California!

AKA my last vacation/trip for a while!!

It feels like I have been gone more than home, recently. But now that I am home from California, I only have two vacation days left, so I will be saving those!! Too bad that means it's June and I can't go do anything for the rest of the year!! But I'm glad I went home, and that we went to Hawaii. Now I will be able to get into the groove at work, which will be a good thing.

Sean's graduation was great! He played a piano solo and gave a speech. I'm so proud of him! It's hard to believe my LITTLE brother (who is 16 and taller than me! has been for a while!) is now a high school graduate!! awwww!!!!! He's a great brother. I'm excited to see what God has planned for him.

Of course, I also got to see Rowan!!! Man, he is so different from when I saw him in March! He was so tiny, and now he is chubby and has dimples and is SO smiley! He is just a sweetie. He took a little nap on my lap, which warmed my heart, of course! I was more than happy to have Rowan time when I was out. We went out to dinner Thursday night (my mom and Ken, Ian and Kathryn, my grandma and cousin, and Taryn and Kyle) and it was really fun. We went to one of my favorite restaurants - Hibachi (like Benihana, a Japanese steak place where they cook right in front of you on a big griddle-surface). Oh that was delicious!!

Saturday, we went to the Huntington Library and walked around the gardens, which are very extensive and just beautiful! Saturday night I spent with Ian & Kathryn (and Rowan) and Sunday, after breakfast, I left for Wisconsin! All in all, it was a great trip. :)

Welcome Home - now take your car to the shop

Yes, my car is in the shop. Right before we drove down to Missouri (or it may have been as we were driving down to Missouri) my heater broke... again. Not only is this the third or fourth heater issue this year, I literally just took my car in to get the heater fixed at the dealership last month!! So, thankfully since they didn't really fix it a month ago, they are going to take off what I already paid toward actually fixing it this time, but it's still going to be about $700! Yikes :-( Not fun. But what can I do, winter in Wisconsin, a heater is definitely not optional!

So besides coming home after 2 weeks of spending money on vacation and having to spend more money on my car, vacation itself was fun! We stayed in/near Branson at two different places. The first place was amazing! It was set on 800 acres and certain buildings had been there since the '20s. It got a little chilly, but the weather was nice overall, and the first two days we just stayed at the resort exploring, swimming, and playing miniature golf on a nearly-impossible course. It was all way too slanted!! But we loved it. We also played in the arcade a bit. Both places we stayed had pool tables, and by Thursday I was actually getting pretty good! On Wednesday, I hit in FIVE IN A ROW! But Thursday I was just doing better overall. We played mini golf again Thursday at the new place, which was like a typical motel. We also saw two shows while in Branson - the New Shanghai Circus, which is Chinese acrobats that do incredible things! I just wanted to applaud the whole time. The next night we saw a magic show, Kirby Vanburch. It was also amazing, and at the end of the show, he came out and said there's no such thing as real magic, or being psychic, and did a little illusion and said that if you give your life to Jesus, he'll make you whole. We LOVED Kirby! Also, I helped him with one trick, where I picked a card, and they flew up in the air and he speared it with a sword! And I got to keep the card! :) I also took Adam to Krispy Kreme for the first time, and he really really liked it. It was a long drive, and a long trip, but we really had a great time. Oh also, we decided to stop at Shoney's on the way back, because it's one of Adam's favorite breakfast places. So we picked one randomly and when we got there, we realized that we stopped at that exact Shoney's when we were moving me out to Wisconsin! What are the odds, with all the Shoney's in Missouri, that we happened to pick the same one! Too funny.

So yes, we had a great vacation, but I'm glad to be back. I missed the Jasp a lot. And I'm tired! All that relaxing really takes its toll on you! :-) Hopefully my posting will resume my kind of normal schedule. We'll just have to wait and see!

Vacation

So much to say! Week one of our vacation was awesome, except that I was sick the entire time (sinus infection-type thing, not like nausea, thank goodness). We went to Universal's Islands of Adventure, with Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, which was amazing! We also went to Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom and to Epcot. Epcot is my favorite, and it was Adam's favorite, too. There's just so much to see and experience, and even though there aren't very many rides, the ones they have are pretty neat. We brought our lunches every day to help save money, and I had this brilliant idea on the plane down there - Adam and I both drink a lot of water and we're kind of water snobs. We each have our own version, but basically it boils down to us not drinking tap water. So I thought to myself that we should get those little water bottles that have the filter built in and filter the water as you drink it. It turned out to be a pretty great thing to have, and I was very proud of myself for thinking of it :)

Jasper missed us a lot! When we came home, he was so skinny! I think he couldn't eat very much because he missed me. And yesterday after I picked him up, he just wanted to be close to me - he snuggled on my lap all day, and we let him sleep with us, and he was RIGHT next to me all night. Usually he ends up at the foot of the bed because he gets too hot (I think), but last night he was up against me the entire night up until I got out of bed at 8! So sweet :) That's going to be the only bad thing about going on vacation Week Two - missing the Jasp!

Well, more may come. That's all for now though. Don't expect anything until probably next weekend-ish.

Small-Town Wisconsin

So yesterday, Adam and I decided to use a coupon we had to have fish fry (well, Adam was going to have the fish fry, I was obviously going to order something else). It was for a restaurant that Adam used to go to all the time when he was younger, and I had never been there. So we went there, and who should we see but Adam's aunt and her husband! They had just ordered, so we sat with them and ate with them. About a half hour later, Adam's dad, step-mom, and brother came in! Welcome to small-town Wisconsin! We thought we were going out to dinner - little did we know that we were actually going to a family reunion! It was nice to see everyone, though.

Just so my readers know, I will be on vacation this week. So don't expect any posts until maybe this weekend. We will be in Florida tomorrow through Friday. Orlando, here we come!! :)