This Week At Home, 2012, No. 34, Vacation!

Little notes written as a remembrance of these fleeting days...

Sunday...

After a full morning of church and Sunday school, we came home with eager anticipation of our trip up north to "our" lake.  There was actually no hurry, as check in at the campground is 5PM CDT.  We are in EDT and it's a little under 3 hours up there, so again, we were in no hurry.  Good thing, too, cause it was raining up there, a very slow moving rain.  When we finally were able to go, we had a delay as we found a tail light out on the camper.  A quick trip to the auto parts store and we were finally off! 

We were blessed with an uneventful trip and when we arrived there was a pocket of no rain, just long enough to set things up at the campsite and stay dry.  Thankfully, Jeff's mom invited us to her home for a spaghetti dinner, so we had a dry evening, despite the wet weather.  And it continued to rain the entire night!  Rain dropping on the camper sounds quite loud, so I did not sleep my best that night.  Oh well. 

Monday...

We, along with Jeff's mom, caught the 9 o'clock South Shore train to Chicago!  It was a beautiful day, too.  Probably about 20 degrees cooler than last year's trip. 

We so enjoyed the train ride.  There was so much to see, and there is less stress for Jeff not having to drive and then pay for parking.  When we got to Chicago, we walked a little more than a mile to Water Tower Place, as the kids had been saving some money to buy Lego sets.  We also stopped at the American Girl store for Grace.  Then we headed to our favorite pizza place, Giordano's. 

We caught the 2:34 PM train back and then grilled burgers.  Jeff's mom's boyfriend joined us for those.  He also spoiled the kids with ice cream from the camp store. 

We also put up Ryan's tent since it was going to stay dry for the rest of our trip.  I think we all enjoyed a good night's sleep this night. 

Tuesday...

We started our morning with a naturalist led hike of IN Dune's State Park trail number 3.  We had never walked this trail.  It starts out a little intimidating with stairs straight up and then some sand dune walking, which is HOT. Thankfully, the trail turns into a wooded section and we are once again enjoying the walk.  In the sand part of the trail, we saw tumbleweed, cacti, and lizards!  It's quite diverse for Indiana!  We also saw a lot of different animal tracks on the trail. 
 

After lunch, we headed to the beach.  There was a cool breeze today, although it was in the middle 80's.  The water was warm enough, but with the breeze, I decided to stay on the beach.  The polar bears jumped right in, of course.  It was a gorgeous day!!!  Not many people were on the beach, too.  I love off peak vacationing. 

We grilled again for dinner and also ate more ice cream.  (It is vacation, after all!)  When it got dark, we had a little fire and then retreated to the camper when the bugs started biting.  We played Apples to Apples (kid version). It was another nice night to sleep, too. 


Wednesday...

Today was the day to pack up and head home, as we had church commitments in the evening.  It was tempting to stay another day, as the weather was perfect, but duty calls!  Again, we were blessed with a good trip home. Little Dorothy was excited to see us, but as she is a cat, gave us the cold shoulder treatment for leaving her.  *grins* 

Church (AWANA) went really well, despite being a little tired.  I have six 5th and 6th grade girls under my watch this year.  They seem as if they will keep me on my toes! 


Thursday...

Now that we are home, we need food!  The kids are so tired.  We spend the day taking care of laundry, getting food, and other things.  Jeff grills our dinner and enough for several more meals, making meals easy for the next couple of days.  The guys mow as it has really grown since we left and the remnants of Issac are on the way.  I do hope we get some rain from that storm!  They are making grand predictions of 4-7 inches of rain by the end of Monday.  That means we'll probably see an inch, if we are fortunate! 

This evening, the kids went to karate and Ryan got his promotion to Jr. Leader status. He's worked for a couple years to get this promotion.  I'm so proud of him! 

Friday...

We know that this is probably our last dry day, so we decide to go check out a "new to us" disc golf course while the sun still shines.  We also have to drop Trevor off at grandparents for his sleep over and Grace has a gift card to spend at the mall.  (We never go to the mall here, so it is an ordeal to me to go.  I feel so out of place there.  I am not much of a consumer!) 

After our errands and a good lunch, Jeff cleaned the gutters in anticipation of the coming rain.  It's now very cloudy, humid and too muggy to enjoy open windows. 

This weekend we are going to hunker down and hopefully watch the rain fall!  I'm going to make a big pot of chili and cornbread.  We are also substitutes in Trevor's Sunday school room, which should be fun.  It's nice having some down time before we start back to work and school next week! 

Thanks for reading! 
~Jenn