help out with the thank you cards for everyone. I thought for sure we would be working well after midnight, but we went to work right away and had them finished before 10pm. We had tons of food left over from the funeral and even after everybody ate we still had plenty to fill the fridge right back up. It was a huge project to get done and I am thankful for everyones help who made it an easy and enjoyable night!