June

We are well on our way into summer 2016, as usual time is moving too fast!  The kids and I took a short trip out to visit my sister and her family in Colorado their first week off of school.  Usually when they are in Wisconsin visiting they have to share their time between families, so it was wonderful to have each other all to ourselves.  These are the kid's only cousins that are close in age to them, so they truly do make the most of every moment with each other.  The days were filled with lots of horse grooming, chicken handling, and imagination.  We even got up to Estes for a day and went on one of my favorite hikes: Dream Lake.  What a different experience of being able to do a hike with the kids tagging along, on foot.  Alex, my brother-in-law, and nephew headed up in the mountains camping for a few days while we were out there.  He noted that his favorite part of no girls was that he didn't have to have his picture taken every 10 minutes.  They got to cook their breakfast over the fire, and cast their fishing poles whenever their hearts desired with a beautiful mountain backdrop.

                        

The day before we headed out to Colorado, we went to a waterpark in Minneapolis for a short family vacation and to celebrate Jason's birthday.  We all had a lot of fun, and again it was a very different experience for us as our kid's were all old enough to go on most of the rides and explore the park on their own.

Only a mom would.  .  . insert your sentence.  For this month, mine would read 'only a mom would put off going to the doctor as to not interfere with a family vacation. . . only to return and find out that she has shingles'.  It took a bit of diagnosing since I'm younger than your typical shingles patient, but my symptoms were pretty tell tale: burning, itching, pain, tingling, etc.  I just finished a potent round of antivirals and antibiotics, and my face finally looks as though it's on the mend.  I still have nerve pain on the left side of my face that comes and goes, so hopefully that will subside sooner rather than later.

The kids are in the second and final week of summer school classes, and have really enjoyed them.  Who wouldn't enjoy subjects like horse riding, archery, and scrapbooking (Laura), basketball, golf, and weightlifting (Alex), carnivals, volleyball, art, and musical instruments (Ainslee).  We'll see you in July!