Grandmonsters Shenanigans...

June 27th Katelyn sent these pictures of her girls playing. Raelyn loves being the big sister and having Emelia to play with. Just look at how much a child grows from birth to 3 years old. And notice that head of hair on little Emelia. 

Forward to Saturday, June 29th. I was preparing to facilitate the Personal Finance for Self-Reliance class on Sunday and realized we were covering purchasing a home. Since Drew and Katelyn are trying to see if they are in a position so they might purchase a home, I immediately sent Katelyn a text and told her to read these pages in the manual we sent them before they did anything. So grateful when the Good Lord times things out like that in our lives.

Katelyn sent us this cute picture of Drew with his little girls. Such a good daddy. They are watching something on the television with music on it. Just love this picture of our little family.

June 30th was my big mistake. This was Drew's birthday. I thought I had taken care of all of my June birthday, Father's Day, etc. things. I did not take care of Drew's. Man did I feel awful. I am so grateful he loves Katelyn and the girls and he cares for them as he does. I sent him a text apologizing profusely and assuring him his gift would be in the mail. It did go in the mail on Tuesday. Geez!!

July 4th the Ropers went to a friends for a BBQ. They had their sprinkler going and Raelyn was enjoying it. Katelyn took this picture of her sitting waiting for her next turn. Please note she is sitting reverently. When we went to Emelia's blessing, our very active Raelyn was having a hard time sitting. I took her out into the hall and we eventually made our way around to the back hall in the church where the Primary room is. While there, I tried to show her how to sit with her arms folded and be reverent. Since then she had gotten old enough to be in Primary and this is being reinforced with her. So, I am very happy with this picture of our very hyper-active Raelyn sitting reverently.

Saturday, July 6th, during the morning Raelyn had Katelyn take a picture of her in her purple dress and send it to me. This little nugget loves purple as much as I do. 

Fortunately I was dressed to go out and I had chosen my purple blouse. So I took this selfie and sent it to Miss Raelyn. I truly hope these little interchanges across the miles keep us close to this great granddaughter. 

Later that day Katelyn posted this picture of Raelyn on Facebook. She was a Princess who was also a Knight. The child is fearless.

That afternoon Claude and I drove to LaGrange to get the Mini's to attend the 4th in our series of Harry Potter movies with the Louisville Orchestra. Before going out we visited with the Marx family and watched the pictures of their European vacation on their television. They brought me back a turtle purse. Yeah!! Bailey went to a beach in Nice. It is a rock beach and she picked up a couple of rocks. She carefully chose one for Claude. Such a sweet thing. He was very touched. The Mini's chose to go to Steve O's for dinner. Then it was off to the Kentucky Center to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in Whitney Hall with the Louisville Orchestra accompanying. We did purchase the Mini's each a souvenir. They were very happy young people. They are growing up on us.

July 7th through 12th Hayden was on a Scout trip to St. Louis. I got a few pictures so that I knew he was okay and having fun. In the first picture, Hayden is on the left end of the front row. In the second picture he is in the orange t-shirt inside the guitar. In the third picture he is in the orange t-shirt and is second from the end on the left. I think he was having a great time.

Monday the 8th we received another cute picture of Raelyn with her friend. This young man is the son of a really good friend of Drew's. Such a sweet moment in time.

Tuesday, July 9th, Katelyn sent us a picture she calls 'Sister Love'. Be still my heart. They sure look different, don't they? It is going to be fun to watch these two grow up.

Wednesday, July 10th Katelyn posted this picture of Emelia getting some tummy time and holding her head up time.

I reached back into my electronic stash of pictures and sent this to Katelyn of her as a baby so she could see the resemblance between her and her little one.

Katelyn showed the picture of her as a baby to Raelyn and asked Raelyn who the baby was. Raelyn said, "Sissy!" How fun is that?

We sent gift cards to Drew and Katelyn for their birthday for the same store. Katelyn opened her's before her birthday which is actually July 13th. This is fine. They made a family shopping trip of it. Raelyn found hats and put them on and told her parents it was her 'Yee Haw' hat. Where does a 3-year old get this stuff.

On Katelyn's birthday I posted these pictures of her life in 1999, 20 short years ago.

And that is our firstborn grandmonster.

