About EmmaLeigh



Hi and welcome to my blog! Thanks for stopping by.

I was born and raised in Upper Michigan, and it's where I'm raising my family now. Here in this blog I'm sharing some of our moments from The Copper Country, Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, and the Yooper culture as it's being lived in real life.

I look forward to sharing our stories and images with you.

Welcome to Copper Country Living. I'm glad you're here.

-EmmaLeigh

Popular posts from this blog

Why I Write Letters to my Stepchildren

I write letters to my stepchildren. My stepchildren live with their mother, 3.5 hours away from us, during the school year. There's not much we can do about that since they need to attend school, but keeping in touch with their day to day can be hard. Last year I started writing them 'snail mail' letters, complete with self-addressed, stamped envelopes. While I've never gotten a reply from either child, I know they are at least getting my letters and they know that their dad and I are thinking about them. It's my own little way of showering them with love from a distance. Phone calls with kids are awkward. I don't know if you've ever tried to talk to a kid on the phone but they're easily distracted and it's not always possible to follow their train of thought. Talking on the phone with our kids has the added 'fun' of their mother hovering in the background, listening to every word and interjecting into the conversation when she's
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Loving Through the Mess- Painting

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Hubby and I have almost finished painting at the new ho use.  We've been living here a few weeks now, but it's starting to finally feel like ours and not just someone else's place we are squatting in. As I mentioned in my previous post about moving while pregnant , we bought our new family home from smokers- who were gross enough to smoke indoors. Which meant there was no removing the smoke from some things. After lots of cleaning (hello vinegar), throwing away of window treatments (they were ugly anyway), odor sealing primer, and fresh paint you can't tell there were once smokers here. And damn was I shocked at how much the smoke residue was stressing me out. I haven't always been such a neat freak. I used to spend a lot of time in places that reeked of cigarette smoke in college, and didn't think twice about it. But when I got pregnant, the reading material about foods I couldn't eat sent me into a spiral about all the poisons out there that we can
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New Year, Some Goals

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Happy 2020! New Year's Day Sunrise 2020 Today doesn't feel much different from yesterday. But it's regardless a fresh beginning, even if only a date on the calendar. We started out this morning with bright sunshine but still plenty cold- perfect January weather. This is the time when people usually talk about resolutions and changes they are going to make. I don't have any changes I plan to make this week, but I do have aspirations and goals for the coming year ahead. I don't usually make resolutions any more. In the past decade, very few of them made it to February and so I've found making a few main goals for the year works better than "resolutions" to change things. Of course, baby will be arriving in a short while and so most of my upcoming plans revolve around him. There's lots left to do and I've been putting off a lot of it until the holidays were over. So I guess my first goal for 2020 is to be prepared when baby arrives.
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Winter is Coming 2019/2020

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First Snow Yesterday morning as Hubby and I were drinking coffee, I glanced out the living room window and  could see a flake of snow falling, here and there, very intermittently. "Look honey, it's snowing!" I exclaimed. He turned from the TV to take a look. "Look at that, it sure is." he replied. "I'm going to go hunting tonight." "Ok." And we went back to watching television like it was nothing. Less than a week ago we were on a boat in 70 degree weather, and now it's snowing. That's how weather goes this time of year. This morning we woke to actual snow on the ground and I took some pictures. It's not snow the way we have snow in the real winter, but the contrast of the fresh white with the fall colors lit by the rising sun just made my morning. It's a chilly 34 degrees right now and I could see my breath as my fingers got cold taking pictures. My poor marigolds are done for the season. They
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