Time to Slow down - Part 1

This has been a crazy few weeks, and I have been looking forward to getting a chance to sit down and write about it before I forget the things I want to say. We've made a lot of memories these past few weeks and I am going to take this chance to record some of them, and this could get long, so I'm going to make this 3 separate posts.

On June 25th, we headed down to Apple Valley to stay with my parents. Mike was headed for Washington DC for our denomination's annual convention, so my sister and I planned a garage sale for the days he was gone. I'm not sure what we were thinking, trying to do a garage sale with 8 kids and a dog in 95+ degree weather, but we had fun, we survived, and we made a little money.

Usually a trip to Apple Valley takes about 1 hr and a half. I don't remember how long it took us to get there, but I do know that 3 stops later, we finally made it. 3 stops is WAY too many to make in 90 miles. First Tate dropped his blankie on the floor (and if you know Tate, you know that this is unacceptable), so we had to stop to pick it up. Then Norah dropped her "gankeeee" on the floor and since she is becoming increasingly more and more attached to it, it was necessary to stop and pick it up. A short time later, I hear Norah saying, "Uh-oh, Uh-oh." I look back and she has thrown up. So, we must pull the car over again to get the poor girl cleaned up. Meanwhile, Anja needed to be fed, so we might as well do that too, instead of stopping again before we arrive at grandma and grandpa's house.

Tate is our early riser, especially when we're not staying at home. One morning I heard him get up, so I went over to the room he was sleeping in and saw him peeking out the window saying, "It's getting there!!! It's almost daytime!" I really dislike his early wake-up calls (that morning was somewhere around 5:30), but I do appreciate his excitement for life.

Mike was gone from Wednesday to Saturday in DC and the day henflew back had been a rough one for me and the kids, so when I left to pick Mike up at the airport my dad told me he didn't want me calling to tell them they'd re-routed the plane to Duluth. Let me tell you, it was tempting! We were all ready for a little Daddy time. I am very thankful for my husband!

While we were in Apple Valley, we had lots of time to play with cousins and I spent some good time with my sister. We got together with some friends while we were there too, which is always fun. The kids also enjoyed staying at Grandma and Grandpa's house where Grandma makes PB sandwiches before bed if they didn't eat a good supper, which by the way, is something that she NEVER would have done for us when were that age. But, she's grandma and she can, right?

The next leg of our journey was to visit Mike's family in Chicago, which I will write about (with pictures) in "Time to Slow Down - Part 2."