Beth's staff Christmas party was this Tuesday at the Boathouse; I got to go along (you pay your own way) with her and there was a white elephant gift exchange. We brought jars of soup (which were highly coveted as stealing targets) and brought home some Chuck Norris folders and half a globe. We'll probably take those to Michigan when we visit family over Christmas break and play dirty bingo.....Wednesday was the annual church "gingerbread" house build/decorating event. Alex and Missy were at the Revolution white elephant / Christmas party so I just hung around the building going on and watched, and was asked to be a judge for the ugly sweater contest; ugliest and most creative categories. The kids both found some old junk toys (and the Hamster Dance CD) to give away in the white elephant gift exchange; Alex got some candy as a gift, and Missy got an almost working tablet. It supposedly did not work, but it came on when she powered it up. For a while. And the battery did not hold a charge. Seems Jeremy hasn't used the thing since 2012 when it wouldn't work any more. But, Missy did a factory reset and got it to do a few things before she gave up on it.....Beth's book club met at our house on Thursday. I took that opportunity to make myself scarce; I've put the blankets up in the stairwell again so it's like the house is divided and I wasn't even there.....As of Friday evening, I am now on vacation until next year. Christmas is coming up fast. Friday we all went to Fort Wayne to go to Burlington because Alex and Nat don't have winter coats. We found a bunch of stuff, but the coat selection was pretty minimal and we weren't that impressed with it. It was no better/different than TJ Maxx to my eyes. We had dinner at Fazoli's and happened to meet the Monsma's there, also having dinner and doing some shopping. But we had to get back to Warsaw in time to drop off Natalie at the bowling alley at 9 where she was going to a birthday party (o the drama associated with that) for cosmic bowling. We were back in plenty of time. She did have a great time although she is a terrible bowler.....We've spent most of the week doing online shopping for Christmas

The girls are going to Italy and Greece. Not right now, but next year. Just like Alex's trip to France this summer, the school is hosting a trip in summer 2020. There was an informational meeting about it last Monday which we forgot to go to, but anyway we checked out the video info for it and it looks awesome. Both of the girls want to go. Now we just have to pay for it. Oh well, it'll be an amazing time for both of them.....The forgetting things keeps on keeping on, this week we had a case conference for Nat at the high school that we forgot about, and an appointment with her psychologist that we forgot about. Gotta get past that.....FCC Kids had the Great Glitter Explosion of 2018 this past Wednesday.....Nat's great-grandparents came to church with us today. They're looking for a new church, maybe they'll start coming to FCC.....

Alex has been looking forward to this weekend for some time. The new Super Smash Bros video game for the Switch was released on Friday, but he had pre-ordered it weeks ago with money he earned at his job. So on Friday he hosted what usually waits until his birthday, a video game sleepover. He and Beth went to pick up his copy right after school, and I picked up the pizza on the way home from work. By the time I got home the girls were already all gone; they bugged out to stay overnight in a hotel in Fort Wayne, do some shopping, use the pool. So I got to watch the house, as it were. 7 or 8 boys all came over and they played the Smash game pretty much all night. I went to be around midnight but I don't think the boys crashed until around 3:00. And I hear the game is pretty awesome, that was the only one they played all night long. They didn't even want to break for ice cream.....The boys were all gone by 11:00 or so, and I had the rest of the day to work on clearing leaves from the backyard, which I have been trying to get to for a while without success. There was just enough time on Saturday to go to the rental place and check out the walk-behind leaf blower, but since they closed soon and were also closed Sunday, I had to keep it for the weekend which was going to be around 55 bucks. Which I decided was worth it to get things over with. So I spent a few hours blowing and hauling leaves back to the dumping ground in the brush in the backyard, then the thing just sat around for the rest of the weekend. Once I got the leaves into piles, getting them on a tarp was really pretty quick work. I asked Nancy across the street if she wanted me to clear her leaves too, but the city isn't picking up any more leaves as I found out, so she didn't have anywhere to put them and she wanted the owners to do it anyway (they haven't been taking care of things over there). So it sat idle and I'll return it on the way to work in the morning.....Beth took off for Michigan today to deliver soup. She had an order for over $200 from an old family friend and several other family orders to fill so the trip there and back was worth it.....The trip was especially worth it because she forgot about a show that she was supposed to do. The small show at the fairgrounds (she did it last year, made about enough to break even I think) was on Tuesday and she thought it was Thursday. This goes along with forgetting what time the Wawasee show started, I guess. She never realized it until too late, so so much for that. No big deal though, she wasn't going to make much.....last Monday Beth and Natalie and I had a meeting with the attorney in town to sign some paperwork regarding the adoption. We don't know where the parents are or how to contact them, and the efforts to do so have not been successful, so we're going forward without them as they have legally abandoned her. Natalie even got to sign some papers herself that say she waives her right to a hearing and consents to the adoption. If everything goes perfectly, we could be done in a few months.....The kids and I all got the pool loaded into the back of the truck (hope we didn't beat it up too badly) and hauled over to the storage unit this week. See ya in the spring.....

It’s been a busy and good and productive weekend. Friday Beth and I had an appointment with the attorney’s office to get the process started for adoption! We have to inform the bioparents, but first we have to be able to find them, which may not be that easy a task. We have a follow-up meeting on Monday, also Nat’s birthday, to sign some papers and get things started. Nat’s coming with us so she can sign some as well…..Friday evening was the Komets teddy bear toss game against the hated Toledo Walleye. The Boschains unfortunately couldn’t go with us this time though. Beth had been busy all week making soup for the big Wawasee craft show Saturday, so it was against her better judgement to go to the game but she did anyway. I swung through Goodwill on the way home from work and picked up some extra stuffed animals (a whole big bag for $6) and the girls picked out a few of theirs as well. Then, since Alex was working until 7:00, we had to pick him up on the fly and drive hard to get to FW in time. The puck was dropping just as we got to the parking lot, so we were hoping we didn’t miss the first Komets goal. No worries there, we missed the first few minutes of the game but there was no score. Nor was there a Komets goal for another period and a half, by which time they had gotten down 2-0. Then they tied it up early in the 3^rd period, and it remained 2-2 until the end of regulation. 3-on-3 hockey in overtime is crazy…and they scored with about a minute left in overtime to win it 3-2! Big crowd at the Coliseum for this game, and going nuts. Over 3000 stuffed animals collected, I heard….Of course we didn’t make it back home until near midnight, and Beth had to get up early to make two pots of soup for samples at the Wawasee show, so she got very little sleep. She got the soup made, and I got the van all loaded up and ready to go; as we arrived at the school there was a decided lack of people unloading stuff for setup and the parking lot was already packed, so we had a pretty uneasy feeling that Beth had gotten the time wrong. By an hour and a half, as it turned out. She was supposed to be set up by 7:00 and she thought she was supposed to be set up by 8:30. So, the show was already well into full swing by the time we got there. And they had given her spot away since she didn’t show up. There was an emergency spot for her to set up in, though, which turned out to be a really good one. It was near the back of the main hallway and looked out of the way at first glance, but there was a lot of foot traffic going that way because it was the way to the food sales, I think. She also forgot her paper bags so I had to run home to get them, but when I returned to the school I had to park in the overflow across the street at a church. But their parking lot was full so I had to go to the overflow to the overflow, which was a grassy field. And all the snow from the last week or two had just melted, and it was raining, so the ground was sodden and I knew driving into the field was a bad idea as soon as I did it. I got about 20 feet before the van got stuck in the mud. However, there was already a tow truck on the premises, towing another car that was stuck before me. Then a pickup truck tried to go around me and got stuck, and a full size van tried to go around me and got stuck, and a bunch of other cars that had parked earlier got stuck...and the tow driver was a busy guy. He pulled a couple others out of the mud before getting to me, and by that time someone had parked in the driveway behind me and the full size van so he could not pull me out from behind. He got creative though, and hooked up my van to his tow cable (as fully extended as it can go, I think) from the side and just pulled the van sideways until the back of it was facing open ground. Pulling me past the full size van, my van missed hitting it by about a whisker. But he got me out successfully, even though it tore the hell out of the grass. But there were several others to get out as well, and it looked like the grass was going to be in even worse shape later. Anyway, after that I finally made it back to the craft show with the bags and Beth had already sold a ton of soup. I stayed to help out for the rest of the show, until 3:00, and sales were very steady the whole time. In the end we counted up $905 in sales from this show. $1005, if you count a $100 sale I had at work just Friday…..Sunday was a work day, mostly, after church. I raked leaves (not an easy task in the freezing wet), rented another storage unit to put the camper away for the winter (had to call Patrick to come over and help me push the camper into the storage unit), and tried to put Christmas lights on the spruce tree in the front yard. Nope, it is just too big, I can’t reach the top any longer.

Thanksgiving is in the books, and it went pretty well for everyone involved, even the cats. The stray that we've been calling Tiger now has a new home, and a new name, Ozzy. He stayed in our garage for a couple weeks altogether, which I felt bad about because he really wanted some attention and meowed just outside the kitchen door a lot. But he was filling out and seemed much better. Laura got Thomas to agree to take him, on the condition we could get him checked out before we did. So on Tuesday I took him to the vet and he got some shots and checked out for feline leukemia and FIV. Clean bill of health, except for just a few fleas and some ear mites, which we got a treatment for. So he was all set, and we started letting him into the house a bit after that. Which Iris and Ruby hated. But anyway, we got things all set to take him with us to Pennsylvania. We left town on Wednesday (I took the day off so we could leave early) with the cat carrier placed on top of the cedar chest (which we're also unloading on Laura!) in the very packed van. Alex drove us all the way to the state line, so 90 good minutes of driving there. Tiger/Ozzy did not like the carrier. He spent the entire 8 hours on the road yowling every few seconds, sometimes while sprawled on his back. We tried putting a small litter pan in there with him just in case but he turned that over and scattered it all right quick, same with the water dish when we stopped. So we were glad to get there. Laura's friend Jen from Chicago was visiting her as well. We had pizza upon arrival, then a few rounds of King of Tokyo. Thursday we did the standard turkey & everything else dinner, and then Christmas. We got Thomas a copy of Azul, which everyone loved and we played over and over again for the next couple days. Laura got some wine from Tippy Creek. I got some work gloves and a new spatula for the grill, Beth got some jewelry, Alex got a GameStop gift card, Nat got some makeup stuff and Missy some art stuff. And Ozzy got a new home. He seemed to be settling in pretty well. Friday we all went out to see "Ralph Breaks the Internet" which we all liked a lot, then went out to dinner at a hibachi restaurant and billed it to Mom. We made some plans for the Arizona trip next year to scatter Dad's ashes, and played more Azul. Saturday, we took everyone out for breakfast at Eat 'n Park before hitting the road again. With much more space in the van without the cedar chest, and much quieter without an unhappy cat. We had to leave Saturday, because Alex had work on Sunday.....while he was at work, I went to FW to visit Mom since I hadn't seen her in a while because I've had such a cold. Not much out of her this time. She wouldn't get out of the chair she was in, and didn't act like she recognized me. Visiting her is getting harder and harder, she just doesn't interact in any real way any more. Laura thinks I go visit her more often than I need to, which might be true, but I still want to see her.

