July in Iowa

Now here is a common sight this time of year in our wonderful state....A teenager forced into exhausting, physical, horrible labor commonly known to us midwesterners as detassling. My poor daughter! She entered into this experience for the first time last year and swore/promised she would NEVER do it again. Somehow, either out of force or reason, she was convinced (threatened) that she should try it again. The hook...a guy she had a crush on was going to be joining her crew!! That did it. She started, albeit quite reluctantly, on Tuesday.
Bless her heart, she rises at 5 am, catches the bus at 6 am and didn't return home today until 5:30 pm. She is a true sweetheart, with the unbelievable wit she inherited from my mom and never, ever complains. I love her!!
I'm certain she will thank me when she receives that big, fat, juicy check in the mail in a few weeks. OOHHHH I'm a good mom!?!

Time flies by....

Guess what this little guy did today??

He got his first round of senior pictures taken!!
I simply cannot believe this. I'm speechless. Its unreal to think he will be starting his senior year next month. I've already told my boss I will take the next year off for mental health reasons. Yes, I will be one of those moms who will cry for the next 12-18 months and it will have nothing to do with hormones. It will be because my baby will be growing up and leaving my watch. Am I overreacting? Maybe, but this is new territory for me and I am not looking forward to it.

Summertime

Does it seem to anyone else that this summer is whizzing by? I took 3 solid weeks off work this year. I did it last year and it was wonderful. I thought it would be the same this year. Actually, since the middle of May, I have only been to the office about 5 times due to some scheduled vacation, my dad's death and to flooding that forced my office to close. I return to work on Monday and I can't say I feel well rested. The vacation we took was fabulous but not extremely relaxing.
On Saturday we took our 3 youngest children to my in-laws where they will stay until tomorrow evening. We drove to MPS after dropping them off and stayed at my brother's place where we were finally able to slow down and unwind. It was a wonderful visit.
Tomorrow my kids return and on Saturday daughter #1 leaves for camp until the 13th. On July 12th, my husband's birthday, both my sons leave for different camps, one to work and the other to play. It won't be until August 3rd that all my ducks are back in the nest. I just love it when we can all be together. Its kind of unsettling for me to go to bed without everyone being close by. I guess its a mom thing.
For those of you who have never seen or met my ducks or husband, here you go.

Back Home

I don't know what got into me but somewhere between my last post and before we boarded the plane to head for home I picked up some kind of 48 hour bug. I started to feel sick shortly after breakfast and while I complained that we were once again seated in the very last row of the airplane it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We were as close to the bathroom as we could be and I could discreetly hustle in there as needed, which ended up to be about 5 times during the flight from Las Vegas to MPS.
I felt nauseous, had body aches and chills, and other symptoms I don't care to discuss right now. We didn't get home until about 11 pm on Tuesday evening and I slowly climbed into bed for what I thought would be some serious sleep. I awoke many times during the night trying to fight the urge to puke. I won that war but Wednesday found me better but still very tired and weak. I did muster the energy to climb onto our Club Cadet and mow for a few hours. I figured if I just had to sit I would be alright. Towards the end of the day my energy slowly returned and I cranked out about 4 loads of laundry, with more waiting to be done.
I did the math and I figured with 6 people in my family with each of us wearing at least 1 outfit per day for 8 days that equals 48 outfits. Wow! I didn't realize we owned that many pieces of clothing.
We are sitting here now looking at our expenditures for the trip and I think we did pretty well. I would list them but that seems kind of weird but if anyone is interested I'm happy to share. (Why anyone would be interested, I don't know but, hey, who knows??)
Back to my realty...running kids, pulling weeds, cooking, mowing, giving orders, cleaning...you know the drill. Glad to be home!!

Headed Home

Its just shy of 6 am and I'm sitting in the breakfast area of our hotel. I've been awake since 4:30 and I thought I would climb out bed and get some "me time". I'm a person who LOVES to be alone. As you can imagine, I haven't had much of that on this trip so this is good; just me, my coffee, my laptop, my oldest daughter's devotional book, and my Bible. I need to refuel.
We have everything packed pretty much and plan to leave for the airport around 8:45 am.
Yesterday we were on the road for about 5 hours, landing at the hotel around 2. My youngest 2 and I headed for the pool. We had a couple of pizzas delivered to the room and took off for Freemont St. Its another attraction we HAD to see when we were in Las Vegas. I don't think the folks who told me what attractions to check out had their kids with them. This particular thing was in a seedy part of town. Basically, its a covered section of town of about 5 blocks. The establishments are casinos, street vendors, etc. Of course, they had the huge movie screen of ladies in bikinis, taking off their tops, and dancing. (Certain body parts were blocked off thankfully.) My poor kids were so out of their element! They wanted to leave even before the light show began. Oh, and don't forget the drunk lady the police arrested in front of the Harley shop. She was causing quite a stir.
I had wanted to go here on Wednesday night but my husband couldn't find the place so I had a mild temper tantrum. Being the wonderful guy he is, he did a little more research and we were able to find it last night. We got there around 7:30 and the light show started at 8:30. It went on for about 3 minutes and then was over. I was so embarrassed. Not what I had imagined it would be and certainly not worth the hissy fit I displayed. Thankfully, I have a gracious husband who didn't say, "I told you so."
It will be good to get home. We should arrive in Des Moines around 8 pm which will put us at our place around 10. We had been saving up for a big trip like this for a few years. My oldest will be a senior next year and I figured this would likely be our last family adventure. I wanted it to be very special and I think it really was.
Time for breakfast. More later!!

