Our first overnight destination was the Maumee Toledo, OH area. Traffic wasn’t bad up to this point despite it being Memorial Day weekend. We traveled from Toledo to visit Hershey Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The kids thought it cool and hadn’t seen so much chocolate in their life. From there we traveled to Strasburg, Pennsylvania to visit the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum. Jayden and I could have stayed there a lot longer, but we had to continue on to visit the Crayola Factory in Easton, Pennsylvania. We got to see a mini crayola factory and all things color. We also got to play with some boats and cannals. We survived driving through New York City and Connecticut even though “Carmin” (The Garmin GPS) let us down in a few spots…more on her later.  We managed to arrive at my Sister’s place on day three.

It rained the first two days we were in New Hampshire so we decided to do a few things that didn’t require us to be outside…shopping and visiting a few places. We went to the Cape Neddick Lighthouse on York Beach, Maine, and shopped at some outlet stores in Kittery, Maine. The following day went Boston to visit the New England Aquarium, and Ikea.

Finally, on May 29th we had no rain! We headed to The Flume Gorge and then up to a fogged in Mt. Washington.

We also made extensive use of Steve’s Kawasaki Mule (Red Gaiter) and 4 wheeler. We also visited Hampton Beach a couple of different days. Jayden loved the ocean, but Josie hated it. Karrie and Steve also threw a party for us with Steve’s family and their friends. It was fun to meet them all and have kids play/make new friends. Steve also hooked up his leaf blower T-ball machine. It was hard to say goodbye as we had such a good time out there.

On our return visit we stayed overnight at the Wolbrinks’ in Liverpool, New York and then made our way to Niagara Falls, New York. We also missed the Supper Nanny, but saw her car. We arrived back at our place on June 4th after another night’s stay in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Here are a few tips for anyone taking long road trips. Get your hands on a GPS. That thing saved us so much and let us find places that we normally wouldn’t have gone to. Yeah, I can read a map, but this gave us the flexibility to do something at a whim instead of having to plan out the whole trip. I did have the hotels booked for on the way out before we left, but didn’t book them for the way back. Garmin along with the Marriott 800 number got us places to stay on the way back. Another thing that I’m glad we got before we left was the iPass/EZPass for tolls. We only found one state that we had to actually pickup a ticket and pay at the end for tolls. The rest of the states we used the iPass. It was so much easier than having to stop and pay someone. We also packed Josie’s little porta-potty thing. That saved us a few times. Her bladder really is as small as she is.

All in all, we had a great time and trip. The kids were great and Kim had lots of activities planned for them to do in the van.  She’s so organized. We wouldn’t have been able to do it had she not had everything setup the way she did. Now we just have to figure out where we’re going next summer!

The complete set of pictures can be seen here.

We are still in Iowa City tonight. My Dad had his testings this morning/afternoon. During the afternoon they couldn’t keep him awake to ask him questions and get the testing done….so they were going to just send us home and come back next week.  but…we asked if we could just stay tonight and get it done in the morning. So that’s what we are doing.  We found a hotel close to the University that wasn’t flooded..(Hawkeye country…YUCK )  My Dad has literally gone down hill since we got to the hotel.  My Mom is recovering from surgery three weeks ago so my Sister and I are handling the brunt of everything. My Dad was very, very, very non-coherent after he had a nap and all that. He knows who we are, but he’s talking about farming in the field, book sales, and going to school tomorrow.  It’s very sad. Then we had to try and get him to the bathroom.  He’s also very immobile tonight. We are hoping it’s just from sitting a lot today.  We don’t know if we are going to be able to get him out the door in the morning if he’s still like this. My sister and I aren’t quite “mighty” enough. So…that’s what we are dealing with right now. We know that Walgreens down the road has a wheelchair we can go buy if all else fails.

This is about the most depressing day I have had in a long time. My Mom says this is the worst he has ever been so far.  Hopefully we can make it through the night without calling 911. We don’t know.

So, needless to say, we don’t have any answers yet. Hopefully we’ll know more tomorrow. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be good news, but we’ll at least be able to know more about the lightning and what it actually did to him.

Thanks for all your prayers and support. This is insane!! I never thought it would come to this. We have a feeling the nursing home is in the near future. I dread that very much, but we know my Mom can’t handle him either. It’s a lot for three of us right now!

Around the same time period, Jayden and Josie got pink-eye and then gave me the pleasure of experiencing it too. Needless to say Josie ended up getting it twice and Jayden three times before it was all said and done.

Kim’s Mom had surgery back on the 19th so I watched the kids (I took last week and this next week off from work) while Kim went and waited with the rest of her family. We took the kids to see Grandma Pat that afternoon and then went back again that night to help Kim’s Dad get back to our place to stay the night.

