Home sweet home

 

Flight 93 Memorial

All of the kids favorite activities during our "field trip" took place during the first five days. In hindsight we could have just come straight home from Louisville. We encountered plenty of COVID bumps during the last few days of our trip - 3 of the last 4 mornings we weren't offered a breakfast at the hotel and many of the places we had planned to visit weren't open. We almost went miniature golfing in Morgantown, West Virginia on Wednesday afternoon. If we had done that, we would have had more time at Fort Necessity and some of the other National Parks we visited on Thursday, which would have been greatly appreciated. We opted not to go miniature golfing because we thought we'd have time to visit Fort Roberdeau on Thursday, but we ended up feeling we wouldn't have quite enough time to spend there. I'm thinking we'll attempt to visit there again probably during the 2023-24 school year. We weren't rushed at the Flight 93 site, but had we known we were going to skip Fort Roberdeau, we could have spent more time at Johnstown Flood and/or Alleghany Portage as those sites were open until 5pm. We had planned to have dinner at Cracker Barrel, but because we ended our sight seeing earlier than expected, we had dinner at home on Thursday. In the original plans, we were going to have dinner twice at Cracker Barrel during our trip, but both times the plans were changed. The first time it was because the wait was too long. I'm sure we'll use the gift cards eventually. Nadia ended up only missing one theatre rehearsal as she was able to participate on Thursday night after we had dinner. I was busy that night with unpacking, cleaning the fish tank, and putting new Junior Ranger badges on the banners in the kids' bedrooms. The kids earned seven badges during the trip. They have each earned around 70 badges so far even though many visits I had planned to national parks were cancelled this year.

Alleghany Portage Railroad NHS

Paul went back to work yesterday morning. Usually he doesn't go to work on Sundays, but due to our trip he did go to work the Sunday before we left and is going to work again tomorrow. The kids had two days of school last week and just one this week. The past couple of years Nadia and Ian did many writing assignments from the IEW curriculum. We will use that curriculum again in the future, but this year I've decided to not use such an intense approach for that subject. Yesterday was actually the first time I gave Nadia and Ian a writing assignment during this school year. They did research on planning a vacation somewhere in North America. I will have them do that for most of the continents throughout the year. I said they could write it as an informative essay, persuasive essay, or as a story. I got books from the library about Hawaii (Ian's choice) and St. Lucia (Nadia's choice), and they took notes yesterday. Being back at home also means playing with friends in the neighborhood again. In the past kids from the neighborhood used to play both inside and outside our house. Yesterday was the first time in 7 months that any of the kids in the neighborhood played inside our house. Oliver spends far more time playing outside with kids in the neighborhood than his siblings, but all three of them played outside yesterday and today.

Johnstown Flood National Memorial

The main reason I am glad we are back at home is because I can sleep in my own bed. I slept very well on Thursday night. Sadly my allergies kept be awake starting at 3:30am this morning. I think mowing the lawn yesterday is what did me in. There are several factors that need to be in place for me to have a good night's sleep including the temperature of the room (which is a challenge when you're depending on an air conditioner in the room), how dark it is, how quiet it is, and if my back likes the mattress or not. The first two hotels we stayed the mattress was fine for my back, but one of those hotels was in downtown Cincinnati, and the noises from the vehicles driving by kept me awake. The mattresses were a problem in all of the other hotels - particularly the three nights in Kentucky. I took my first vacation apart from my family in 2000 when I went to Florida with my friend Charlene, and from 2001 to the present I've been taking vacations with Paul (and the kids since 2008). Over the past 20 years my top four vacations were to St. Lucia (2001), England/France (2002), Mexico (also 2002), and Aruba (2006). If I chose my four least favorite vacations over the past twenty years I'd pick: Grand Cayman because it rained almost the whole time (2012), a Western Caribbean cruise (2011) partially because the weather wasn't great and primarily because I got almost no sleep due to Ian, Sandusky, Ohio (2016) because I was physically ill and also emotionally grieving the loss of my mom = I was in zero mood for a vacation of any kind, and this trip we just took. The weather was lovely, and I was healthy. However, we had to wear masks a lot (I'm NOT a fan of wearing a mask), many things were closed or only partially open due to COVID, I didn't get enough sleep, I did a lot of driving (which is exhausting) because Paul can read in the car and I can't so he was reading novels on the Kindle while I did most of the driving, and also it was traumatic when the fawn ran into our van. I wish I could delete that image from my brain. I think it would be hard for a vacation to be considered one of the top vacations during a pandemic. It's just not an ideal time to travel, but it did mean that Paul got some time off for leisure for the first time this year, and we were able to see and do some of the things we hoped to on this trip.

Margie got very good news yesterday from her MRI and pathology report. First, the cancer is the best type to have in terms of being slow growing, and secondly the MRI showed that it hasn't spread anywhere else. PTL!!! I think this means that Margie will only need a surgery and not chemo or radiation (aside from possibly one radiation treatment during the surgery). This is a big answer to prayer!!! My mom's sister had uterine cancer quite a few years ago, and she just had a hysterectomy - no radiation or chemo. She was several years older than my mom, and she's still alive. Detecting cancer early is definitely a huge factor. My mom's wasn't detected until it was already stage four. Her quality of life was not good during her entire 6 1/2 month battle with cancer. I'm very thankful to hear that it seems Margie's battle with cancer will likely be very different than my mom's was. Speaking of health concerns, Paul's mom had two heart catheterizations last week. They discovered the problems during the first one, and then they took time to decide how to proceed. As she is not a candidate for open heart surgery, they opted to do another heart catheterization to place a stent the next day. Thankfully she was discharged from the hospital last week. Although they couldn't address all of the problems they found, we are hoping this procedure will help her feel stronger. 

Tower of Voices - Flight 93 (huge windchime!)