Natalie’s birthday is coming up, and of all things she has asked if she can get her last name changed to Knight for her birthday. So I went in to ask the attorney that helped us with the guardianship, and asked about formally adopting her at the same time. We’d never pursued it before because we weren’t sure how her bioparents would react, but the attorney thinks it should be a slam dunk since there’s been no contact for the past 3 years. So we have an appointment to get the adoption process started around the end of the month….The kids had their first snow day (actually an ice day) on Thursday this week. So, e-learning!... Friday was a busy day for Beth, since she had to get Alex to work by 4:00 and Missy to church (Missy was gone all this weekend at ICYC) by 5:30 (which she found out via a phone call at 5:10, was supposed to be 5:00) then load up and haul everything to a craft show in Columbia City for setup, which had to be done before 7:30. Alex wound up having to walk home after he got out of work. Saturday Beth sold soup at the ‘Yuletide Treasures’ craft show in Columbia City. That show was almost an afterthought for her, she signed up a few weeks ago because she had just heard about it and had time available. So we went, and we sold a ton of soup. Brought in $640 in proceeds, which I think is the most ever except for last year’s Wawasee craft show. It was heavily enough trafficked that we sold out of the soala soup (she had brought 13 jars) in about an hour and 45 minutes. Of course, that was one that she had for samples and everyone remarked on how great it smelled as they passed by, whether they stopped or not…. Sunday Natalie invited a friend of hers to church with us.

Today I basically just relaxed, since yesterday was the annual Veterans Half Marathon. I finished the race in 2:13:06, which is my slowest time of the 5 times I’ve run it, but today was also by far the coldest and windiest it has been for this race, and I’ve had a bad cold for over a week. I came really close to tapping out before mile 4 was done, because we had been running into the wind a lot up to that point. But I did plod on and finish, with only walking up a couple hills near the end. Trey and Justin from work also ran this year, Trey finished about 15 minutes ahead of me and Justin finished about 45 seconds behind me. I had no idea he was that close. The race was very arduous, and I’ve never been so glad to be done with a race before. But I now have a complete 5-year set of finishers medals, and I am done with it….I took Iris to the vet this week, since she has had some sort of lump on her chest for a little while now. Beth and I just noticed it at around the same time, no idea how long it’s been there but it must have gotten there relatively quickly. So we were concerned enough to bring her in. She almost shredded my hand trying to get her in the carrying case, so she went in a tote instead. The vet did a needle aspiration, but there was no infection and no tumor, so we’re not really sure what it is other than some sort of cyst, and all we can do is keep an eye on it and bring her in again if it gets worse….speaking of cats, one has shown up at our house. He appears to be a stray, or more precisely I think he was abandoned around here somewhere. He can't be more than 6 or 8 months old, if that, and he is not afraid of people and likes attention. He's also starving, and practically skeletal. We kept him inside since it was getting so cold, and started feeding him. I tried to take him to the shelter this week, but they are full up with cats and can’t take any more. Neither can any place that they recommended I try. So for the time being ‘Tiger’ is going to live in the garage until we can either get Iris and Ruby to accept him (they are NOT having that) or find somewhere else to take him. Laura has indicated a willingness to take him if nobody else will and we can bring him with us for Thanksgiving....Beth and the girls and I did some geocaching in Winona Lake this afternoon. Found a couple on and around the trails, but didn't find one of them out in the woods. Might have been buried in leaves, though....

Beth had another soup show yesterday, the one at the Brethren Church. It was about the same as last year, a very successful show but modest. She sold about $460 worth of soup over the course of the day which was definitely worthwhile. More so than the Tippy Creek show even.

Last week was fall break, and we did something different this time. We headed in a different direction than usual and headed to Cincinnati. I took Wednesday off and spent the morning getting some things done around the house, little things mostly, getting the grass cut and getting more birdseed and things like that. A bit later we took Alex downtown to get his passport application sent in for his trip to France next year. The kids all had dental appointments in FW so we drove there and took off for Cincy after they were done. Somehow we wound up taking a wrong turn somewhere along the way and lost an hour on back roads south of FW, but we made it and got to the hotel with plenty of time to do the hot tub. We spent most of the next day at the Creation Museum, but less than we actually thought we would, so we set out to find a place for dinner in the city, but not knowing where anything is or how to get around, we didn't. We wound up just finding some chicken tenders restaurant somewhere near the hotel. Friday we hit the ark. We spent most of the day there until dinnertime, then headed out to meet up with Brian and Deeann Myers. We met them at a burger restaurant on the riverfront by all the sports stadiums. We had a nice dinner with them and stayed a while to catch up. Next morning we headed back home.

Alex has really been racking up the hours at Culver’s this weekend. He worked Saturday from 11:30-7:00 and again today from 3:00-7:00. Things went generally pretty well, though it was a really long shift on Saturday and he wasn’t really feeling it at the start. But, he rallied after he had lunch and things were better for him after that. He did slip and fall at one point so we may have to look into better shoes. Still, he’s excited about making some money…..Saturday was the Donut Dash 5k at Heartline. I ran it, but chose not to eat donuts at each mile marker. I had one afterwards. Trey ran and had donuts, which he regretted almost immediately. Anyway, I ran as fast as I have in a long time. My official time was 24:18 or blazing fast, but the course was considerably shorter than 5 kilometers. I ran around the parking lot a couple times to get my distance up to 5k and my phone clocked my 5k time as 25:10, which is still really fast for me……Saturday while Alex was at work Beth and I did some yard work. I finally got the rose bush in the trellis dug out like Beth’s been wanting me to do for months, and finally got the lower branches on the spruce tree trimmed, got the lawn mowed and the back yard swept, got the bird feeder filled back up and most of the backyard furniture into the shed…..Sunday I went to FW to visit Mom again, since I won’t be able to next week and possibly the week after. She was sitting at a table when I got there and did not seem to notice me when I came in. Nor did she talk much at all, or respond to anything. She didn’t recognize anyone from the same photos I show her most visits, even the grandkids, and I think she soiled herself while I was sitting with her. I did get her to get up for a little walk downstairs, but she didn’t even seem to notice the birds as we walked by, even when I pointed them out to her. The whole visit was pretty much a bust…..

Alex has started his job in earnest now. He had an orientation Saturday at 2:00, which lasted maybe an hour or so. I took him to the restaurant and waited for him, and while I was waiting some other kid working there came to my table and offered me a free turtle sundae because they had accidentally made an extra one. So, yeah, I’ll take it. Anyway, we have to go shopping for some non-skid shoes and black slacks. He’s got his first real working hours next weekend….I took some old coins I found among Dad's things to a coin shop this week, and got about $22.50 for them. There were a bunch of wheat sheaf pennies, including one from 1918, a Kennedy half-dollar from 1965, and Eisenhower dollar from 1971, but the big prize was a Morgan silver dollar from 1893, worth 20 bucks. Funny that I gave them a handful of coins, and they gave me some bills and a handful of coins back..... Friday the girls had a painting event at church, for the youth group’s girls night. Missy and Nat both went. It was pallet painting, not really pallets but they had some wood nailed together into framed plaques or placards or sign boards or something for the girls to paint words, verses or inspirational quotes on. Both of them seemed to really enjoy it….. This weekend was Beth’s first soup show of the season. We’ve renewed her website and I got her signed up to accept Paypal at the shows, which I thought might help, and it got her a $20 sale that she wouldn’t have had otherwise. The show was at the Tippy Creek Winery; much earlier there than last year because they just weren’t bringing in enough revenue after paying for the tents and heaters. Too bad, the December show there was gangbusters last year. Anyway, this year it was a beautiful day for it, if a bit windy at times, and even though the crowd wasn’t what it was last year Beth still sold $435 worth of soup. They also had several BBQ food trucks and live blues music all day which was pretty cool. Beth’s been pretty stressed about things, but after the show started going she calmed down and was starting to really enjoy running the show. She’s been feeling overwhelmed but I thing a good show will get her ready for the season to get going in full now…..

