We were heartbroken this morning to have to back out on an invitation to lunch at our new friends’ house. Dimitri had been very under the weather last night, with a sore throat and general exhaustion, but when baby K threw up in my bed, that was the nail in the coffin. So, no church, which would have been stake conference. We did run some needed errands, including finishing up getting aunicas phone fixed! I broke the screen a few…
First up, my oldest had a birthday today! She turned 13, officially a teenager, and that makes *me* officially the mom of a teenager! We have a rule in our home that you must be 13 to watch PG-13 movies, so for her birthday she wanted to stay home with her dad and binge watch The Hobbit movies. Sounds like a teen to me. 😉 Now is when I have to share a story. We have come across many nice…
What a great day! If you haven’t realized yet, I am an eternal optimist. Every day is great, even the days where I don’t get any sleep or my kid pukes on me or whatever. This wasn’t one of those days, it really was great. It did start a little weird. We had pulled in to our second choice of campsites, since our first was ful. We did notice some riff-raff, and some of the dirtiest restrooms I have…
All of my kids have negative feelings about Nebraska. They are really unfounded; they are a result of a massive heat wave the only 3 days they have spent there. I am hoping I can erase those feelings, and today was a good start. We left the campsite and headed north to Lincoln. We arrived around 2 at pioneer park nature center. I knew we would all need to stretch out legs after being in the car so long. It…
Every day we learn some. After being forced to take a break Sunday when we popped a tire, Deon and I had a little talk. He felt so much better after an evening doing nothing, in a nice campground, by the water, and so did the kids. It was time for a little break. So last night we returned to the same campground and paid for 2 nights rest. Today, we did nothing. The kids played at the lakeshore for…
Today was satisfying, in fulfilling a yearly tradition while 2000 miles from home. We went to the fair! It is a bigger fair than ours, but a lot of the similar things. We saw horses, cows, chickens, pigs, and rabbits. Aunica requested to see the pig races, so we checked that off our list. We saw two canine shows, one police (a little dull) and one called jump. We watched a man carve a wood sculpture with a chainsaw, petted…
Woke up well rested after a night in the outdoors (ish). We didn’t rush to get a move on, but the tire store was super quick. We were in and out in 20 minutes with 2 new tires and one new rim. Today we hit the Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve. I am so glad we had more time today than being rushed yesterday. We did a 2 mile walk (they call it a hike, but Deon takes offense at…
So, it’s Sunday. We are all set, having researched a meeting time and place, eaten a nice breakfast, and put on our “Sunday best.” 9am, shiny faced we walk to the chapel to find…locked. Weird. Make some phone calls, and due to a scheduled priesthood meeting, they have postponed church until 11, and then only for one hour, foregoing classes. Weird. After church we stopped at a novel idea of a fast food restauraunt: it had an outdoor playground with…
Today the plan was to drive from Kansas City, MO to Manhattan, KS. A new state! In the morning we stopped by the Harry Truman home to get the kids their junior ranger badges. We met a very nice (and informative) ranger that was able to give some valuable advice to my oldest as to what degree path she might like to take. Another nice ranger pointed us in the direction of another national historic site, brown vs board of…
I have decided that history is really my favorite thing. And English (because it involves reading). Today we went to the Harry s Truman museum. It was so cool. There is so much I didn’t know about this president. He really made some decisions that changed the course of our history (dropping the atomic bombs, beginning integration in the military and White House, recognizing Israel as a country). This Torah was given Truman by the president of Israel in gratitude….