This memorial weekend was rather interesting to say the least. On Friday Kim came back from shopping with a friend and said that she had some interesting news for me. As soon as she said it was about her Dad, my heart sank as his health has been questionable as of late. The good news is no health problems that he currently has was the issue. The bad news was that he had been struck by lightning while sleeping Friday morning. Dale was sleeping when he felt the lightning bolt start up his feet and continued up through his spine and ending at his head. He especially felt it when it hit his back as he has metal rods in his spine from previous back surgeries. He told Pat that he thought his legs had blown off when it initially happened. It’s odd that he even drove himself to breakfast that morning as he was pretty incoherent later that morning. The lightning knocked the picture off the wall and left a mark on the white paint (see larger image from link above).

So we decided we’d head down to Creston on Saturday after attending a couple of graduation parties. It’s always an eery feeling going somewhere when you’re not sure what to expect. Yesterday Dale feel asleep a lot (he fell asleep with his breakfast in his lap). He also slept through Dinner. Fortunately he was doing a lot better today. He even drove himself to the restaurant for breakfast this morning.

It’s amazing that more damage hadn’t occurred and I consider it a miracle that Dale even survived. So all in all, quite an eventful month.
 

Back at the home ranch…the kids are doing pretty well. Josie is working on getting some teeth now so Sunday night was a tiring night as she didn’t want to sleep much. It amazes me how growing teeth can be so painful. Josie’s also crawling all over the place including going up any and all stairs she can find. Of course she can’t come back down yet, so we have to run up and get her.

Jayden has been keeping his end of the deal up being an almost 3 year old; the almost daily melt down and his big brother attitude. He is as curious as ever and loves to “do things on his own”. In his words, “I will do it!”.

Kim was very busy taking care of the kids last week, as well as, organizing a garage sale (Jayden’s pile and Josie’s Pile). It went over pretty well and we got rid of quite a bit of stuff. It amazes me how much stuff one accumulates having kids.

It’s good to be back in the groove now, but the Florida trip was fun. See more pictures in the Informatica Set

Last weekend we had Christmas on the Wagner side. We all had a good time and watched the normal movie, “Christmas Vacation”. We all got some good presents and more presents.
Yesterday Kim and the kids hung out with Emily and Mady. The kids exchanged gifts and apparently Jayden wanted to keep opening gifts…even though there weren’t anymore. So, I think Jayden is getting the hang of Christmas or at least the gift part. haha.

Josie has been growing a bit…not as fast as Jayden did at her age, but still growing. She had her 6 month checkup yesterday and was a whole 12 pounds. She’s starting to sit up on her own now. She’ll sit for about a minute then fall over.

Don’t forget to good and if you need help tracking Santa be sure to visit the Santa Tracking Site.

Merry Christmas!

Anyway, I made my way down to the courthouse bright and early Monday morning. I found a place to park and made nice to a lady aimlessly finding her way too so we could look lost together. We found where we were supposed to go, along with the other 100 people or so. I got settled in the “Jury Room”. And settled is the word. I always wondered why it took so long for a trial to get started. Man, it’s because picking the jury and getting that ready, takes HOURS. The judicial time clock is very slow. They may say, “We’ll be back in a couple minutes to get you.” That actually means, “Another 20-30 mins. and we’ll come and get you.” It was almost like sitting in church, but knowing you’ll be able to go home for an hour and not have to sit on the hard pew anymore. Well, that’s not the case. I managed to ride the pine for about 7 hours on Monday, three hours yesterday and another 2 and a half today.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, but there’s alot of sitting around and doing NOTHING! Alot of time wasted and alot of government money wasted. It was very frustrating and very overwhelming all at the same time. By the time I left on Monday my head was POUNDING. So, Tuesday roles around. I was to return for the jury selection on a trial, which I ended up not being on. THANK GOD. It was a sex abuse case. The victim: 11 year old girl. I don’t think i would have been very objective considering kids are my profession. I got told I wasn’t going to be on the jury and was relieved. Only to find out 5 minutes later, I’d have to come back on Wednesday. GGGRRRRR!!!!! So I went in today (Wednesday) and wasted another 2 and a half hours of doing nothing. I was actually told, along with 50 other people, that had better things to do, that we could go home. Man, it’s such a waste. Can’t they come up with a better system for jury duty?