Alex’s orientation at Culver’s was supposed to be this week, but they called to reschedule. I advised Alex to make calls back to them to make sure it gets scheduled, which I think worked out well for him. They’ve just been busy. Anyway, the orientation should now be this weekend….Alex had his final drivers’ ed driving course on Saturday; the one that had to be made up because of his fender-bender a few weeks ago. He drove for an hour with the instructor, then the parent ride-along followed, so he had a good 90 minutes of driving time. The teacher said he’s been doing very well and gave him good marks in everything, so now he just needs to finish up the 50 hours of driving time (he’s got something like 15 now, which seems impossibly little for as much as we’ve done with him) by next June when he can get his license…..I did not go to Alex’s ride-along because I went to FW to visit Mom. Today, she looked at me as I came in but didn’t really seem to register much. We sat on the couch and watched a movie, but she was not really present much at all. She spoke only a little the whole time I was there, mostly in gibberish, which is new to me. She also didn’t seem to understand when I told her I had to leave; she just sat there like she had been the whole time. She didn’t recognize anyone in pictures I showed her, not even her mother. She is still healthy and being taken care of and kept clean, and the clothes I bought for her last time fit her fine, but visiting her is getting to be so depressing..…Natalie started up with piano lessons again this week. She’s been wanting to get back to it but Susie was full up, and we had to wait until she had another opening. Which she now does…..Beth’s been gearing up for the soup season again, even though she’s not sure she’s really up to it. She’s been working hard on making the soups, but the hardest thing has been getting started. She has a show next weekend, I hope it goes well…..I finally got the pool put away early this week. While I was waiting for it to dry out it rained overnight, and by morning there was a lot of dirt (mud) in the pool as well. So I hosed it off a bit and drained all the muddy water with the shop-vac, which worked really well, then got all 3 kids to help me haul it into the garage and get it laid out on top of the camper. That’s going to have to do until I rent another storage unit for the winter, I guess, because I do want the truck in the garage this winter…..

Alex has a job! Last week we were eating dinner at Culver’s and I got him to get another application and fill it out right there. And the manager arranged an interview for him on the spot, which was today. And they hired him right from the interview! So he’s pretty excited about that. Now he’s got to go to an orientation, which will be scheduled sometime next week…..This weekend I finally got the pool drained. It was long past time to get it done, since I don’t think anyone’s been in it for some time and it has been incredibly cold. But, no green water this year. The chlorine dispenser works so much better than continuously adding by hand. Anyway, I started draining it during the week and it took pretty much all night. I was stacking chairs and things against one side to help keep the pool folder over and forcing water to drain, which worked much better than just pulling it and draining by wave action. So now it’s empty, and I just have to get it dry and figure out where to put it….This was the weekend of the Kelley’s “wedding,” actually renewal, that Beth was in, so Beth was busy with that most of the time. They had their rehearsal dinner Friday night and I was invited along with Beth, the dinner itself was at B-Mac's (formerly Dig's Diner) downtown, because it was the site of the Kelley's first date. They had a full on wedding ceremony at the church since they never had one back when they actually got married, and they’re going on a 2-week Florida vacation without the kids since they never had a honeymoon back then either. So they did the whole nine yards, with the dress and tux and rehearsal and flowers and wedding party and cake and reception. It was a very nice ceremony, with a fun party at the American Legion in town afterwards. They had El Arriero cater (taco bar) and had a DJ playing music for dancing. Beth and I actually danced for the first time in years. They played an electric slide song and the Macarena and a few other line dance kind of songs, plus some slower ones of course. We stayed a couple hours until the kids all really wanted to leave, at which time we did too……

I finally got the van into the shop to have that front end clunking noise looked at, and it turned out to be bad front sway bar links. While we had it in, I also had them look at the front blower because it has been really noisy for some time now and Beth doesn't like it. It turned out that the motor was going, so I had them replace it. Overall, $503.64, ouch....This weekend was the 11th annual Wiessner/Pinkster/Gruizenga/Knight campout, once again at Michawana. This year we did camp, since Mom was not with us this time. I can't even imagine that any more. Anyway, I took a half day of vacation on Friday so I could finish up all the last minute prep. The kids had all their clothes and things packed, and Beth had all the food bought, so I just had to pack up and hitch up. Since it's only a weekend, we did simple. We got on the road by around 4:30 or so, so we were able to get to the campground and set everything up in the daylight for once! There weren't as many cousins and friends this year, but still a pretty good crowd, with all the usual suspects. There were, however, other groups of campers about, and one little kid apparently mistook Alex for some other kid that had been picking on him and threw a bottle of pop all over him. Alex was pretty pissed but not much he could do about it. Otherwise everything went pretty well, the weather held out for the most part, it was cool and cloudy but it didn't rain to speak of all weekend. It was also windy enough that I never set up the awning. Saturday night unfortunately turned into a drinking party around the fire, again. Not loving that. The zipline never opened either, not loving that. I did get in a run, another round of the first 5k I ever ran. Too hilly though, bad time. Sunday everyone packed up and left to go to a new restaurant but Beth and Nat were not feeling up to the crowds and noise, plus we had to get home for small group in the evening, so we bugged out without staying for lunch. We did stop in Kalamazoo since I had a Barnes & Noble coupon that was expiring, and we had wanted to pick up copies of King of Tokyo and Azul.

Busy weekend. I went out for a run on Saturday but had to cut it a bit short because I had to get home to take Alex to his driving lesson at the high school…..In the early afternoon I drove to Fort Wayne (myself) to go visit Mom, since I hadn’t seen her in several weeks. She seems to be doing pretty well; she’s clean and her hair has been trimmed, and she was in a good mood. It seemed. She was sitting in the common area watching TV, which was just on to a Motown music channel, but she was laughing at things. She’d laugh at commercials, or look at the nurses working over in the dining area and laugh at them, or laugh at me if I said anything to her. She talked a little bit, nothing really understandable, and if I asked her what she had said she laughed at me. I just sat with her for a couple hours; she didn’t want to go for a walk or anything. Until I told her it was time for me to leave, when she clouded over and seemed to get upset. She got up and started walking around, so I stayed a bit to walk around with her. When I really did have to leave, one of the nurses caught me and told me that she needs some new clothes because all the ones she has are wearing out, and she’s putting some weight back on (she’s lost a lot in the last year). So I ran over to the Kohl’s near the home and picked up some fleece shirts and pants for her…..After that I had to get home quickly because Beth and I had to get to a wedding reception for Brittnee (Bullington) and Alex Rethlake in Nappanee. It was a nice reception, they eloped last year so this was their big party. The food was amazing. We visited for a while but Beth wasn’t feeling great with all the crowd around.

Beth and I hosted a cookout for the victorious softball team on Tuesday. We invited everyone from the team plus families, plus the ministers, and planned for as many as 50+ people altogether. We were providing the burgers and grill, and asked everyone to bring a side dish and their own drinks. Well, we had a bunch of late cancellations but still had around 20 or so people come, and we prepped around 56 burger patties and had 30 left over. Good time though, we had several families come and let the kids use to pool and trampoline, and there was plenty of food. We’re also planning on getting performance tees for next season, with names and numbers on the backs, just like a real team!...Wednesday was water wars for Revolution since it had been cancelled a few weeks back. At the same time, FCC Kids was cancelled on Wednesday because Bob had wisdom teeth pulled and wasn’t feeling too good, and Lindsey tore something in her knee so she wasn’t feeling too good either…..Missy had her first guitar lesson on Thursday. We’ve had a guitar for her for a couple years now, and have promised her lessons for a long time, so a few weeks back when I spotted a sign on a door downtown advertising guitar lessons I finally made the call. The guy checked out the guitar and said it was in good shape and definitely playable, which is good, and Missy said she had fun. He fingertips were a bit sore afterwards though. But she’s excited about finally getting lessons…..The Zimmer Biomet picnic was this weekend. This is the first time we’ve gone since before the merger, for one reason or other. It was back at Cedar Point this year, but as before, Beth, Alex, and Missy are not roller coaster riders so I wasn’t sure what everyone would do there. As it turned out, Alex stayed behind. He had drivers’ ed on Saturday for 3 hours, which we thought he really shouldn’t miss, and he really didn’t want to go anyway, and the Monsmas agreed to have him stay over there for the weekend, so it all worked out. Beth and the girls and I all took off for Ohio on Friday evening. I had rented an Airbnb for the weekend, which was a lot cheaper than staying at a hotel at the park. It was a single-wide mobile home in a trailer park, and we had the whole house. The place was very clean, the park was very well-kept and quiet (there are no trailer parks like it anywhere near Warsaw). Everyone had their own room since Alex wasn’t with us. We spent pretty much the whole day at Cedar Point Saturday. Beth and Missy split from Natalie and I as soon as we got there, and Nat and I rode coasters all day. We rode Raptor, Iron Dragon, Rougarou, Millennium Force, Steel Vengeance, Gatekeeper, and Valraven in that order, which took all day until dinnertime. Nat also got a henna tattoo which she’s always wanted to try. We stayed overnight at the trailer again before heading home in the morning.

For the first time since 2002, First Christian Church is the softball divisional tournament champion! We had an incredible run through the tournament, and even through the last few games of the season. After winning our first two games in the tournament I was wondering if we were really that good or if we were just punching above our weight. We came into last Tuesday heading into the winners bracket championship while the losers bracket was down to the final four, so it was a situation where we could have played 2 or 3 games depending on if we won or lost. The first game was against Leesburg who had pretty well stomped us twice during the season and was the odds-on favorite to win it all. Well, we were ahead 1-0 after 1 inning, 2-0 after 2 innings, 3-0 after 3 innings…and start to think maybe we can beat them. They tied it fairly late in the game but we came right back with a few more, and held them in check the rest of the way and won 7-5. Then we had to wait for them to play again for the losers bracket championship against the team that they had beaten the week before. We were expecting to have to play Leesburg again but North Webster beat them and ended them. Now North Webster had been in the final four of the losers bracket, so they had to win at 6, then win at 7, then win at 8, then play us at 9. So they were in their fourth consecutive game, and maybe a bit tired, but we capitalized on every opportunity and made some great plays including tagging runners out at home at times, and they were hitting the ball a long way but not quite far enough and our outfield was running them down, and we actually shut them out 10-0, invoking the mercy rule after 5 innings. I even got to record the last out of the game at second base. An amazing victory and an amazing late season run! By the end we really were feeling like we could beat anybody in this league. Funny story…Beth was in line at the concession stand midway through the championship game when one of the league directors came by to tell the worker that she had to go home to make more championship plaques, because “one of the teams that’s not supposed to win keeps winning.”…..Saturday was a 5k race at Tippy Creek Winery, the first I’ve run in almost a couple years. My time was not great (27:42) but I’m pretty sure the course was long because the tracker app said my 5k time was 26:16. Anyway, the course was not that interesting (run down the road and back) even though it looks like the winery would be a really fun place to hang out on a weekend. They had live music and a food truck, and runners got a free wine slushy which was pretty good, actually……I ran the 5k with a stuffy nose that had started midweek and was getting progressively worse, even though I felt all right for the race it got worse from there. By Saturday afternoon I felt terrible and stayed home from church on Sunday. Today I wasn’t great either but since I’d been feeling sick all weekend and it was a holiday and the rest of the family wanted to do something, we went to Fort Wayne. Nat needed a few more tops so Beth took her shopping for some clothes, but Alex and Missy didn’t need anything else so we went to the stores they like (Think Geek and that other one that’s just like it). I thought about visiting Mom but decided that I probably shouldn’t go there sick.

