3 Reasons why we went to Illinois/ Kentucky

We went on vacation last week for a couple of reasons, but the three main ones were for Megan, Courtney, and Christian. They wanted to see their very good friends that moved away in January! We missed them so much and it was great spending almost two weeks with them!

These pictures were taking right after we saw them for the first time. We were waiting to park the camper because it looked like it was going to storm out, so we went and got ice cream at the local ice cream shop!

Reason number 1:
Ana, Megan, and Kaelynn. Megan and Kaelynn are very close in age and I actually forgot how good these two got along. During our trip, they were together almost the entire time! They played together, wrote a play together, swam, laughed, hiked, explored, slept together, read books, played cards, etc. They just had a great time together!!

 

Reason #2: I can't tell you how excited Courtney was to see Miki!! These two could giggle ALL DAY LONG! Since Miki moved away, I have not heard Courtney giggle much and about a week before we left, Courtney said, "I can't wait to see Miki, I want my giggles back!" And they GIGGLED the entire trip! They were truly inseparable the entire time!

 

Reason #3: Erich and Christian. I thought these two got a long better than they did before they moved away, I think because they are both older now, they loved to play in the dirt, jump, skip, everything that little boys do!

I have so many pictures of these kids throughout the trip. Hopefully I will get around to posting more. In addition to seeing our friends though, we did do many activities, so I have lots of pictures of hiking trails, amazing rock formations, caves, campgrounds, and don't forget we saw the "Creation Museum" while we were in Kentucky. Fun, fun!!

Back to School Tomorrow

We are hitting the books tomorrow, aka getting back to school. :)

I am not ready at all. I haven't had much time to look over their lessons, so I pretty much am going to do what I can.

But before we get school started, we need to discuss something in history that happened 13 years ago.  September 11, 2001.  I want my children to know what happened on 9/11 and I want them to understand why it happened. But how can you explain that terrible day to a 10 and 8 year old? Make it kid-friendly, in a way.  We were at Ground Zero last year when we went to the east coast, so my kids have walked that ground, so they understand a little bit of it.  We have talked about it every year and we are going to continue to talk about it.

We are going to use videos from history.com tomorrow to explain what happened.  We might look at some pictures online too.

http://www.history.com/topics/9-11-attacks/videos/911-timeline?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

We might use this as a timeline if we need to:

http://www.english-online.at/history/9-11/9-11-terrorist-attacks.htm

Campgrounds

After being home and sleeping in my own bed last night, I thought about all the different campgrounds we stayed at on our trip. I can remember each of them in my head, most of them were great, but there was one that I probably would not stay at again.

Here are the campgrounds in the order we stayed at them:

Rock Creek State Park, one hour east of Des Moines Iowa, 1 night

Illini State Park, Marseilles, Illinois, 4 nights

Hidden Paradise Campground, hour south of Indianapolis, Indiana, 3 nights (Labor Day Weekend)

Big Bone Lick State Park, 20 minutes south of Cincinnati, Ohio (technically in Kentucky), 2 nights

Mammoth Cave National Park, Mammoth Cave, Kentucky (90 miles north of Nashville, Tennessee) 2 nights with NO electricity and 90 degree heat!

Ferne Clyffe State Park, southern tip of Illinois, 1 night

Riverside City Park Campground, Springfield, Illinois, 1 night (would not stay here again unless I had to!)

Mark Twain Cave Campground, Hannibal, Missouri, 1 night

I think state parks are the best way to go! You get what you need (electricity and water) and they are usually really nice! They are not expensive either; we usually paid $20 a night.  We had a pool at Big Bone Lick State Park and really nice hiking trails and rock formations at Ferne Clyffe State Park.  It's fun exploring new areas and talking to the locals. I would go back to many of these again.

We are back!!

Tonight, we arrived back home tonight from our vacation. Luckily, we didn't have to come home in the middle of it and got to spend as much time as we wanted to originally! We had a great time and spent a lot of time with some friends that we haven't seen in about nine months!

I could've blogged while we were gone, but we didn't have good internet connection some times and I don't think Matt took his laptop out of his bag once! I am uploading the pictures now, so maybe I can post my favorites here within the next couple of days!

In the end, we travelled through Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, and back to Nebraska. We travelled about 2500 miles and went through many, many gallons of gas! (Not as much as last year though!!)  We stopped at many Redboxes along the way and the kids watched many movies as we travelled! We also listened to "Adventures in Odyssey." The kids were great travelers!

Today we left Hannibal, Missouri (the home of Mark Twain) and drove across Missouri to St. Joe and then up Interstate 29.  Around 3:30 pm, we needed gas, so Matt pulled into the truck stop at the Nebraska City exit.  He got gas and since we knew there was a huge storm in Omaha and it was heading our way, we decided to go over to Wendy's for some ice cream.  We sat there awhile, looked at the radar, and Matt decided that it would be ok if we took off, so we climbed back into the camper and circled around the parking lot to get back on the road.

