Vacation Day 2 - August 23rd, 2009

So I had to upload each of these pictures individually, so it will probably take me a bit longer then expected to post summaries of each day of our vacation.

Here are some notes from that day.

There was a flock of birds sitting on the ground near our site. Peder and Mari kept walking up to them until they flew away and then would come running back giggling and screaming.

*We visit the playground at the campground and just had fun.

All 3 kids on the tire swing.

Peder climbing to look through one of the bubble view areas.

Mari doing what she always does....picking up rocks and putting them in her shoes.

Emmy all dirty and on a mission.

*We spent time on the jumping pillow. Jake tried it out when there weren't any kids on it.

*We drove into Rapid City to do grocery shopping. It was horrible, the kids were beyond crabby.

On our way into town we saw a Mountain goat and her baby.

*Peder was very excited to see the "faces." This continued for the rest of the week. We were staying less then 1o minutes from Mt. Rushmore so any time we went anywhere we drove past it. It was Peder's favorite thing.

*All the kids playing with Jake in the little pool (1-1.5 feet deep).

*All 3 kids jumped into our arms from the pool edge while playing in the big pool.

*Peder picked me a beautiful purple flower.

*The kids go their first showers ever. Peder and Mari loved it, Emmy screamed the whole time.

*There was a HUGE thunderstorm the night.

*A HUGE bedtime battle with the girls - Daddy won.

*My parents called to check on our electricity....they love us and care about us.

*Jake's threat to Peder, "If you don't go to sleep, you'll have to go sleep by Mommy." It made me laugh because he made it sound like such a bad thing, but Peder did go to sleep. :) Oh....and asked to sleep by me the next night.

*Shopping at the House of Scandanavia and deciding I want my scrap space decorated in the Scandanavian style with rosemaling.

Update, Kind of

Well, I have been trying to continue our vacation story since yesterday, but CANNOT get any pictures to upload right now. I've tried several different web browsers and always get the same error message.

I will continue trying as I have time today and hopefully can get some more days up by the end of the day.

Vacation Day 1 - Saturday, August 22nd

We're home! We got home at around 6:30p tonight. I took a ton of pictures and wrote down little tidbits from each day of our trip. I'm planning to do a short summary of each day of our trip. Notes that I wrote down from each day will have an * before them. Enjoy!

All 3 kids in the car and ready to go by 6:15a.

Our van and camper parked out front....before the trauma of the day starts.

*We were SO proud of ourselves for getting out of the house by 6:15a. We made it as far as Bernard (2 blocks) before realizing we had a big problem. There was a loud knocking and we couldn't figure out what was going on. Jake finally figured out that it was coming from the left tire of the trailer. We pulled over at Thojmpson Park and Jake realized that someone had loosened ALL the lugnuts overnight while the camper was parked out front. I called my parents for tips from my dad, filed a police report and started looking up different places to stay. My parents came, my dad went with Jake to try to fix the trailer and my mom came to our house to help entertain the kids. My dad knew what we needed to do to fix the trailer and we were on the road by 8:40a.

*Emmy fell asleep with her rice krispy bar on her lap. She didn't even take a bite of it.

Peder reading one of the books he picked up at a rest stop.

Mari being cute and smiley.
Jake was the happy chaufer. He had to drive the whole way because my back and hip just can't handle driving any distance right now.

Me during my very short nap.

*Mari tucked in her Teddy Grahams into her blanket.

*The girls sang a ton during the trip.

*Driving along seeing fields full of sunflowers with their faces toward the sun.

*Peder saying, "Stop it! I'm trying to color a little bit please!"

*When we got the camper set up the electricity didn't work and we had to set up in the pitch black (at 9:30p).

*Jake smacked his face on the camper trying to get the supports set up on the camper. He had 2 huge scrapes on his face for the rest of the trip.

Ladies of Grace 08 19 2009

Time for Week 3 of Ladies of Grace over at my pal Beth's blog. I really thought about this a lot this past week and tried to apply it to my interactions on a regular basis. I've noticed a difference in my patience level while out and about shopping and just running errands.

This week's experience happened at a gas station in Rogers while we were running errands on our way to our sister-in-law's parents' house. When the Powerball reaches over $200 million I will sometimes buy a dream for $1. I'm don't really do it often just because I don't really get the opportunity to go into gas stations very often because the kids are usually with.