The softball team continues on a hot streak. We won another tournament game Tuesday, defeating Wesleyan 14-4. They never really got into the game, just scrapping together a couple runs here and there over the course of the game. I think we’ve already surprised some people, we already can’t finish any lower than 3rd place. Next week we get Leesburg in the winner’s bracket championship, and they really hammered us twice during the season..…Thursday there was another orientation of sorts at the high school, although I could have sworn we just did that. This was more of a time to meet the teachers, though. We took all 3 of them and walked around meeting everyone’s teachers kind of randomly. Afterwards there was an informational meeting about a student trip to Europe that Missy was invited on. We thought it was an honors class thing but as it turns out it is open to all. It’s a 2-week tour through England, France, Germany, and Italy, looks amazing. Of course it’s over $4k per person and both the girls would like to go. And it’s just next summer, when Alex is going to France, so there’s not a lot of time to pay for it, and we do not have the budget for it right now. So, we have to disappoint both the girls this time. I hate doing that, especially since we already have Alex’s trip paid for, but his was less money and we had more time. Missy was brought to tears because she thought she’d be able to go. But, there will be another next year and I’m ok with making them wait until after sophomore year like Alex. Hope it’s a trip they’d like to do, when we can send them..…Friday night Beth and I went to another game night at the Rodgers’ house. Several other work people/couples also came. We played rounds of Rise of Augustus, For Sale, and Azul, and Beth loved the last 2, especially Azul. She’s already looking to buy that game as soon as she gets a paycheck…..Did some more driving Saturday with Alex, he’s probably got something like 10 hours in now…..Sunday the whole family did some geocaching (first time in quite a while) at a conservation area or something (swamp) up near Lake Wawasee. There are something like 9 caches in this natural park with several walking trails and a pavilion. We got two of them (including one that was hidden in a fake wasps’ nest up in a tree, which you had to lower with a string and pulley) and were looking for a third when the bugs got way too thick for us and drove us out. I’d told everyone that we would go to Lake Waubee to cool off and swim after geocaching, and it was about a million degrees outside and soaking wet, so I think that’s where everyone wanted to be anyway. So we decided to come back when the bugs would be less dense, and go swim. The lake is our new go-to place; it is certainly cleaner than any of the lakes in Warsaw and it wasn’t as crowded either. We swam, played Frisbee, and Alex drove us home.

Tuesday was the first day of school! All 3 of the kids are now high schoolers. That does simplify the ride in to school. I’m taking them in, and Beth is picking them up. None of them were particularly looking forward to it, but I think it’s going to be just fine for all of them. Alex and Missy even have a programming class together, hee hee. Beth is also now back to work at Lincoln after last year off, her first day was actually Monday. She’s been incredibly stressed about it, but really was enjoying it once she get started. She also got exactly the job she wanted, which helps..…The softball tournament started on Tuesday, and we continued on the stride we’ve been on lately. Once again we played Fellowship Baptist and jumped all over them, scoring early and often. They got a few here and there but we beat them 13-5, and for the third time this season. We’re really clicking lately, hope we can keep it up…..FCC Kids started on Wednesday. I didn’t want to do it again this year but I know it’s hard to get people to do this sort of thing, so I said I would as long as I didn’t have to do the teaching. My counterpart for the year couldn’t come this week, but she should be there from next week on. To fill in, I had Bob most of the time this week. I have the 1st – 3rd graders this year, there are 8 and all but 1 are boys, and a couple of the boys are, uh, challenging…..Alex had a sleepover on Friday night for a friend’s birthday party…..Saturday Laura came for a quick visit. She had flown to Chicago to see Monica for a day, then drove to our house to see us. She arrived around lunch time, and we had lunch and visited for a while and then headed to Fort Wayne to visit Mom. Laura didn’t really want to but she did. The visit went as well as any has lately, Mom didn’t want to go walk around but we were able to get her to anyway. She didn’t talk much but she wasn’t agitated, and what she did say didn’t make sense. The most amazing thing was she remembered Laura’s name. We went to walk outside, and we saw one of the nurses coming inside who asked her who this was, and she said ‘Laura.’ We had said it before we went outside, so we’re not sure if she just remembered it because she had just heard it, or if she really knew who Laura was. It’s hard to tell if she actually recognizes us, but I think she does to some extent. She was also short of sheets and towels so Laura and I went shopping for her at Kohl’s to pick some up. It was a hard visit for Laura but I thought it was one of the better ones lately. Laura stayed on our couch overnight, then left after we went out for breakfast....today we all went out to see "Christopher Robin," which was a bit cutesy but serviceable.

Dad’s birthday was Monday, which left me a bit melancholy.....Monday evening Warsaw was hit by a tornado. Beth was just getting home from somewhere as the weather started kicking up, and Missy looked out the back window and remarked that the wind was really blowing hard. Which it was; I looked and saw a bunch of trees across the ditch just being whipped around, but it didn’t look like it was that strong closer to the house. Which turned out to be good since it was a confirmed tornado, practically skipping over our house after touching down near Pike Lake, and then touching down again just across 30.....Tuesday we finally got to make up the softball game that has been rained out twice. We played FUM and once again only had 8 players show up, and once again we won it, 13-10. We won with only two players in the outfield. Scored early and often, and held them off. Gotta love beating that team, they are sorta whiners and talkers. So we're going into the tournament on a hot streak! I also took a bouncer off my knee (still got the guy out at second) which had left a gnarly bruise by the end of the week, complete with a pattern from the laces.....Beth has been spending most of this week shopping for back to school clothes for and with the kids. Holy cow are we spending a lot of money. Nothing fits them any more, and their shoes are all trashed. It's also very difficult to find school-appropriate shorts for the girls, we're finding...Saturday we all went up to Michigan to visit with Judy and the rest of the family. We went first up to Judy and Neill's cottage on the lake and visited with them most of the day. The flood waters have receded a little bit but the lake is still really high there. Ric and family came over a bit later and we all had a cookout for dinner. Judy also gave us a roll-top secretary, which is very nice and I think will replace the little computer desk in the dining room at home. It took a bit of doing to get it to fit into the back of the van with the back seat up, though. Anyway, things broke up just after dinner because everyone had places to go, but then we all headed up to Marve and Beth's house to visit with them for a while. We all swam at their pool for the evening, and when it started getting dark we played Farkle. We headed for home late, like 9:30 or 10, and in the process of packing up our stuff I managed to walk into the rear lift gate of the van and split open my head on it. Put about a 1" gash just under my hairline on my forehead. So that delayed our leaving by a bit as I worked on stopping the bleeding. I don't think stitches are needed but it will probably leave a scar.

Beth took the kids to Black Pine Animal Park (again) on Monday (without me, which was fine). The girls love the place, but Alex and I kinda feel like we’ve seen it enough…..Monday evening I took the rebuilt RC foam plane to the church for another flying session, which like the last one ended quickly. It took off and ascended initially, but was banking hard left from the start and I couldn’t keep it under control. The flight lasted about 5 seconds. I thought I was going to be able to keep it under control for a second or two but then it crashed hard into the parking lot and was totaled. Parts flying off and everything. The battery started to swell so I’m going to have to replace that, but the rest of the parts should be salvageable and I’ll try again…..Tuesday was supposed to be a make-up day for softball. We were rained out a few weeks back, so last Tuesday was originally an off day before the tournament starts, and they took advantage of the free day to make up the game. However, the rainout was rained out. It was one of those days when it kind of drizzles during the day and threatens rain all day, so nobody’s sure if we’re going to play or not until game time. Most of the team was at or on the way to the park when they finally announced that games were cancelled…..since we had a free evening after the game was called off, Beth and I took the kids to see “Ant-Man and the Wasp” afterwards. It was a little boring, I thought, but maybe I’m just not used to the lighter Marvel fare…..I made reservations this week for Cedar Point for the company picnic in September. I found an Airbnb house about 10 miles away for a lot less than a hotel near the park.…..Beth and Nat had some difficulties on Wednesday; Nat was going to a friend’s house in the evening after counseling but her friend thought she was coming over to our house. So while she and Beth were gone her friend’s dad dropped her off at our house. Then we waited for them to get here, which (I didn’t know) they weren’t going to. After a while I get a choppy phone call from Beth, that they had gone to drop Nat off at the friend’s house but they ran out of gas in middle of the trailer park, which is a place where Nat had some bad history and she’s having a panic attack just from being there, and now they can’t get out. And Beth’s phone has died. So she has to go door to door in this trailer park asking if someone will let her use their phone to call me, while Natalie is lying on the floor of the van and Beth is getting panicky herself. But she did it! And the person that she finally found to let her use a phone didn’t have service so she had to find wi-fi somewhere to use it. She finally got a hold of me and I (with the friend) came to get them and brought enough gas to get them back to a gas station…..Natalie has finally finished summer gym online! What a pain to deal with this teacher all summer but it is done.

It was a fairly busy first week back from vacation. Not to mention the constant checking the Find My Phone app for Beth which proved to be fruitless, and the constant prying of the cats off of our ankles, on Monday the kids' youth group had Moe's Monday so Beth and the kids were doing that for lunch, then in the evening a group from church went to Fort Wayne to see the TinCaps game. It was a group from FCC Kids, so Bob got the tickets for everyone. FW was playing the Clinton (Iowa) LumberKings. FW was ahead 3-1 after the first inning, and that's where it slowed way down. Beth and the kids were all willing to stay for the entire game, so we did, but the game dragged on and on and eventually ended after 10:30 (almost 3 and a half hours long) with the TinCaps winning 4-2. It was a pretty boring game. But, there were friends there. Tuesday the softball team was brought back down to earth; we played the top team in the league and lost 11-4 unable to get much of anything going all game. This weekend, we went back to the vet to get the cats some of those flea treatment pills, since the drops do not seem to be working. Great advice they gave us: grind up the pills and put them in some tuna. Well that didn't work because those pills stink when they're ground up, and the tuna stunk when we put the powdered pills in it. And, the cats wouldn't touch it. So on to plan B with that.