At this time, I checked my text messages and one of my friends told me that there was a huge storm coming our way and we needed to STAY PUT! Matt pulled up his radar again and sure enough, there was a huge storm coming.  At this point, we drove over to the truck stop, parked the truck, and ran in there through the pouring rain. (I figured there would be much more in the truck stop for the kids to look at/ play with if we were stuck awhile!)

We weren't in there but ten minutes when Matt got a message over his phone saying there was a tornado warning in the area.  I pulled a manager over to the side and asked him to verify it and what we needed to do.  He said the plan was to go into the men's bathroom.  About ten minutes later, everybody was in the men's bathroom because there was indeed a tornado warning!

We hung out in there for a little bit until the tornado warning cleared.  Once it was all clear, we came out, but it was still raining sheets outside! It was incredible!!  We stayed at the truck stuck probably another hour before we got back in our truck to come home.  We pulled into the gas station at 3:30 pm and we left the truck stop about 5:45!

We continued to drive home and got home around 7 pm tonight.  It is nice to be home!!

I love running water, internet, a washing machine, a big fridge, a couch that we can all sit on, counter space, a stove I don't have to light every time I want to use it, a microwave that will work whenever I need it, etc, etc, etc. 

Travelling really does make you appreciate home!

A Change of Plans!

I think we should be famous for changing plans!!!

We ARE now going on our trip, BUT if anything happens to my grandpa, we are heading home!

We were at a company picnic for Matt yesterday and we were talking with one of Matt's co-workers. We were telling him about our situation and how we had put our trip on hold.  We mentioned that we were thinking about going some place local to stay around here, but then he mentioned that we should go to South Dakota or out to western Nebraska. His next sentence was, "It's not that far, you can always get back within a day. If your grandpa did pass away, you have 2-3 days before the funeral."  Matt looked at me and said, "Let's go to South Dakota, that sounds fun.  We could come right home." I looked back at him and said, "If you are willing to go to South Dakota, which is about 8 hours, then why can't we go to our friend's house in Illinois, which is only 7??"  It was then that we agreed to go ahead with our vacation and come back if needed! Depending on the timing, we could probably leave our camper at our friend's house in Illinois, come back to Omaha, and then head back to Illinois when everything was over. Maybe then we could go on to Kentucky, like originally planned!

Once we had made this decision, we decided to leave as soon as we could.  Our first plan was to pack this morning and head out by 12, this could possibly put us at our friend's house by 7 pm tonight, if we didn't stop on the way!  As I was thinking about this last night, I thought this might be too much for a day PLUS it is move-up Sunday at church. Each child moves up to their new Sunday School room today and there is a pancake feed at church.  I told Matt that we should pack in the morning, go to church and Sunday School, come home and finish packing and THEN take off. My new goal is 2 pm.  This would not get us all the way to our friend's house, but it would get us at half way there, or even further.  I think that is our new plan!

If anybody wants to know where we are on this adventure, Matt wrote a program that shows us where we are via his cell phone.  Here is the link:

http://wherearetheruwes.azurewebsites.net/Home/Login?ReturnUrl=%2f

It will need a login, which is our last name.  The password is "Grace," which is our second daughter's middle name. Matt thought this would be fun for everybody! Of course, you can always call or text us to know where we are too!

Ok, off to start packing!  We have quite the day ahead of us! My stress levels have been a little high lately...I wonder why!!!

Transition time!

I can say that Matt no longer works from home. He finished his contract yesterday with the company he has worked with for the last 2 years and in a month, he has a new contract.  This is at a company here in Omaha, so he will have to go to the office.  We are all sad that he will no longer be home with us, but we know it was a great opportunity and we are very thankful for the time he was here!

He has taken 4 weeks off between now and his next job, which will start on September 22nd.  Until then, we had planned on taking a 2 1/2 week trip to Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, but that trip is put on hold due to my grandpa being pretty sick and not having much longer to live.  Until then, I think we are going to hang around this area and Matt is going to get some stuff done around the house.  We may even camp locally, we are not sure yet. We are just to a point where we cannot leave town.

Because our plans were changed, school is also on hold. If we are around here, we may continue to open the books and learn, but I had originally planned to take the next three weeks off, so we may yet, we will just have to see what happens.

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!!

Ok, I have to admit. I am having a GREAT time with Christian and his preschool curriculum! We are not doing numbers or letters, I think those will come in time, but we are just having fun! Each week we are reading a different book and doing different activities. This week's book is Caps for Sale.

It is about a peddler who is trying to sell his caps, of which he wears them ALL on his head, but one day, he can't sell any and he decides to take a nap under a tree instead. While he is sleeping, monkeys come and take his caps! He gets very angry at the monkeys, but eventually get his caps back! It is a great book and Christian loves it!  Today, we collected all the hats from around the house and tried to see how many we could stack on our own heads! Even the girls were involved! We laughed pretty hard as they fell off our heads!

Tomorrow, we are going to learn a song. It is called "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" and I am going to use this website for a video.

http://bussongs.com/songs/5-little-monkeys-jumping-on-the-bed.php 

Christian loves to sing, so hopefully he will enjoy it! I think we are then going to sing it ourselves and add in the actions. I may need some help from the girls!

I think we are going to read some Curious George stories on Friday.