So I’m relieved today to know, that my civic duty is done for 2 years. But there needs to be some change. Stop wasting people’s time. Get things going in a timely matter. Very annoying and very frustrating. I wouldn’t have minded doing “my civic duty,” but I also have two children to take care of and why would I pay for day care? Like the state is going to reimburse childcare costs. I even called Kevin’s mom down here today thinking I could be in the court room until Friday. So not only did this whole thing affect me, it affected Kevin, Jayden, Josie and Kevin’s mom. If I had a “real job” and didn’t have to worry about the kids it would have been a good experience. It was nice to see how some of the court stuff is done that you don’t see on TV. But change the system and make it easier for everyone. I don’t wish this upon anyone. But if you do get called, take a book, magazine, I-pod, and whatever else along, to keep you busy. You’ll need it. Oh, and a cushion for the pine!

Jury duty was only a small portion of Kevin and my great week. We ordered the wrong windows to replace Josie and Jayden’s room. We have to take those back and get the right ones this weekend. We got a storm door, only to get it home and find it was the wrong size that they had given us. And our fridge gave out on Saturday so we had to buy a new fridge. We lived out of a ghetto cooler until today! This week can be over any day! I’m ready for a new one.

Oh, but it’s not over
Saturday Kim’s Mom came to town so we could go pickup the windows we ordered two weeks ago at Lowe’s. We decided to also get a storm door while we were at it. “I need a 36×81 storm door like this one.” I told the helpful Lowe’s window guy. Took the thing home and was going to install it with the help of Tony…Opened the box and wouldn’t you know I got the only 32×81 door that they had. For some reason the Lowe’s guy gave me the wrong one. So, we took all the child seats out of the Vibe loaded the door up (Yeah, it can actually haul an 8′ article) and exchanged it. I’m kind of glad though as the windows that we got were designed for a “drop-in” replacement instead of a regular replacement. The replacement windows that I should have gotten have a flange around the entire window which is what I needed. So, this Saturday Tony and I will make another trip to Lowe’s to return these windows and order some other ones that will work.

It gets better
The highlight to all of this door not fitting, wrong windows, fridge done-n-gone broken, and Jayden doing a face plant is that Kim is on Jury duty for the week. That left me to stay home and take care of the kids yesterday and this morning. She’ll have an updated entry of her own to explain how wonderful our judicial system really is.

It’s okay now
I guess through all that has happened this week I’m just glad that everyone is mostly healthy (Josie had a cold Sunday and Yesterday, but is feeling better today) and no more things are breaking (hopefully). Thank goodness for Lowe’s interest free for a year get out of jail card. haha

We decided to have something different for his birthday party this weekend. Most parents would probably get a clown or go some place cool, but we decided to have some fun with Pop and candy. You can watch the Mentos and Diet Coke video on YouTube. I think Jayden had more fun with that than he would have with a clown. haha (Or maybe it’s his parents and family that had more fun). Here are some pictures as well of the Mentos & Diet Coke fun.

On Jayden’s B-day, we took him to the Blank Park Zoo (Pictures). Although, it’s not quite like the Omaha Zoo, we still had a good time. He got to feed the goats and watch his dad get attacked by them. Probably his favorite thing was riding the train. He LOVES trains right now. Especially Thomas the Tank Engine.

We took the plunge and got Jayden and Josie’s pictures taken last Friday. It was a challenge but we managed to get a few cute poses. Some of you will be receiving copies in the mail, but you can look at them on line soon. We’ve started the fun process of painting the outside of the house. We are leaving it white but changing the trim to a reddish/burgundy/cranberry color. Right now it’s a little bright. We hope it darkens a bit when we put another coat on. We are at least getting the front done, and then we’ll worry about the rest next spring/summer.

Josie is growing like a weed and changes everyday I swear. Jayden has started to pester her a bit more, but really could care less about her. Hopefully someday he’ll stick up for her!

In spite of Jayden graduating to his “big boy chair” and gaining another 2 pounds (not much, but at least he’s holding steady), he’s managed to gain his terrible twos attitude a bit early. This past weekend we went up to Hope and Mike’s wedding in Emmetsburg, IA. The wedding was short and sweet, but Jayden thought he should make a big deal out of it and wasn’t the quiet little boy he usually is. So, I spent half of the wedding in the atrium of the church with Jayden. Next we went to the reception for about a half an hour. Jayden proceeded to want to run around. Kim and I decided we’d just leave early and head back to Rockwell City to visit with her brothers. I guess the lesson in all this is that I don’t think we will be able to take Jayden to another wedding anytime soon. I don’t blame him any, he’s almost 2 and he had been riding in the car for about 2.5 hours.

Kim did okay on the long trip, but I think she’s paying for it now. She (and I) can’t wait to have the baby! We’re not all that excited about the birthing process or the sleepless nights, but more for the comfort of Kim and getting back to normal.

So, yeah, that’s almost all that’s happened within the last month.