Beth has almost certainly left her phone on the train yesterday. I can't get a signal on it and we've all turned the house and van upside down trying to find it. Crap.

Vacation began on Friday the 13th which may have been apropos, considering. To start off, we got to the train station in South Bend on Friday night (the train was scheduled to leave South Bend at midnight, but schedules mean nothing to Amtrak) and found that it was closed. Doors locked, lights off, windows covered. There was a sign on the door indicating that due to staffing issues, the station was closed until morning. That was odd, we thought. Not having ridden the train before, we didn’t know how to check baggage, or even how to get on board. There were a lot of people, 20 maybe, sitting around outside the station…apparently most of them had been waiting for a train that was now 3 hours late, and wasn’t going to arrive for at least another hour. Our train arrived around half an hour late, and it seemed as much of a surprise to the conductor as it was to us that the station was closed. The train stopped maybe 100 yards down the track for several minutes, until a conductor came walking all the way down the tracks to the station and told us all to move to so-and-so location before the train could approach. Maybe he was waiting for a safety check that wasn’t coming since there was nobody at the station. And since there had been nobody to check our suitcases, we just had to lug them all along with us and stow them onboard as we could. The conductor pointed out 5 seats together up front, so that’s where we sat. We spent the night trying to get some sleep, mostly unsuccessfully, but everyone all seemed to get at least a few hours here and there, despite the fact that the intra-car doors banged over and over again every time we went around a curve, and noisy people got on somewhere in Ohio. It was getting light by the time we got just past Cleveland, and by that time they announced that we were now 2.5 hours behind schedule. The rest of the day passed on the rails, we had café car food which was edible but simple and microwavable, and it was nice that I didn’t have to do all the driving. It was a little boring even so. Not much lake view on the Lake Shore Limited, though. Only for a while along Lake Erie somewhere. We made it to Boston late Saturday, maybe around 10 pm, and got all our luggage off the train with us, then had to make our way to Logan airport a few miles away, which isn’t an obvious path. We got on a bus to take us to the airport, then another to take us to the car rental place, a process that is made a lot harder by lugging all your stuff. We had to ask directions a couple times but eventually made it to the rental counter, where we found that the agency we’d rented from was now closed. I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do at that point, but an agent from the next desk over apparently knew where they left the keys and was able to get me the rental agreement (I imagine the agencies are all subsidiaries of a single company…I guess) and we got the car. I’d been worried that we had too much luggage for the trunk space of any car we would get, but we had a Ford Edge and there was just enough space for everything we were lugging. So we hit the road for Providence, where the overnight hotel was, around an hour away. When we got there at about half past midnight, we found out that they had overbooked and gave our reservation to someone else. And the hotel had nothing for us. The clerk was as helpful as he could be, but every call he made he was finding out the same thing, the hotel is booked solid and no rooms are available. One right after the other. Nothing in Providence. Nothing in Warwick. Nothing in any close by city. Nothing nowhere. I finally found a place in Worcester, about another hour away, using hotels.com since they gave us a $100 voucher for us losing the reservation we’d made 3 months ago. I had the voucher, so we used it, but I’m never using hotels.com again. I found a room, and we hit the road again. Ironic that our train had stopped in Worcester several hours earlier. At the hotel, of course, they informed us that they didn’t have the room that hotels.com had said they had. But they did have a room with smaller beds, which we took. They even gave us a roll-away bed. And we all got to bed at about 3:00. The plan for the next day was to drive to Newport and tour a couple of the mansions, since we now had a much longer drive in the morning and the mansions close at 5:00, we had to get an earlier than planned start. But we did make it, and had plenty of time to tour Rosecliff and The Breakers. Rosecliff is much less impressive than I remember it being…the Breakers is much more so. We saw parts of the Breakers that I do not remember at all, to the point that I wondered if most of the house was shut off for maintenance or something when we were there last (in 1995, so maybe I just don’t remember it). The Billiards room especially was super cool. And we saw a lot of details I don’t remember at all from last time. We also had audio narration tours at both places so more details were pointed out. Afterwards we did some driving around the beaches and the town (we barely remember anything from there, it seems. Or so much has changed it just doesn’t seem familiar.) and ate dinner at the Red Parrot, but they didn’t have stuffies anymore. Got some good swordfish, though. Beth and I always thought maybe we would have liked living in Newport better if we had been there during the summer instead of the dead of winter, but overall I have to say I don’t think so. Newport is too crowded and touristy in the summer. I think we wouldn’t have liked it much if we’d lived there in the summer any more than we did in the winter. Anyway, the next day we headed out on the road again to Acadia National Park. It was a good 6 hour drive, through some pretty slow traffic for the last hour or so. We got to the cabin by late afternoon and didn’t do much for the rest of the day but go to dinner in Bar Harbor and do a bit of grocery shopping for our time there. The cabin itself was really nice, plenty of room for all of us (the proprietor gave us a mattress for Alex, since it was just a 2-bedroom place), full kitchen, immaculately clean, grounds well-kept, and only a mile or so from the park main entrance. To save some money we got boxes of cereal for breakfasts and got some supplies to grill burgers and such instead of eat out a couple nights. We did eat out the first night, at a restaurant in town where I got a lobster roll that was…uninspiring. But Beth’s haddock was amazing. I went for a run through the park in the morning, about 8 miles or so past the visitors center and along a couple of carriage road loops, and afterwards we all went out to the park to sightsee. We had heard such good things about the audio tour by CD so I got one of those for the car, and we’d planned to take the driving tour of the park loop road that first day. Well…that first day was pretty overcast and misty, and foggy enough that most of the spectacular views were just not there on the tour. And the narration was kind of curious as to when you were supposed to stop; it seemed like we were always waiting in the car after we arrived somewhere for the narration to end before getting out. We wound up punching out of the tour by a bit less than halfway into it; the kids were bored with all the driving (drive here, look around. Get back in the car. Drive there, look around. Get back in the car…) and the scenery just wasn’t there for the most part. We did have a nice short hike over some rocks to the water, and we did stay at Thunder Hole for a while (although it was just gurgling) and a couple other places down by the water where we could walk around, but after a while we were ready to just be done with it. We got lunch at a seafood place that was down by the water and came highly recommended, but the lobster was pretty chewy and disappointing. Natalie and I did a bit of geocaching in the evening (first part of an earthcache series)and got the first station, but by the time we got the correct coords for the second station (after wasting some time at the wrong place) and got there, it was getting dark and there was a half-mile hike through the woods to the actual site, so we left it for another day. Wednesday was a much nicer day, much clearer. We tried to repeat some of the driving tour with the CD but everyone seemed pretty much over it, so the driving tour didn't last long. Then we tried going straight to bubble rock, which was the second earthcache site that Nat and I couldn't get to the night before, but we were thwarted by traffic. A lot of the park seems to be a thousand cars trying to get into a parking lot with 12 spaces. We couldn't find anywhere to park, either at the site or at the overflow parking or anywhere down the road, so we left it and thought maybe we'll go see Cadillac Mountain instead. Well that was similar, but the narrow winding road up the mountain meant we couldn't turn around when we got to the point where traffic was crawling. It took probably close to an hour to get into the parking lot and find a place to park, but once we were parked the mountain was very nice. It's the tallest mountain around, so the views of the shore and park are pretty spectacular. I also found by chance the information for the third station of the earthcache series, which was handy. We walked around the peak for a good while, then there were some hikes around the mountain that the kids wanted to go on; one was a hike down to Bubble Rock which was where we had been trying to get to that morning. It was against my better judgement, but all 3 kids wanted to try the hike and it didn't seem that long, just a mile and a half or so, so everyone thought it'd be easy and fun! Beth didn't want to hike down the mountain so she took the car the head to Bubble Rock and would meet us there. The trail was indeed spectacular, but rugged and steep. I don't know how far we got, but after a while Natalie's foot started hurting, although she wanted to go on. Then it started hurting worse, and her hiking boots were hurting, plus her big toenail broke, and it was hurting badly enough that she tried taking her boots off and going on barefoot, which lasted not even one full step. At that point we turned around and started back up. But there was only spotty service on the mountain so I couldn't reach Beth either through a call or a text that we were not going to make it. A little while after turning around, the panic started, and after a few minutes it turned into a full blown panic attack. We spent several minutes working on calming her down (a couple of passers-by gave us a bottle of water and a Kind bar) About 20 minutes after we turned around I got a text from Beth asking how it was going so I texted back quickly hoping that the messages would get through. About 15 minutes after that we all made it to the summit where the snack/souvenir shop was, so we got drinks and snacks and found a place to sit. Around 20 minutes later another text came through that Beth was on the way, and she got there around 15 minutes after that. We headed home after that, and rested at the cabin for a while. The only other thing we did for the rest of the day was go to a beach at Echo Lake, which seems to be a hidden gem in the park. It was a fairly longish drive to get to the beach but it was really nice and the lake was a pleasant place to swim. We grilled dinner in again in the evening, then Beth took Alex and Missy to Bar Harbor to do some shopping, while I stayed behind at the cabin with Natalie since she was still a bit panicky about going where there were so many people. Thursday (my birthday) we had made reservations for a whale-watching cruise out of Bar Harbor. We got up early and bundled up (although not as much as we should have), and we were pretty lucks to go since they had cancelled the cruise for the past 3 days due to fog and/or choppy seas. Our day was clear and relatively smooth, although they did advise repeatedly that the small chop that there was made things pretty rough out on the open sea. We all had Dramamine so we thought we'd be fine, and we were. The first hour or two of the cruise we headed out towards a small island where there is a lighthouse and research station, where they have been working to reintroduce puffins to the area (I'd thought puffins were all over up there, but I guess not. We did see some puffins although they are much smaller that I'd thought; I thought they were the size of penguins but it turns out they are more like robins. Little birds. So they were hard to see, but I got a couple good photos using a zoom lens. After a while we headed farther out to sea, where it got colder. We never did see any whales, but there were a lot of dolphins or porpoises out there, not really leaping out of the water but jumping up a bit. Also a big sunfish, although that was not a picturesque. After another couple hours out to sea we headed back, fast, and it got much much colder up on the weather deck as we did so. The wind cut right through anything we had on, which was not nearly enough clothing. Alex had a sweatshirt with no shirt underneath it which was reeeeally not enough. But it was nice back in town when we finally got there. We got lunch in town and did a bit more shopping (there was an alpaca wool store in town, and the girls went crazy for it). We got lunch in town, then after a rest at the cabin we went out for a hike I'd wanted to do. One of the stone bridges in the park frames a waterfall through the arch, it's a pretty iconic Acadia scene, and I wanted to go see it. Well I wasn't sure exactly how to get there so I got us to the roadside parking lot where we got onto the trails, but then I guessed a bit how to get to the site I wanted to see. I guessed correctly, but the trail we all hiked was sort of the hard way through the forest primeval. It was fairly steep and very rocky once we left the carriage trail, and we hiked that was for probably a good hour. By the time we got to the bridge Beth was exhausted and grumpy and angry. The waterfall didn't have much water going over it at that time, but it was very cool and scenic once we got there. And also we found that there was a much easier and faster way to hike to and from the spot we had parked, which never left the carriage trails so it would have been a lot easier for Beth to do the hike if I'd known. But that's kind of the way hiking goes sometimes...there's a better way to get where you're going but you won't find it until you get there. Dinner was out at a place where we'd eaten lunch the day before, for calzones, which were amazing. Friday was our last day at the park, I got up early to finish the earthcache series and found that the park is nearly empty between 6 and 8 am. If we'd known that we would have seen a lot more of it, I think. Anyway we definitely should have been getting earlier starts than we did while we were there. So I got to the last 2 stages of the series, one of which involved a spectacular and rugged hike part way up another mountain, one where I was nearly alone on the trail. It was near thunder hole which I saw was also nearly empty at that time. Anyway I got the last 2 stages and headed to the park HQ as instructed to finish and sign the log. The dispatcher on duty, though, had no idea what I was talking about and couldn't find the log and stamp. She had to go ask the ranger. Once he got there, though, he didn't know where the other dispatcher had put them, so they looked for a while and eventually apologized and said they couldn't find it. So as an alternative, I suggested that I get a selfie with the ranger and he give me a thumbs up in it, which he thought was a great idea so we went outside to take the photo. as we were finishing up, the dispatcher came out with a baggie of stuff, and asked "is this it?" and it was! So I got the selfie AND signed the log and got the stamp! I headed back to the cabin after that, where the others were up and getting breakfast and packing. By around 10 or so, we headed out. On the way we stopped by a rest area to meet up with Marlene, my step-aunt. We had lunch with her and her husband and caught up a bit, mostly about Mom. They live in Florida now and had just happened to be in Maine visiting family for a few weeks when we were there. After lunch we drove to the Boston area, where we were staying overnight. The plan had been to leave Acadia Friday and stay overnight in Boston so we didn't have to get up at zero dark 30 and drive 5 hours to Boston through morning traffic trying to catch a train on time on Saturday. We got the the hotel without too much problem, and got moving towards the train station the next morning in plenty of time...way too much time, as it turned out. I left Beth and the kids at the station and headed to the airport to return the rental car, then made my way back to the station via public transit. I was fretting a bit that I was running short on time as I made my way through returning the car, but before I made it back to the station I got a text from Beth letting me know that the tracks from Boston to Albany were closed for maintenance so the train had been cancelled. And they were going to put us on a bus to get us to Albany instead of a train. A BUS. Actually, it wasn't all that bad. We were on a bus for about 3 hours or so, and made it to Albany without too much difficulty. The train didn't leave for another couple hours after that, though. So we waited around in Albany. Once we got going it was better on the train for the return trip...there was less noise from the banging doors and such, at least. We were in Toledo or so by the time it started getting light, and the rest of the trip was fairly uneventful until a system-wide signal reset (whatever that is) happened when we were just a couple miles outside the South Bend station, and we waited in a sketchy part of the city for an hour or so waiting for things to get going again. But we got there, and the van was still sitting there in the parking lot when we arrived. The the big schlep home. That's a long post...one vacation done.