Sunday, July 14th, Katelyn posted this picture of her with her two girls.

Our son, Jake, is off Facebook for a bit. I sent him this picture via text. He loved it. He said, "Those girls will be a trio. God be with Drew." Amen to that.

Finally, I spent this morning making letters for Bailey. She will be off to 4-H camp next week. I wrote a card for each day with a sticker in each car and a couple of dollars for a snack at the camp store. I labeled each card for the day it is to be opened. Then I put all 5 cards in an bigger envelope and mail them at once so they are at the camp when she arrives. Whew!! This I have found to be a much better method than mailing a letter each day and hoping she gets all of them. 

It is amazing to me that even over the miles that separate us, with all of today's technology, we have them close to us. I didn't post the video of Raelyn singing "I'm so Glad When Daddy Comes Home" to Claude in a face-to-face chat. I am truly grateful for this blessing with technology. It can have it's draw backs but there are many, many blessings to having all these electronics. Claude and I love our family.

Our 24 Hour Vacation...

When your life revolves around timing to visit Papa each day, you learn to adapt. We did that the beginning of July. We will be married 50 years in 2020. We don't want one of those big parties at all, either of us. What we want is to get our kids and grandmonsters together for one weekend. We are visiting places we might do this to see where we want to hold this family weekend. We wanted to check out Great Wolf Lodge outside of Cincinnati. To that end, I spent Tuesday morning, July 2nd with Papa. I hurried home and we loaded the Jeep and were off on our 24 hours vacation. 

Our first stop was Great Wolf Lodge. 

We explained what we were looking to do and they showed us the kinds of rooms they have and what they offered at the counter. We pulled out our list of rooms we would need and tried to find the right combination for our family if everyone is able to come. We reserved these rooms just in case this is where we go. Then we were encouraged to walk around the facility and see what we thought. Here are pictures of some of the things to do on the inside of the facility.

We then drove to our hotel to see if we could check in. We could and we did. 

When in our room I began the search for a place for dinner that might be a little unique to the area. I found a place named Two Cities Pizza. It was obviously in an old building. Sounded like a plan. We climbed back in the Jeep and went to dinner.

Turns out the old building that houses Two Cities Pizza was the original City Hall for Mason, Ohio. Two young men who were friends from their childhood always wanted to have a business together. They each grew up and went to college to study different things. Then they decided to find the right place and start that business dream. Two Cities Pizza was born. It is called Two Cities Pizza because they serve Chicago style and New York style pizza. We each ordered well and the food was excellent. We did not have the pizza!! Our server was talking to us and we mentioned that we were from Sadieville, Kentucky and it was just north of Georgetown. Turns out she is a horse aficionado and comes to the Kentucky Horse Park regularly. When she does, she stays in Georgetown! It is a very tiny world folks. We were extremely pleased with our choice for dinner. If we have a family gathering at Great Wolf Lodge, we will plan a family dinner at Two Cities Pizza. 

We all know that calories and fat grams do not exist when you are on vacation. Even if that vacation is only 24 hours long. So an ice cream run was in order after dinner. Claude spotted a Dairy Queen near our hotel so we drove back to it. Imagine our delight when we found this wall of fun to enjoy as we ate our blizzards.

We found everything on the list in this hand painted mural about the area. Great Wolf Lodge and Kings Island are in the background. It was fun and Claude had a good eye for finding these things. Now time for some rest.

Wednesday morning we had breakfast in the hotel's breakfast buffet. Then we were off for Jungle Jim's. Andie, our daughter, suggested this stop. Turns out there are two of them in Cincinnati and one of them was at an exit off I-275 on our way home. 

Okay, this place is just fun. Again it has an interesting back story. There is a video of how it all came to be which you can watch when you go into the store. A guy started all this with a fresh vegetable stand. Now he has these two enormous stores with all kinds of treasures in them. It is like a grocery store on steroids. We roamed through the International market and found so many things. I checked the aisle that had things from South Africa as that will be our big trip this year. Very tiny section on a very tiny shelf. Makes me wonder what our dining will be like in Kruger National Park. Hmmmm.... We found an entire shelf display under a firetruck of bacon flavored things!! Claude spent a good deal of time roaming through a whole corner of the store filled with aisles of sauces and rubs for the king of BBQ and smoking. Then he came to me with a big grin and I got this fun picture of my guy. He found a sauce named Claude for smoking brisket. Yes, we purchased it!! The other thing we poured over was an entire wall of soda pop in very interesting flavors. You can get a cardboard carrier and make your own 6 or 8 pack of different kinds of soda. We did this and plan to share it with the Marx family while Bonnie is here. The other section that was of great interest of us was the cheese section. We came prepared with a cooler and put all the cheese we bought in it. Yes, we know how to do these things. 

