Off to camp!

Macy left this afternoon for church camp for 4 days. Let me tell you, she was beyond excited. Here is she with her friend Paige and Becca right before they left. BTW, Paige and Becca are both on their tip-toes trying to be as tall as Macy. That's why they are laughing. :)

She won't be alone long, though. I'll be going up tomorrow to help for a couple days. I'll make sure to stay out of her way, though. :)

We had probably a 20 minute discussion last night about taking stuffed animals or the pillow pet. She was worried the others would make fun of her. She ended up NOT taking any stuffed animals or the pillow pet. I had suggested she hide her stuffed animal inside her sleeping bag, but no go. I also told her others would be bringing their pillow pets, but no go.

So today everyone was meeting to leave. Paige told Macy her stuffed animal was hidden inside her sleeping bag. Ha! Score one for Mom.

THEN...everyone was loaded onto the bus. I saw Macy frantically waving me over. She mouthed to me through the bus window: "bring my pillow pet when you come up tomorrow" Ha! Score two for Mom.

Good news, bad news

Yesterday Kaylin met with her orthopedic surgeon. We've been with the same doctor since she was 1.5 years old, and it's been so nice to have him remember us, remember her condition, remember what is going on.

We did the usual x-rays. Kaylin used to smile when they'd x-ray her hips, but not anymore. She now realizes they aren't really taking her picture. The same x-ray tech was there, "move your biscuits over a little"--super sweet lady.

Then we waited over an hour in the same small exam room. Ever been in a super small exam room with 2 kids, with no toys or TV? Not fun. It was all I could to keep them from climbing the walls. They read a couple baby books and generally annoyed me and each other.

The surgeon came in and met with us about the x-rays. Long story short, it was good news, bad news. The hip itself, in the socket where he fixed it a long 6 years ago, is healing nicely with cartilage forming around it like it's supposed to. It doesn't seem to cause her pain or restrict her range of motion. He was pleased with that. He's not pleased with the the way the top of the bone is forming around the top of the ball socket. It appears to be curving up instead of laying flat. He showed me on the x-rays where over the last 4 years, it has made that progression. He said several times "no surgery, but..."

So we wait another 2 years to see what that bone will do. He's not a rush into anything doctor, which I appreciate. We'll wait 2 years to see if it has flattened out or still continuing to curve. I'm guessing at that time, some sort of decision will have to be made. I couldn't get a sense of what that decision was going to be--surgery? Meds? No idea.  I'm praying it will not be surgery and another spica cast. The spica cast was hard enough to handle when she was 1.5 years old; cannot imagine her being 9 in one.

So...we wait.

The one where we went to a concert and sweated to death

Saturday was a much anticipated day--the Big Time Rush concert at Worlds of Fun. We'd bought our tickets over a month ago--since we have season passes, we only had to get tickets to the concert. We went with Kaylee and Joseph and their mom, and then their friend Mallory went with us as well.

Thursday night everyone came over to make t-shirts.  We totally winged it, but I think they turned out pretty cool. Good old spray paint--Amy and I were starting to get a little high from the fumes in the garage :)

We arrived at Worlds around 4, and rode a few rides while we waited. Here's all the kids when we first got there. From left to right: Joseph, Kaylin, Kaylee, Macy, Mallory. Would like to point out that Mallory is the same age as Macy; look at how much taller Macy is. And Kaylin is 2 years younger than Mallory, yet they are about the same height.

We had to wait A LOT ALOT...they had about 4 or 5 opening acts, then played music for about 30 minutes between EACH opening act. It was over 100 degrees, and we were sweating like pigs, and drinking water like it was going out of style.  The girls were champs...didn't hardly complain. Enjoyed the opening acts, even though we didn't know any of them.

The heat got to Kaylin a few times...poor girl. She never threw up, but she didn't feel good for part of the day. Luckily she felt better by the time BTR came out.