It has been a busy week getting ready for vacation. Tonight (late) we depart on the Amtrak train from South Bend to Boston. I'm looking forward to not having to drive all that way, and it's always seemed like it would be fun to take a long train trip. However, we'll find out in a few days whether it really is. Not sure how the kids will like it. Nor us. But, it wouldn't be much different for them in a car all that way either. So, we're up for the experience. We had a spaghetti dinner at Lincoln School on Monday, as a fundraiser for Drake (one of the students, who had a lot of medical issues in the last year). It's the first time I've ever been in the new building. Beth is going back to work there this year, so she's pretty excited and nervous. Tuesday the softball team had an amazing game: we were short-handed, just barely enough in fact to have a game. We had 8 people show up, but that's legal, though you take an auto out with the 9th battling slot each time. Even so, we jumped all over them early and won the game 9-3. We played with only 2 in the outfield and they did an amazing job. We were even playing a team that worked us a few weeks back! So we have a little winning streak going. There was a surprise even at the Bells' house for youth group...the new house we helped them move into a few weeks back. The surprise event turned out to be a pool/pizza party, although I gather not everyone used the pool because it wasn't as clean as it might be yet. They're still working on that. Anyway. The kids (except Nat, at counseling) all had a fun time. The last couple days has mostly been about getting things ready to go on vaca. Acadia, here we come...

This week I finally got around to having a plumber come in and fix the toilet downstairs. Been flushing slowly, if at all, for some time now. It just took augering it out, so something was stuck in there, who knows what.....Since July 4 fell on a Wednesday this year, I had a midweek break (and no softball game), which we took advantage of with another beach day. Beth and I had been telling each other that we just wanted to go back to the beach ever since we went to Holland last week, so we decided to take advantage of the holiday and hit the beach again. It was another perfect day for it. This time we found some close parking in South Haven so we stayed there. The lake, once again, was perfect; it was a hot and sunny day; it wasn’t even too crowded (until later in the day). We all had the sunscreen on, we all stayed under the canopy when we weren’t in the lake, but we still all got burned to some extent. Me on my arms and shoulders and chest and back. We were at the beach pretty much all day, until around dinnertime, then we went to Kalamazoo for supper (Main St. Pub) and on to visit with Beth and Marve at her house, where they and Ric & Nickie and the kids had been hanging out all day (she has a pool). Our kids were back in the pool for a while there, too. We headed home after a while and then I went back to work the next morning, which wasn’t easy.....Friday evening Beth and the kids and I spent getting the house ready for a wedding shower for Stephen Prater and his fiancée Sarah, since Mary Jane has no room to host one at her place. We hosted his graduation party a few years back, too. It wasn’t as well attended as I thought it would be, so I hope they at least got cards in the mail or something.....Today, we didn’t do much but I am itching like crazy from the sunburn (peeling already). I took Alex driving for a while out in the country. He needs to learn how to keep the car in the center of the lane, how to stop at a stop sign instead of way in front of it, and to check for oncoming traffic before pulling out from a stop. But otherwise he did fine, and he’ll do fine once he gets used to it all.

Alex has been away all week ay CIY, but he’s back now. He missed a nice win by the softball team…we were up against the lead team in our division, incidentally the only team we had beaten all year. They had only lost once…to us. Now, they’ve lost twice…to us. We are their kryptonite, it seems. Anyway, Alex was away all week (and we never got an anxious call!) at the conference at Hope College in Holland, and he loved it. He said he had just an amazing week. The downside for him was that the Super Smash Bros. tournament at the library in town was Saturday, the day he was scheduled to get back, but he was going to miss it…again. But, we reached an arrangement with him that on Friday, the rest of us would go up to Michigan to spend the day at the beach, pick him up in the evening after the conference was over, and head back Friday night so he could participate in the tournament on Saturday. So that’s what we did…I took most of the day off on Friday and we headed up to the lake. We couldn’t find a place to park near the beach in South Haven so we headed to Holland instead, and it was a perfect beach day. The lake was cool enough to be refreshing and take a few minutes to get used to but no more than that, then it was awesome. And the water was so clear. And the beach wasn’t too awful crowded. And it was sunny and hot. The conference was done by 9-ish so we headed to the campus after dinner (we saw the huuuuge crowds of teen kids) and collected Alex, who talked and talked about what a great time he had. Beth and I are so glad. We were home late, and Beth and I were up early to do another day’s worth of garage sale. It was worth extending to sale another day because we made around $30 more, Alex made around $20 (some DS games went), and the girls made another few bucks each. Alex made it to the Smash Bros tournament, and afterwards said “we didn’t do very well, but we had fun” which is all we could hope for. Last night was the fireworks show in town…seems early…Beth and Nat didn’t want to go so I took Alex and Missy to the fairgrounds to watch the show. The fireworks display was kinda meh, if you ask me.