After shopping at Jungle Jim's were found a Jimmy John's for lunch and purchased a large cup of ice to set in the cooler with our cheeses. 

We pointed the Jeep for Sadieville and got home in time for me to spend the afternoon visiting Papa.

And that, my friends, is how one has a 24 hour vacation!!

And We're Walking...Again...and Again...

We participated in two 5K Walks (we don't run) in the past month. The first was held at the Kentucky Horse Park on Saturday, June 29. It was to celebrate the life of Man O'War, a very famous race horse. We finished in about an hour which is what we wanted. This was a lovely walk all around the Horse Park and through the campground. 

The second was on July 4th at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. This is my favorite distillery. First one I toured in Kentucky and totally enjoyed their tours. So for me, this was a walk I looked forward to a lot. The walk was called Buffalo Chase and would take us over the whole campus. Claude would finish in 57 minutes and I finished in 58 1/2 minutes. We both felt really good about that. We had to park a mile away from the registration and then walk another mile to the start line. That my be a slight exaggeration but we felt like that as we walked to the race, then registration and then back to the car after. Truly felt like we walked a 10K. I assured Claude I would never wear a tutu and wings. Not happening, ever. Can you tell which picture that comment came from? Claude cracked himself up at one point when he realized he was walking thru a stop sign (instead of driving thru at stop sign). Can you tell which picture that is? We are old and these things make us laugh. It was a good morning but we were really happy to make it back to the Jeep!!

I find it interesting that we are walking with hundreds of people but it still like it is just the two of us on a lark. 

The next walk we are registered for is the Alzheimer's Walk on September the 21st. Claude and I have agreed to walk the God and Country 5K to benefit veterans and God's Pantry in Lexington on November 9th. So we will have at least two more 5K's this year. 

The partner story with these walks are my poor feet. In 2002 we did a driving tour of New England. It was an absolutely amazing adventure. It was in October and the leaves we all changing. Super trip. However...isn't there always a 'however'...we opted to wear matching black sneakers. We purchased these when we were in the Gold Wing Road Riders Association (GWRRA) and Claude was a director so we worked a lot of rally's. We got really good sneakers to help with all that walking you did to keep the rally going. Well, when we were on Cape Cod we walked out to a lighthouse on a sandy trail. When we got back to our car, I told Claude my toes really, really hurt. Took of those wonderful sneakers to find my toes were very bruised. I have long second toes and they particularly were bad. Fortunately, I had sandals so I wore those with my socks the rest of the trip. However,..there it goes again...when I wear close toed shoes for long periods of time my toes get really sore again. When we did that first 5K this summer, they really hurt. When we did the second 5K I had bruises under my toenails on those long second toes. I told Claude I loved the walk but really needed to find an answer for my feet. I started a search online for good walking shoes that were open-toed. I ordered some Teva sandals. They didn't come in for the Kentucky Horse Park walk so I wore my Clark sandals. They have good cushioning and I did better with the toe situation. Then my Teva's came in and I wore them for the Buffalo Chase walk. These will be great. They are definitely made for that kind of exercise. I did wear a blister on my big toe but I can put a bandaid on before the next walk and I will be fine. 

And we walked and we walked and we walked...

Addendum: One of the bad things not Blogging more often is that I forget some of the things I wanted to put in the Blog when the event happened. Did that with this Blog and so I come back with another paragraph. We are each getting a t-shirt for each walk we do if we register early enough. Now, neither of us really needs another t-shirt. So I suggested to Claude that I could make a quilt out of them at some point. Then I had one of my 'flashes of intellect' and I told Claude I should make two twin size quilts so we could each have one when we are in the nursing home. We both laughed at that idea!!