Here's BTR...finally came out at 9:30. I couldn't believe how late they came out on stage. BTR is a boy band of 4 boys, and I gotta say...even though I'm 35, I think they are pretty cute (for youngen's). Their music is pretty catchy, and we listen to it a lot in the car. They sang for about 30 minutes, and did all their ones we knew from the CD. I had to hold Kaylin for some of it, for her to be able to see the stage.

After the concert, we were walking out. The security people were trying to move us out of the way because the van with the boys inside was driving by. The girls were THIS CLOSE to touching the van as they drove by. You can image the scene...van inching along slowly, hundreds of girls right up next to the van screaming bloody murder. Pretty funny stuff.

The girls kept saying over and over "This was the best night ever!!" Very thankful to have the opportunity to take the girls to things like this, and even though it was so dreadfully hot, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

And I think I'm turning the girls into concert-goers like me. :)

South Dakota, Part IV...Alpine Slide

One of my favorite stories from the trip...the alpine slide.

After Mt. Rushmore, we ate a picnic lunch (we did this everyday...found parks, picnic areas next to streams, etc. Beautiful!) then headed to the alpine slide. I was so excited when I found this this alpine slide. We took Macy on an alpine slide when she was 6 months old in Winter Park, and it makes for a great story. The girls were excited to do the alpine slide.

We rode the chair lift up to the top. 

We could see Mt. Rushmore from the top, which was cool.

Then we went to get in line. The alpine slide is a track that goes down the mountain. You don't steer, but you can accelerate and brake. There is a fast track and a slow track. The line was long for the fast track, so we all went on the slow track. I went first, then Kaylin, then Macy, then Bobby. We made poor decisions in that order.

I went pretty fast,got to the bottom and waited...waited. And waited. And waited. AND WAITED. Finally, I see Kaylin coming. And I HEAR Macy. Apparently, Kaylin went so slow that Macy and Bobby both caught up with her. I honestly don't think she knew she was going that slow. Macy was TICKED because she didn't get to go fast. And we heard about it loudly.

Bobby decided to do the slide again, for Macy's sake. She really didn't have a good time, and we felt bad.

So Wednesday, we went again. We had talked with Kaylin about going fast for 2 days. When we got to the top this time, there was no line. Bobby and I went first--he was in the fast lane, I went next to him in the slow lane. But he had a head start, so there was no racing. He beat me, and he got to go fast, unlike the first time. We waited at the bottom for the girls anxiously, waiting to see who was first. 

It was Kaylin.

Bobby and I looked at each other. What just happened? Maybe Kaylin went first...

Nope. Macy went first, and Kaylin PASSED HER.  Unbelievable. Kaylin, who made Macy and Bobby go soooooo slow the first time, started after her sister and PASSED HER.

I so wish I'd had a camera for the look on Kaylin's face. I'll never forget it.

And, I'm proud of Macy for not crying or getting upset that her sister had just beaten her. :)

South Dakota, Part III...Mount Rushmore!!

Monday was a beautiful day, and we went to Mt. Rushmore. As I mentioned earlier, Macy had been anxiously waiting. She'd done a book report at school about Mt. Rushmore, so she had all the facts for us and was very excited. She was also annoyed with her sister, who kept calling it Mountain Rushmore.

This is one Macy took with my little red camera. 

All four boys...Georgie, Abe, Teddy and Tommy.

First picture with Mt. Rushmore.

We bought the girls these hats when we got there, and you'll see them in many more pictures. They wore them almost the entire time we were in SD!! They loved those hats. I love this picture of my KK.

Macy taking a picture of Mt. Rushmore.

Love this family shot! We'd had another one taken by a guy who had no clue how to work the digital SLR, and it was a crappy picture. Later I saw a guy with his own digital SLR, so he obviously knew how to work the thing and this was the end result. Much better.

Monday was also Bobby and I's 13th wedding anniversary..crazy to think we've been married 13 years!! I made sure to get a picture of us and Mt. Rushmore for our wedding anniversary.

And that was our trip to Mt. Rushmore. I took about 800 pictures (I know you're surprised,right?) but only put my faves on here.