Garage sale weekend! Finally a chance to get some junk out of the house. I took most of Friday off work to help out (especially since Beth had to go to a follow-up appointment for the infected cyst), and boy were we slow. Steady though, I suppose, which I guess isn't too bad for no advertising. We sold off a lot of Mom's trinkets that she had to have when she moved from Arizona, but didn't remember once she got here. Most of her Day of the Dead decorations, a lot of her objets d'art (not the Indian stuff - Laura has that), clothes, the old viola, etc. I sold our old school TV for $5, which is great because it would have cost me $10 to recycle it, which is what I was going to do. Sold all the old VeggieTales DVDs and Muppet Show VHSs, Missy sold a ton of old toys, Alex sold a few Pokemon cards, we sold games and clothes and junk. By the end of the day we were looking a bit picked over, and we didn't sell a whole lot on Saturday but as we found out later, there was a massive community-wide garage sale going on at the fairgrounds this weekend, so not surprising we got little traffic. We're going to plan on another Saturday garage sale next week to hopefully clear out some more clothes, which was what didn't sell the most. Overall though, we did ok, Beth and I made $131, Missy made $76.25, Alex made $31.95, Natalie made $28.75, and the Harrisons made $18.50.
After church on Sunday we all went to Fort Wayne, mostly to visit Mom. She looked good, was alert and clean and we found her glasses in her room (even though she says she doesn't need them). We got her to go downstairs for a walk and sit on the porch outside for a while, which she seemed to enjoy. But she was getting agitated with all of us there after a while so only I took her back upstairs and got her seated in the TV area again, and she didn't try to follow me back out. So a good visit, she still seems to be doing fine there. After leaving the home we went to Toys R Us, just to see if there was anything left. They're about down to bare bones, but I did find a discounted 4-plug charger. Otherwise, they have crap left, priced about like it would be at Wal-Mart. Then we just headed home.
No softball game this week, it was rained out. Even though the rain stopped an hour before the game, and we could have played.

Well, the week was dominated by medical issues, just not the usual kind. The kids all went to summer PE on Monday as usual, but Natalie rolled her ankle during warm-ups...badly. Then the teacher rolled her eyes, said "there's always something wrong with you," and wouldn't send her to the nurse. Made her run on it. Told her to just stretch it out and she'd be fine. Well, after all day at PE when Beth picked the kids up, she took Nat straight to the ER where they found out she has a broken 5th metatarsal. And in serious pain. Ooooooo are Beth and I pissed. So she's going to have a walking boot for about a month, after which she'll be re-evaluated to see how it's healing, and the doctor gave 50-50 odds that he'd have to put a screw in her foot at that time. Sheesh. I was at the school the next day demanding of the teacher's boss to know why this happened. So yeah, the teacher never should have made a diagnosis herself, should have informed the nurse, etc etc and they're very sorry. (It even got back to Nat the next day that the teacher was overheard in the hall saying Natalie should have just sucked it up). So she's hobbled, and summer gym is over for her. However, turns out that there is such a thing as an online PE course, believe it or not, and she can finish her summer gym requirement that way. She has to enroll online and will read a bunch of information and take a bunch of quizzes on it, and since she had a week in the class she doesn't have to keep logs or actually do any exercise. They'll give her credit for time served, it seems. So we'll just have to keep her at that, and it'll finish her PE requirement without ever having to take gym at school.
Tuesday the softball team lost again, after giving the other team a good run. We led for a while but couldn't hold it and lost 11-10. Nat walked to the ball diamond but was in too much pain to walk back so she got a piggyback ride from me.
This was Father's Day weekend, but it didn't exactly work out that way. Friday was Missy's birthday, and she had a pool party (finally it got warm enough). I picked up the pizza on the way home and then picked up Missy and a bunch of other girls at the movies where they had gone to see "Incredibles 2" which everyone said was awesome, just as good as the original. Then party duties in the evening (cutting cake and all). Saturday, we took the cats to the vet (again) to get them some of those flea pills, since the FrontLine again doesn't seem to be working and we're getting  a lot of fleas off them. Just like last year, not what we want. Later, Natalie's half-sister was having a birthday party for her son up near Milford and wanted Natalie to come, so I brought her over. I was going to stay there just in case things got panicky for her but she said she was fine and didn't want me to stay. So I left her, and as soon as I got home I had to run back there to bring her her bathing suit which she had forgotten. A bit later on she called and asked if she could stay overnight at Cara's, and we decided to let her but we did run her meds and other things over to her. I took Alex out driving later on in the day, we drove around for around half an hour..his first time on the roads! Sunday was the real day. Natalie called in the morning and asked if she could go to Deep River Waterpark with Cara (her boyfriend's parents had surprised them with tickets to the park and were paying for her too). Despite better instincts, we let her go. We really want her to have some positive relationships with her family and we thought this would be nice for her. Anyway, meanwhile Beth's had a cyst on her chest that apparently got infected, it's been hard and red and sore and Dr. Dick told her to go to the ER if it got worse over the weekend, which it did. So we were in the ER on Sunday afternoon, with her getting the abscess drained (gross) and getting a scrip for some heavy duty antibiotics. That took a few hours, and almost immediately after we got home Natalie called and asked us to come get her. And hurry. She was very panicky and hurting. So I made the 3 hour round trip to get her. She slept in the car a good part of the way back home. We grilled steaks for dinner (all me) to celebrate Father's Day.

Alex is making some attempts to enter the workforce! He's filled out some applications, and this week Wednesday he had an interview at Culver's. Unfortunately I think he was a bit too restrictive on the times he can work. They were supposed to call him back in a few days but so far they haven't. I know they've been hiring 15-year-old kids, but they didn't hire him on the spot like I thought they might. Well, here's hoping. Softball lost again this week, we played another one-win team in the league in a battle for the cellar...and came up short. We held with them for a while but eventually they pulled away. But another team lost too so we're not in sole possession of last place, at least. This has been the week of the global research summit at work, every couple years ZB research people from all over the globe come to Warsaw and we all meet and find out what's been going on. It was a good meeting, though a bit longish especially the first day when we were there until 8:00, but there was the mandatory fun thing (a gathering at 110 Meatery in town, which I've never been to. It was nice, but I find those sort of things to be extremely uncomfortable). Finally this week, we bought a new couch. Well, new to us. Nancy across the street told Beth about Home Sweet Home in town, which is an antiques-used-furniture-and-junk store that we've known about for years but never gone to. Turns out, it's really pretty nice and they have some good used furniture. We found a matching couch and loveseat, being sold separately, that we had to move on quickly because people both in front of and behind us were also looking at (and we beat one couple with the sale). We just wanted the loveseat, which was in really good shape for being used. It reclines on both sides, and has a storage space in the center for remotes (I guess) and cupholders. So we're going to try to get rid of the couch that we all hate.

The kids' free week is just about over. Summer school starts tomorrow (ah...it's only gym). Tuesday, softball lost again 8-4. We are just not hitting. Or fielding. Oh well, we're just practicing for the tournament. Friday we helped the Bells move to their new house, as did most of the people at church. We went to their old house with the van and truck and started helping carry things out and loading them into all the other trucks and trailers. When everything was full, everyone took them to the new house and unloaded. It's amazing how fast a church family can get things moved, I wonder how non-churchgoers do it. We all only had to do 2 trips and pretty much the entire household was emptied and moved in to the new one. They had lots of pizza and pop for everyone too. Saturday was a vet trip for both cats, all their shots were due. The vet like Ruby's ear hair so much she took a picture and asked if she could put it on the vet clinic's Facebook page (we had to sign a waiver). The girls still needed some shorts and a few other things, and I wanted to visit Mom since I hadn't in a few weeks, so we went to Fort Wayne for the afternoon. The girls dropped Alex and me off at the home, and we visited Mom for a couple hours while the girls shopped. There was another ice cream social today, and we just happened to wander downstairs (to look at the birds) as it was ending, so Mom and Alex and I got some ice cream, and since it was a nice day we took it outside to the porch. Walked around a little bit too. It was the first time Mom has been outside the building since she moved in. Overall she didn't seem worse than the last time I was there, but there's not much of her left. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know who I am, but she knows that she knows me somehow. She doesn't know who Alex is but she likes him. She smiles at him a lot. She doesn't talk much, though. And she doesn't seem to remember Laura at all. Today, we all went to the Winona Lake art fair for a while (not as much there that I was interested in this time...) then up to Michigan for Sam's birthday party (he's 17). There was a cookout at the Wiessner's house. Pretty much everyone in the whole family was there.

Memorial Day weekend...again not camping, but a good thing because it was unseasonable hot this week/weekend. It actually topped 100 degrees at times. Softball lost 18-4 during the week, we played about as well as we're going to, I think. We were also short our best player so I filled in in the outfield (I may be the only one who caught anything in the game). We mixed things up a little, but it didn't help. Anyway. The kids are now done with school, thankfully, and a final push to get things done at the end came up a bit short but Nat passed almost everything anyway, so all 3 of the kids will be in high school next fall, yay! Alex wants to look for a job now. I'm going to have to get the pool set up soon. Beth took all the kids shopping quite a bit in the last week or so because they also all need shoes for summer gym which is starting up in a week. Saturday we went to look at a couch/loveseat that someone at work had for sale, but it turned out to be 2 loveseats and they were really mushy so I knew that was a no-go as soon as I sat on them. Also Saturday Alex went to a birthday party for one of his friends, so he was gone all day (they were going to FW to play laser tag), and the rest of us took a drive up to Goshen to pick up the framed portrait of all of us on the beach at Virginia Beach. I've put it up in the living room where the framed photo of Beth, Alex, Missy, and me at the Birmingham Zoo all those years ago used to be. It looks great! Saturday was pretty low key, Beth and the girls did more clothes shopping and I stayed home with Alex. I got some cache maintenance done too. Monday I had the day off so we all went to Dutch Creek Animal Farm or whatever it's called; the place where Beth and the kids went last year when I was in Arizona without them. Beth had been sure it would be really crowded so we went super early...and it wasn't. Which was fine, but we had seen everything by lunchtime and headed home. It's a nice park though, fun tractor ride and feeding the animals, and quite a variety of animals to see. But it was frakkin hot. Also this week we had Mark do some minor landscaping for us; finally getting stones put in the circle around the crabapple tree in the front yard (looks great), and leveling a pad in the backyard for the new pool. Which I'll have to get set up soon.

