Vacation Adventures!!

Well, I am sitting in the camper listening to the rain while in the Rocky Mountains. We have been gone for a little over a week and already have lots of stories to tell. We loved our time in the Black Hills of South Dakotah. We have been there before but this time we stayed in a campground near Hill City and really enjoyed the area around there. It is basically south of Rapid City SD. The only bad thing was that we had storms three nights in a row. Bad Ones, too. It hailed twice!! The camper keeps amazing us at its durability. We lay in bed listening to the wind, rain, lightening and thunder and wonder when it will just fall on our heads and yet we wake up and all is well.

Next we drove through Wyoming and stayed at a hotel one night. YEAH! I was so glad to get in out of the rain and actually have a bathroom within a few feet of the bed for one night. Wyoming is beautiful in its own way. There is so much space and you can see for miles and miles that we could see the storms we missed and the one we didn't. Then on to Denver and car trouble.

Correction: tire trouble. We were set to arrive in Colorado Springs early when we almost had a blowout on the camper. Justin was able to change the stripped tire in the blazing heat of a Denver highway. That tire trouble cost us 3 hours so we arrived when we originally planned. You may not know that the reason we went to Co. Springs was for the wedding of Justin's mom to a man from San Diego. His daughter lives in C.S. so the wedding was there - halfway for all of us. Well, we met our new cousins, and in-laws and really enjoyed ourselves for a few hours. The fun stopped (at least for a few of us) when Hannah fell on the trampoline and broke her arm. Thankfully the hospital was close but it was a slow night in the Pediatric unit so we had to wait for a nurse to arrive before we got a room. Then we had to determine when the best time for surgery was. Because she had eaten right before the accident she couldn't have surgery until at least 7 hours later. That was 3 am...so we decided to just wait until 6 so we could sleep a little. We finally got into the room at 1:30am and thought Hannah would like a movie to settle her in. I thought we'd watch a little and then she'd be out. Well, needless to say she watched the whole movie and we really didn't get to sleep until 3:30am. Surgery was at 6:45am. They came and got us up at 5:30am to get ready. Surgery went really well, and fast but she was in a lot of pain when she came to. The rest of the morning we watched tv and moved her toward discharging.

The wedding started at 1pm and I wanted to at least see a little. We arrived just when everyone was mingling around after the ceremony. Hannah was a trooper. She was really funny in the hospital - a bit demanding - but really she just did not want anyone touching her arm.

Now, what is it three (I can't keep track) days later she is still in a bit of pain but back to regular activities. She broke the upper arm, just above her elbow so her cast is from her wrist to half way to her shoulder.

We drove in to Estes Park Colorado tonight and were in awe. It is so beautiful here and I love the smells. It brings me back to when I was a kid and we camped here. I am struggling a bit with the altitude but hopefully tomorrow it will be better.

Summer is here..

Summer officially starts tomorrow and I am a bit nervous. While I love all three of them they are really crazy all together! We are off this week to Wisconsin and then we head west the following week. I love the travelling and time away from the day to day, ie laundry, dirty toilets and unloading the dishwasher. I always have these goals of books we are going to read in the car and then the pull of the dvd player is too strong to resist. I do have Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time to read to everyone so I hope we'll get that one read by August. Well, laundry calls.

Oops I forgot to post on Hannah's b-day!

Here is our newly graduated (from Kindergarted) and newly 6 year old! Hannah was such a momma's girl. She wouldn't let anyone else hold her but me. She also had another curious habit of putting her hands up my sleeves whenever I held her. She is certainly a tactile kid. She has grown into an exuberant, fun, creative kid who I am proud of.