South Dakota, Part II

Sunday morning the girls woke up begging to go climbing. We headed to the Badlands, found a trail and started up. And kept going up and up and up. It was rough climbing...the rocks were sharp, lots of loose gravel to slide on. And the trail at times was STEEP. I mean steep. Mr. Rock-Climber-Bobby had no problems, but the girls and I had trouble at times. You can see from this picture how steep it was.

Bobby and the girls almost to the top, taking a break. Then we climbed a little higher.

We got to the bottom finally--lots of sliding from me and the girls--gulped down water, and then I looked up the trail in the trail guide. Yep, it was marked "strenuous." Choices were easy, moderate, and strenuous. We had picked the strenuous trail. That's why I love my girls... climbing up strenuous trails with hardly a complaint (well, there was one after KK fell and scrapped her arm, but she rebounded quickly)

We headed out of the Badlands, stopping to take a few pictures along the way.

We headed over to Wall Drug next. It is apparently one of the must see's of South Dakota. We ate lunch here, and I had a nice buffalo burger. Yum, yum, yum. Couldn't go to South Dakota and not have fresh buffalo!

Macy had been so excited about visiting Mr. Rushmore in the weeks/months before the trip. We told her we wouldn't see Mt. Rushmore until Monday, and she was okay with that. Then Sunday afternoon as we driving, we turned a corner and I saw it through the break in the trees. I started yelling for Bobby to pull over. No one could figure out what I had seen. But quickly Macy figured it out...

Love that girl. Love her!!

Then we headed to Custer State Park to camp for the night.

South Dakota, Part I

Where to start with stories on our trip to South Dakota??? One of the primary reasons I do this blog is for history--as the girls get older and older, they have a record of what we did.

Saturday we headed out. Had lots of detours to make us cranky. Saw lots of flooding--crazy stuff. Stopped in Sioux Falls to visit Falls Park. I could have stayed here all day!

The park was gorgeous! We headed across South Dakota at that point, and it was a looooonnggg drive. Nothing to see across South Dakota. We didn't have reservations, so I started looking for places to stay. I had an interesting encounter at a hotel--the creepy man running it still lived there with his mom, and I felt very dirty after visiting the lobby. I told Bobby, "no way are we staying here!" when I got back in the car. We were trying to find a place reasonably priced with a pool. Either the hotel was outrageously priced, or the pool was closing in 10 minutes. Finally found a place where the pool was open until 8:30, so we started racing to get there.

Then we entered the Badlands National Forest and saw this:

The girls start begging: Can we get out and climb??? I said, that's fine, but the pool will close. They said okay, so we parked and started walking, climbing, jumping for over an hour until it was too dark to see anything.

Then we headed off to the land of mosquito's...

Uses for my iPhone on vacation

You know I love,love, love my iPhone. Here are some ways I used mine this week on vacation:
1. As a GPS/map countless times. I would put in "current location" to show me where we were and how far it was to where we were going. Helped with the girls constantly asking "how much longer?"
2. To find the local Walmart to buy groceries
3. To find the nearest Red Box to return and pick up movies
4. To order Red Box movies with the Red Box app
5. To find lodging when we decided to stay another night
6. To take pictures
7. To upload pictures to Facebook and Twitter
8. To email pictures to my mom and sister, who are not on FB and twitter.
9. As a flashlight to find my shoes in the dark tent, and as I walked to the bathroom at 2 am.
10. To calculate gas mileage (not pretty)
11. To play Words With Friends in my sleeping bag at 3 am when I couldn't sleep because of the rain
12. To keep me from going crazy on our 12+ drive home
13. To look up times and prices to things we wanted to go to
14. To upload pictures to Flickr
15. To make a grocery list for what we needed
16. As an alarm clock- the girls liked the duck sound best
17. As a stopwatch as the girls raced their bikes to the bathroom and back
18. To type this blog post as we drive down 1-35, listening to Taylor Swift for the 100th time

Summer is...

staying up way late
sleeping in
lots of family time
missing friends from school
eating popsicles like they are going out of style
pool, pool, and more pool time
flip flops only
sunscreen
friends, friends and more friends
air conditioning
packing for vacations
no time to blog because I'm being lazy