Softball got mercied this week, 13-2. Based on how well we can actually play, that may be more like how the season goes. Natalie's choir went to Cedar Point this weekend. It's lucky that she was able to go at all, since she had gotten herself suspended for a day on Thursday, for threatening to fight another girl over social media. I wasn't really sure how much to be angry about it after hearing why she did it; the other girl deserved it. Really. Anyway, she spent Thursday at home without her phone or Kindle, but she went back to school Friday and we did go. Some of her teachers had expressed concern about a panic attack at the park and maybe someone should go with her, so I did. The bus left town at around 5:30 am. The school paid for my ticket, which was very nice. She wanted to ride the bus so I drove separately (somewhere in northern Ohio, I looked up and noticed that the bus wasn't in front of me anywhere anymore, so I used to GPS to get there on some back roads and still beat them there) and we got there by opening. I went around with her and 4 of her friends for a couple hours (2 of her friends did the bungie slingshot thing and one of them passed out 4 times during it) until she told me "you can go ride the rides by yourself if you want to" which I took to mean she was ready for me to be away from her. The Lancasters also happened to be there that day, so I met up with them and we went around together for a while. After lunch we were at the Gatekeeper when the rain started. It had been sprinkling while we were in line, but just after we got into the shelter at the head of the line the downpour started and it rained HARD for about half an hour. At first they were still running the ride and people were coming back drenched...I didn't really want to ride it in the rain...but just 2 people in front of us they shut it down. Unfortunately for some, the last train back had to wait outside while the attendants got everyone unbuckled, which took several minutes, strapped in, in the pouring rain. But we were in the shelter and never got wet. After about 45 minutes they started running it again and we rode it dry. Then we got in line for another coaster but after waiting an hour or so I got a phone call that Nat was having a panic attack. The ride where they drop you straight down, plus her friend screaming, had sent her over the edge. By the time I got to her there was a medic there but she was still crying really hard. She managed to calm down a bit after a while and we went to the aid station, where it was cool and dry and dark and quiet (nobody else there) and she fell asleep for about 45 minutes. The medic didn't let her friends into the aid station which was good also. She was better after that, and she wanted to get some frozen yogurt. So we did. While we did that she complained about how her friends had been driving her crazy all day and they weren't listening to her. She wanted to ride the wooden coasters but nobody would. One of her friends had her shoes so we had to get a hold of them and meet back up, but afterwards I tried to make sure Nat was in charge. We rode the Genini and the Mine ride, and were going to ride Gatekeeper, but ran out of time. The bus left at 7, and we stopped at a rest area for dinner, at which point Nat decided she didn't want to ride the bus any more so I drove us home. We got home around midnight or so, and in the morning overslept and missed church (Beth and Alex went without me and the girls).

I finally got the downstairs cable working, but I somehow missed the fact that we do not have a DVR with our new cable service. We have lots of on-demand stuff, almost everything we watch in fact, and Netflix included so no need to stream it through the DVD player anymore, so we’re going to try it out without a DVR. I already don’t like it, because we even have to watch commercials with the on-demand shows. Do not like it, at all. We’ve had a DVR for 15 years, can we ever go back? We’re going to try. In other news, finally a real softball game this week! It wasn’t certain at first since there were a lot of circumstances amongst the players and only 8 showed up. We recruited one of the players’ teenage son and he played catcher for us, and bailed us out a bit. We won the game, 13-11, although we tried hard to blow it in the last inning. We had an 8-run lead that turned into a 2-run lead by the time we were done. Our outfield is a bit shaky, and balls were taking bad hops, and Bob and I were colliding chasing a popup and such. Also the game started 20 minutes late because there was a car crash right at the entrance to CCAC just before game time and the police weren’t letting anyone pass. Wednesday I took a vacation day from work, I figure school is going to be out soon so it’d be nice for Beth and I to get to spend some time alone together. We went out to breakfast, went shopping at the Amish grocery store, did some geocaching up around Bremen, and some other stuff.

We had another weird softball preseason game this past week, but at least we played against another full team. And we turned a few 6-4-3 double plays in the process, which is always fun. Natalie had gone to the library for a painting class just before the game and was walking home so I had to do a mad dash to find her and get her and get her home to get to the game on time. Saturday I emptied the storage unit (overdue since the storage loft in the garage has been done for a while, but this will save us $70 per month), which was harder than I thought it was going to be since one of the camper tires was flat flat flat. I couldn’t move it by pushing or pulling, so I had to get creative in wangling the truck into position to pull the camper out enough to be able to get the tire pump to reach as far as the flat tire. But the camper is back in the garage. I may get another unit next winter for the camper, but for now I’m trying to save money. On that same note, I’m switching our TV provider to Comcast cable because the Dish price just went up again and I’m paying nearly $100 now. And the internet just went up too so I’m trying to bundle and save. Looks like I can save around $60 per month there between internet and TV. Although as of today, I’ve been trying to get the downstairs TV working (involving running some cable through the walls downstairs, which is always fun…sort of) for several days and it still can’t communicate with the set-top box. In other news, the church picnic was this weekend, Beth spent way too much time cooking and getting food ready and got up way too early (I helped) to turn the crock pots on in time (I turned one of them on but forgot to plug it in) and such, but in the end we had a beautiful day for it and a good turnout with plenty of food.

The first softball game of the season was this past week! Sort of, anyway. For some reason, the league manager decided to try something different this year, so we have 2 “preseason” games, during which we will use different rules. Only 4 innings, 10 batters per inning, no more and no less. Outs do not matter, you bat 10. Start with a 2-2 count, so 1 strike and you’re done. They’re trying it out, to see if maybe there’s interest in a forming league that plays like that all the time. I thought it might be fun but I’m not so crazy about it any more. Anyway, the opposing team only had 6 players show up so we didn’t even have an umpire for the game. We loaned out a couple guys for their outfield, and it’s hard to say who “won.” But it was good to have a practice anyway, since we have 4 players on the team who have literally never played before. And we have lost a couple from last year. We’ll see how it goes. Friday, we all went out to see “Avengers: Infinity War” which was incredible…and wow. What felt worse: the ending of Infinity War, or the ending of The Empire Strikes Back? Not sure. Saturday, Beth and I took the kids on something of an expedition. Beth had seen a commercial on late night cable for a specialty hardware store called Hinges & Handles, in Osceola, a place that is not easy to get to directly from Warsaw. There were a lot of back country roads directed by the GPS. But we went there specifically to get some replacement hardware for her antique dresser, which we’ve never been able to find before. But this place had some! She’s super excited about it. Won’t be cheap though. But she’s wanted to do this for a long time. We also hit some furniture stores in Elkhart since we’re both absolutely hating the couch we have now, and also we finally took the family portrait from Virginia Beach to Hobby Lobby to get it framed, gaining on 2 years since it was taken. I went to visit Mom on Sunday, she was asleep in a chair when I got there. We walked around the floor there a bit, looked out the windows, then sat and watched TV. She didn’t say much the whole time I was there. I asked if she remembered me and she says she does, but she couldn’t recall my name. She also didn’t remember Laura. But, she did tell another resident that I was her son so that was good. She seems to know that she recognizes me but I don’t think she’s quite sure why. I also found her glasses again, in the same place in the cart where they were last time, so she probably keeps taking them off and putting them somewhere.

This has been a fairly low-key weekend, for Beth and me anyway. Friday after school Missy headed to a church youth conference in Holland MI, and Natalie went home with a friend and to a middle school dance. It was just Beth and me and Alex, so we went out to dinner at Applebee’s. We picked up Nat later on (she had a really fun time…had gone with friends and not on a “date.” Later in the evening she told us she broke up with her bf because he was smothering.) Saturday was e-learning day (complicated by the fact that Nat had left her iPad at her friend’s house the previous night) so we were home pretty much all day. Missy was home from the conference by around 7, she said she had had a blast. Today I took the kids to see “Ready Player One” which was awesome, incredible! Beth didn’t go because she had a headache, probably not the movie to see if you have a headache. Also notable during the week: there was a coaches meeting for church softball, in which it was revealed that we’re trying something a bit different this year: 2 preseason games, with some funky rules. We’ll see how that goes. Also Beth and I have started making reservations for our summer vacation. We’ve reserved spaces on the Amtrak from South Bend to Boston, and renting a car to see Newport and Acadia National Park. Going to be expensive. But cool. I’ve always wanted to do a train trip like this, we’ll see if it really is as fun as it seems. 20 hours is a long time. I bet it’ll be good though, I don’t have to drive it.

Friday was a gorgeous day. The first one we’ve had this year. And it made Beth a bit stir crazy. She does love her a picnic. As soon as the weather is nice she wants to carry all the food and dishes and service and everything outside to eat there. I’d rather eat inside and then go outside without all the extra work, dirt, and bugs but I knew about all that when I married her. Anyway, one nice day and she plans a big picnic at Pottawatomi Wildlife Park, and having the kids invite friends. So Saturday afternoon a couple friends came over (Alex asked the girl he went to the dance with a few weeks ago, but she couldn’t come) and we toted a nice hot dog and veggie lunch to the park. Where it was drizzly and freezing. Luckily there was a shelter at the park with a picnic table under it, so we had a dry place to grill and eat. The kids went off to do some exploring along the river (Natalie caught a frog) and the pioneer cabin, and after we’d all eaten we all went for a hike along the trails and do some geocaching. Unfortunately there was only one cache in the park, all the rest have been taken down or disappeared for one reason or other. But we found it, and had a nice nature walk without bugs (but with mud). Afterwards we packed up and headed out, a bit earlier than planned so we went to the bowling alley afterwards and all had a game. I went to visit Mom on Sunday, first time in a few weeks because she’s been sick. She was wearing a towel bib when I got there, not exactly sure why, but she did have the sniffles so maybe that was why. I gave her the Easter card and the little stuffed lamb that Beth got her and she cried and cried when she read it. She hugged me and said ‘I love you so much.’ It was a hard visit. I can’t really tell sometimes how much of her is left, what she really remembers. I know she recognizes me but I’m not sure she really knows who I am. I stayed for a couple hours, just sitting with her watching TV, other than when I gave her the card she hardly spoke. I also found *both* pairs of her glasses. Like last time, she didn’t have them on and they were nowhere to be found in her room, but turned up in the nurses’ cart. And this time they were both in there! So hopefully the nurses can help keep track of them from now on.