Off to "kid" sit

This was the view from the room we stayed in at  Forest Springs Camp in the morning.  Check out the website of this amazing place!

Jon took us on a tour about the campgrounds.

This is a camp on steroids!  Awesome!!  This is a new snow groomer that was donated to them for their ski hills!  Jon is in his element here!  We are so happy for them to be here!  I'm in Jan's Bible study and we have been praying for Jon and Laura's family for several years!

After the tour, we were invited to their home for breakfast.  Alyssa is home from college, but their son was off to school.

We left Jan with her family, while we took off through the Wisconsin woods toward our kids' home.

I did not know that this was Amish country.  You can ask Al the story behind this picture if you want.  He really embellishes it.

As we were headed southeast, Jill and Adam were headed northwest.  (They were headed toward Minneapolis for Jill's graduation for her master's in Christian Thought from Bethel Seminary, summa cum laude!)  We followed eachother's whereabouts on-line and connected at a Culver's in Waupaca for lunch!

Our "old" car and our new one.

They continued on their journey and we got to the kids' home about an hour later.  Kobi was soooo thrilled to see us.  He jumped and ran around and around us!  After a little bit, it was time to go pick up Claire from school.

Claire was worried she wouldn't recognize us in our new vehicle, so we took the family van.

We played for awhile.  

Sophia was at track practice so we had a little time.

When Sophie got home, Al gave her tips for discus and shotput, things he did when he was younger.

Hannah drives herself to school and work now.  She has my mom's old car as Adam handed it down.  She got home just in time to watch her mom graduate on-line.  We had all hoped to be at Bethel in person, but darn Covid rules limiting that.

We popped some popcorn to enjoy the "show".

 

Jill and one of her professors, Dr. David Clark, who was a missionary kid in Japan like me!  In fact, he was in my brother's class at Christian Academy in Japan!

We finished the evening "bowling" and "racing" on the Wii.

A few day home and then...

We were home for 3 days.  3 busy days!  Enough time to do laundry and repack the suitcase.  No point in taking to the storage room.  I also washed the car as there was so much bug-juice on the windshield from our trip to Colorado!  

I mowed the lawn too.  We have a self-propelled mower that doesn't have much propel anymore.  It really is a PUSH mower!  Normally we share mowing with the neighbor who has a riding lawn mower and  Al does the edging/trimming.  But his yard didn't need mowing yet and we had to mow before heading off for Wisconsin.  

We got pictures of our Arkansas grandkids who have begun mowing their lawn - the easy way!

You've all heard of the way grandparents say they walked 3 miles uphill in the snow to school - both ways?  Well, I used to mow with a contraption like this when I was their age!  That really IS a push mower!!  Literally! Luckily, our yard in Japan was fairly small.

I also attended the viewing of someone I knew as we'd be driving on the day of the funeral.  She was a young grandmother with little grandbabies!  So very hard!  But, God has each of our days counted.  

"Our time on earth is brief; the number of our days is already decided by You."  Job 14:5  

What a thought!

My flowers were growing so beautifully!  There had been lots of rain and cooler weather, which they thrived in!  Our neighbor girls didn't need to water much for us when we were away.

They had also fed the birds so they were well taken care of.

I delivered a meal to a family that just adopted a child; got my hair trimmed; picked up a Bible study book to go through this summer in planning my fall study. 

"She did WHAT she could", not ALL.  Mark 14:8    It was plenty!!  Whew!

Mindy sent a picture of the baby and I printed it off and put it on the dash of my car so I'd be reminded to pray for her as I drove along.

But no time to let grass grow under our feet.  3 days and it was time to take off again!  This time we were taking our friend Jan with us.  Her son and family have moved to Wisconsin so we asked if she'd like to tag along.

We had never gone up Highway 81 into Nebraska to go to Wisconsin before, but evidently, Jan's son had.  We decided to give it a try.  It was a pretty drive!  More miles, but being 4-lane, it did not add much more time.

In 2011, my older women's Bible study came here to Concordia to check out the Orphan Train Museum.  What history this place has!  I blogged about that here.

Coffee break.  

Love the art work on these walls.

We stopped at this rest stop for another break.

It had a hiking trail and we took it to stretch our legs.  

Beautiful Iowa country

And you know, if you are headed into Des Moines on I-80, you are so very close to the Cheesecake Factory, that you just HAVE to stop!!

We passed a windmill graveyard.  I remarked about that on my last trip to Colorado.

We got to the campgrounds that Jon directs just as it was getting dark.

Jon and Laura showed us a couple of buildings and then he set us up in a very NICE room.

Doesn't feel like any camp I've been to!

We were tired and ready for a good night's rest.