But on Saturday Jake made a quick pit stop and I went in to buy a piece of a dream. I walked into the store and got directly into line. There was one person checking people out while another woman was doing something with a computer behind the counter. As soon as she was done there was a line of three of us. One person checking out, a woman waiting in front of me and then me. The woman did the standard, "I can help whoever is next." And as the woman in front of me was trying to step over a guy cut through our line and booked it over to the newly opened line. He showed us his one candy bar (almost like it was ok because he just had that) and checked out. I just kind of shrugged my shoulders. If he was in that big of a hurry, let him be, I didn't really care at that point. And I was kind of shocked by this reaction. Normally I would have been indignant and made some loud comment about how rude it was.

The woman in front of me got helped and I went over to the other woman who had checked out the candy bar guy. As he was walking away she asked, "Did he just cut in front of you two in line?" I responded, "Yeah, but I don't really care. I'm not in that big of a hurry." And she said (loudly, as he was walking out of the store), "Yeah, but that's just rude." My response was, "Yeah, I guess so." I left and we shared "Have a great days" and went our separate ways.

It just got me about how the other woman's reaction would have been mine if I hadn't been making a concious effort to be "graceful" in my every day life.

Ladies of Grace 08 12 2009

It's week 2 of Beth's Ladies of Grace Blog Carnival!

I spent a lot of today thinking about how to have a more open heart in my every day interactions. I haven't been the easiest person to be around lately. I'm crabby, exhausted, overwhelmed and stressed out, which means I'm not very nice. So I'm trying to change that, one person and one interaction at a time.

My story for this week is about a friend of mine. In recent months I've been kind of snarky about her, impatient with her and not very understanding. This past week I changed that. I just decided to stop. I changed my reactions. I intentionally went into conversations with her expecting positive and expecting to GIVE positive responses in return. And I laughed more because of it. Enjoyed our conversations. Just liked her again. She hadn't changed, I changed my perspective on the relationship. It made a world of difference.

Today's Smileys:

1. A great PT appointment. It resulted in a lot of pain, but we also figured out what I really need to work on to get my strength back and reduce my overall pain.

2. A definitive plan for the next 6 months with my orthopedist and great explanations of everything that will be happening from his Physician's Assistant.

3. I have 5 moles on my back that often get caught on my clothing and can be painful. I am getting them removed if insurance covers it. WA-HOO!

4. Mari giving me loving and snuggling right when I need it most.

5. Peder telling me, "Don't smile, Mommy. No smiling allowed!"

6. Major progress on my cross stitch.

7. My mom calling me after every appointment I have. Sometimes it drives me crazy, but I know she does it because she cares about me and loves me.

8. Jesse attacking Mari with kisses.

9. Sounds of the girls tickling each other and giggling away while they are supposed to be napping.

10. Sweet corn, potatoes and onions from my cousin Amanda's and Grandpa's garden.

Ladies of Grace

So I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I seem to be behind on EVERYTHING lately so you get it a day later.

My pal Beth over at Walk A Mile is doing a blog Carnival called Ladies of Grace (see the button on the side of the blog). Here is a quote from her blog describing it more:

This experiment is meant to help us explore and experiment with the simple concept of opening our hearts-simply making space for the Lord and others. Because this experiment is more about becoming than doing , it is simple, doesn't consume time, actually creates energy and therefore self- perpetuating ... This should be easy to do, but I believe the results will be more profound...because we are in search of a new heart...a heart like His!

So this is something I've been working on A LOT since our book group started at church last summer. I've been trying to be more gracious, more understanding and more loving. For quite awhile I would read something in the books and think, "I really wish so and so would read this book. They would learn a lot from it." I quickly stopped that and repeated the mantra my mom used to say to me growing up, "The only person you can control is yourself. Don't worry about what other people are doing."

So I've been thinking what to write about because I was trying to figure out what would be "good enough" for this. I finally decided to write about my PT appointment that I had last week.

My appointment was at 2p and Jake and the kids dropped me off because at that point I was still unable to drive myself more then 20 minutes without a great deal of pain and if I was in pain I couldn't drive at all. I got there about 10 minutes early. I got brought back to the room at about 2:05p and was told the physical therapist would be right in. At 2:40p I went back out to the front desk and asked what was going on. I had debated about walking out the door and not ever going back. I was angry and upset at having to wait that long and also worried about Jake and how he was entertaining the kids. I decided to be patient and just wait a couple of more minutes. I'm SO glad that I did. Several weeks later I am almost completely without muscle pain and the care I've gotten at the PT has been excellent.

If I had let my annoyance guide me and had left I would still be in a great deal of pain and no closer to a solution for my hips. By being patient, opening my heart and being understanding, I have gotten a very positive experience.

Go share your experience at Beth's blog Walk A Mile!