Minnesota and Ohio – Summer 2017

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Seems like we just got back to Minnesota and we are already making plans for leaving in October.  Time flies when you are having so much fun!  We are so blessed with four beautiful grandkids and have been able to spend time with each of them this summer.  With Cate and Alex because they are getting older we went to movies (I love animated movies), Chuck E Cheese (only grandpa and grandma can take them there – lucky us) and parks and more parks. We enjoyed a day at the Minnesota Zoo with Alex, Amanda and Adalyn.  Cate and her Girl Scout troop hosted a Mother’s Day brunch which grandma was invited to. It made me realize just how grown up Cate is getting.  We had sleepovers with Cate and Alex and getting use to papa and grandma evenings with Adalyn while mom and dad went on “date nights”.  We went to Ohio in June for Vivian’s 1st birthday.  We had so much fun getting reacquainted.  She was a little afraid of us to start off with but came around at the end of our time with her.  It is hard to leave that precious little girl in Ohio because it is a long time before we get to see her again and now they are moving to Italy in the Fall for a two year stay for Zach’s job.  We will have a couple more times to see her before they go but this is going to especially hard.   I see Italy in our future travels.  We are so blessed with these four special grandkids!

Summer has also been filled with fun outings with our kids; 4th of July in Wisconsin with Cassie and her family, Scott County Fair with Amanda and Adalyn, walks and parks with Zach and his family, and dinners out with Eric.  We have enjoyed spending time with friends and making new friends.  It keeps us very busy and happy.

As most know we call Dakotah Meadows in Prior Lake our home for most of the summer.  We had an interesting tree issue while we were there this summer.  We looked forward to our site this year because we had two lovely trees that provided us shade.   When the trees first started leafing out we noticed one of them didn’t look healthy.  Then we started to notice that similar trees in the park also didn’t look healthy but didn’t think much of it.  When we left in June for 5 weeks and came back it was apparent that these trees were sick but again didn’t think much of it.  As a week or two went by we noticed that the tree directly over us was dripping a very sticky substance that was covering our 5th wheel and truck.  It seemed to wash off pretty easy so we still didn’t think much of it until Joe climbed up on the roof.  We no longer had a white roof but now a black roof.  Our windows were getting hard to see out of, our awning was hard to bring in and out because of the stickiness and we couldn’t sit outside without getting dripped on with this sticky stuff.  We could see the tree was getting sicker so I did a little research on the good old internet.  What I found was the tree leaves were infected with aphids (once we pulled a leaf off we could see hundreds of aphids on a leaf) and the aphids suck the leaves of their juices and the stuff that was dripping on us was the excrement of the aphids.  Sounded pretty gross but we had a mess on everything.  We asked to be moved after explaining to staff in the office what a mess we had but they said they had no sites open on the weekends.  Our option was to move to another site during the week but would have to move back to that site on the weekends.   We decided since we were going to Grand Marais mid-August we would just leave early to get out of there.  We moved sites for a few days so we could have a detailer come and give our 5th wheel a really good wash (that was another terrible experience) and are now on our way to Grand Marais to meet up with all of our kids and grandkids.  Things like this make life interesting.

Life is so good even on bad days because tomorrow brings another good day!  So very blessed!

Stay safe!  Love to all!