Vacation, Days 5 and 6

Day 5 was long. We did a lot of driving, some unnecessarily, but that’s another story. We did learn that you cannot always trust Mapquest when they put us about 21 miles short of our desired location.
We went back to the Grand Canyon Visitors Center to see the IMAX movie. We figured we could do this because we theoretically only had about 1 ½ hours to travel to Sedona. The IMAX experience was incredible. It gave a lot of history and some amazing shots we would not have been able to see otherwise. We drove another 10 miles to the Canyon itself to retrieve the pedometer I had left in one of the gift shops the day before as I was trying on a t-shirt. I was promised when I called there later that day that they would put my name on it and have it waiting for me at the counter. It wasn’t. They told me to go to this other place and it would be there. It wasn’t. I started moaning about how we had driven ALL that way just to get my pedometer. It didn’t help. They couldn’t find it. I was hot but I left without losing my religion there on the spot and fussed and fumed about it for about another hour and then just let it go.
We drove on to Sedona. BEAUTIFUL!! This is a place you MUST see. The canyon and red rock is amazing. We got in to the hotel around 3:30 pm, completely pooped out from traveling and being hot and cooped up in a mini van or a hotel room for the better part of a week. We pretty much relaxed for the rest of Day 5 knowing Day 6 would be busy.

Day 6 (Sunday)
This was probably the best and busiest day we’ve had on our trip. Bob and I awoke early and were out for a walk by 5:45 am. We both admit/realize that while we have been vacationing we have increased our food and caloric intake and decreased the amount of exercise we usually do, We walked a bit in a nice residential area and saw a small deer which quickly ran from us. We continued and met a couple with whom we visited for a minute. They were of mid-Eastern decent but are living in Ohio. It was interesting to learn they have a son who lives in the neighboring community that we do. We continued on our walk until we came to a hiking trail. We took that for a very short way when my husband said he saw a rabbit or something like that “only bigger”. We continued on for a moment to see what type of wildlife it was. It was quickly apparent that we were tailing a coyote. I was OFF! I ran like the wind, in fear of my life. I came back to the street and met a woman who was off on a hike. She went straight up the path where we had seen the coyote, completely unafraid. My husband, too, came sauntering down the trail. He had followed the animal to see if he could get a closer look. I came as close as I cared to.
That morning we went on a Pink Jeep Tour. Our family piled into a big pink jeep with a wonderful driver, Mike, and he took us on the trip of our lives. We took the Broken Arrow tour which put us amidst the red rocky canyons and mountains surrounding Sedona for 2 hours. It was like 4-wheeling but on a MUCH grander scale. It was like nothing I’ve ever done before and our whole family agrees this was best thing we have done on our trip. I had heard about this experience on Little People Big World which is a TV show on TLC.
After our tour we met up with my brother, D$?#, (he said to write his name like that) who drove up from his home in Tucson. We went out for lunch and he drove us to Mt. Humphreys, which is the highest point in Arizona at about 12,633 feet. We road on a ski lift which took us to about the 11,500 mark. Do you remember, a few posts ago when I wrote how I feel about the heat? That’s the same way I feel about heights. I was mortified for the most part. This was a ski lift, mind you; feet dangling and all. I wasn’t going to go on it but my husband had already bought me a ticket. I figured if my 6 year old could do it, I could too. I’m glad I did it but I don’t think I would do that again. It was a VERY scary thing for me. Uncle D rode with children #2 and 3 and he was sure to point out to them the 3 bras and 1 pair of thong underpants hanging from the surrounding pine trees. They thought it was SO funny.
We got our feet firmly planted on the ground and went to dinner and headed back to Sedona. We stopped at the Safeway in Sedona to grab a few groceries. I had been looking forward to a good, black cup of coffee and we discovered Starbucks in the Safeway. While we were waiting for our coffee to brew, D jumped into a motorized cart and started driving around the store with the electrical plugin cord dragging behind him. What a hoot!!
Poor Uncle D. He was so patient. As a bachelor with no children, I’m pretty sure he was about ready to pull his hair out. Have I ever told you that I have 4 very LOUD children? Imagine all 7 of us in D’s SUV traveling. I’m sure it seemed like an eternity until he was free from us. We stayed at the same hotel and I made sure the kids didn’t know his room number so he could have some peace. The kids LOVE Uncle D. They look forward to any time they can be with him.
Tomorrow, back to Las Vegas.

My new favorite song

Sit back and relax and enjoy this BEAUTIFUL song sung by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. We heard it a few nights ago as we stood in front of the Bellagio Hotel on the Vegas Strip. They choreographed the dancing fountains to this absolutely gorgeous song. To all you head bangers, sorry, but this is REAL music. Enjoy!! It takes 4 minutes.