Summer Vacation in the Springs

Our big summer vacation this year was a trip to Grandma and Grandpa Ladwig's in Colorado Springs. This will probably be the last time that we get to go visit them there before they move from Colorado next spring, so we wanted to try to spend as much time there as possible.

With our move taking a little longer than anticipated, our trip was cut short by a few days, plus while we were there we were all exhausted. So, we didn't end up doing some of our favorite things in Colorado Springs, but we did a lot of other, new, fun things as well as spent some good down time at Grandma and Grandpa's house recouping.

Diane and I drove over on a Tuesday and made fairly good time. We made it from Tooele to Colroado Springs in about 10 1/2 hours and even more amazing than that, we made it all on just over one tank of gas. My van was rocking the gas mileage. We filled up in Tooele before we left and did not fill up again until Cheyenne, and even then I had just under a quarter of a tank.

Landon was supposed to join us the following night, Wednesday, but ran into some problems with the airline. His flight that should have only taken an hour and a half ended up stranding him in the Denver airport over night because of a delay on his original flight from Salt Lake to Denver. He was stuck in the SLC airport for about 5 hours causing him to miss any connecting flights from Denver to the Springs. He spent a restless night on the floor of the Denver airport and finally made it to us on Thursday morning.

The first couple of days we didn't do much except sleep and play at Grandma's house. After Daddy joined us and got rested then we planned a trip to the dinosaur museum.

Grandma and the Kids sitting in front of one of the statues.

This is out in front of the museum. It is not really a stellar picture of any of us, but the dinosaur looks cool.

The kids really loved seeing these big statues. Levi just kept pointing at them telling us they were dinosaurs. I worried that the kids might get bored inside the museum, but I was wrong. Our boys have been really into dinosaurs lately, so this was right up their alley. Ellen also enjoyed reading all of the signs and learning about all of the dinosaurs. The museum has a really fun kids area that we spent most of our time with the kids trying to "dig" and uncover bones, reading books about dinosaurs, and seeing which dinosaur they could jump as far as.

Grandma spoiled us at the store at the end. She bought each kid a shirt, (which they all love and wear regularly) plus they each got to pick out some sort of toy. Trevor decided on a dinosaur hat, Ellen got a book, and Levi got a pack of baby dinosaurs. It was a huge hit!

Like I said, we spent a lot of time just playing at Grandma's house. Diane needed the time to be home since she had been gone for almost a straight month and was leaving with us again in a week to be gone for another three weeks. I needed the rest and so did Landon after the stress of moving. The kids needed some down time too, to just be kids in a stable environment. So, Grandma's house was a-okay with all of us. The kids played in the pool in Grandma's backyard about every other day.

The boys spent most of their time jumping in and out of the pool. Ellen spent most of her time walking around the yard occasionally getting in the pool. She also loved helping Grandma in her garden.

The boys didn't mind getting wet. They even liked getting one another wet. They would take turns splashing each other or pouring water over each other's head.

Grandma spent those afternoons in her garden trying to pick the "fruits" or just weeding and getting the plants back in a manageable state. One of the first nights she was able to pick a bunch of peas. We shelled them and Levi wanted to help.

He worked diligently with us for at least 15 minutes. He was so careful to open them up and make sure he got every pea out. He was very, very good help, not to mention absolutely adorable doing it.

On the weekend Grandpa got to have some time off from work and play with us. We decided to check out the Renaissance Festival that was going on that weekend.

Ellen and Levi
Ellen and Trevor. (Thanks Grandma for holding up the boys in these pictures.)

First thing when we got inside the festival Ellen noticed that lots of people were dressed up and wanted to be dressed up too. She settled on having this flower headband. (Thanks again Grandma and Grandpa for spoiling our kids. They really outdid themselves buying the kids souvenirs at the festival.)

This big statue just seemed like the type of thing you needed a picture by, so we took a family picture and then took one of Grandma and Grandpa Ladwig.

Ellen was not the only one who wanted to be dressed up. Trevor quickly decided once we got there that he wanted to be a pirate, so the search for the perfect pirate store began. Once again, Grandma spoiled the boys and bought them both these do-rags and swords. The boys loved them!!!!! Not only did they wear them and carry their swords the rest of the day, they wore them the rest of the trip, and still pull them out pretty much every day.

Levi looked so stinking cute that day in his pirate get up, but he also had another attachment. The monkey back-pack was permanently attached to him so that we wouldn't loose him. We had several people comment on how cute our pirate with the monkey on his back was.

The Fair had a kids area where there was this medieval carousel. It was turned round by some girls pushing a pole inside. The kids loved riding on it.Ellen and Levi were funny while riding. They would wave at us every time they went around. If you look carefully you can see Levi's hand waving at us in this picture.After the kids area we sat down to get good seats to wait for the jousting contest. It was a good time for a break anyway, the kids were getting kind of hot and tired. Ellen and Daddy

Ellen decided that I needed to wear her headband for a little bit, so we got a picture of it.

While we waited for the jousting to begin we were treated to some fun entertainment. A man all dressed in black came by and started playing a bell organ. It was really, really, cool and he was very talented. Ella's favorite number was Carol of the Bells. She recognized it from Christmas time.

After jousting we ran into this fun booth. There was a man getting tomatoes thrown at his head. He was insulting everyone trying to hit him. With very little encouragement Landon decided to take his turn at him. He was able to hit him in the arm and came pretty close to hitting his head. Landon's insult in return had to do with him not being able to see because of his glasses. It was entertaining!

While Daddy and Grandpa enjoyed the insults the kids got to go for a ride on this giant rocking horse.

After the rocking horse we were able to find a maze. Landon went in with Ellen and Trevor.

It started raining on them while they were inside so they ended up running through a bunch of it, but it made it that much more fun.

Ellen coming down the slide at the end of the maze.

Trevor's turn....

Daddy had to make a grand finale to the maze.

While we were visiting in Colorado we were able to celebrate the 4th of July. We were lucky enough to get to go to the Air Force Academy for their fireworks show.

Outside the stadium they had a bunch of blow up toys set up for the kids to play in. By the time we got there we didn't have a ton of time to let the kids play, but they were able to do about three or four of the toys.

The Ladwig's have always told me that you have never seen a fireworks show until you have seen a military one, and I have to say they were right. We watched the fireworks from inside the Air Force Academy Stadium.

The view from across our seats with "Air Force" written on the stands.

What a beautiful daughter I have. She was very excited for the fireworks to start.

Levi and Mommy waiting for the show to start. As you can see, the boys wore their pirate get up to the show. Levi is drinking one of his new favorite drinks, "gator drink" (gatorade).

Grandma and Grandpa Ladwig

Trevor and Daddy

Before the fireworks began they did a 50 canon salute to all of the states. It was a little loud for my sensitive ear children, Ellen and Levi.

The firework display really was phenomenal. The music was well chosen and patriotic and the fireworks were huge and there were lots of them. I will be hard pressed to see such a good show again in my life.

The fireworks were a little loud for Levi. Because we were sitting so close they music was loud and the booming from the show was fairly loud. Levi spent the whole show like this. He pressed one ear up against my chest and would either have me cover his other ear or covered it himself. I wondered if he would fall asleep, but he didn't. He watched the whole show and liked the lights, but would tell me periodically that the fireworks scared him. He still mentions it every now and again.

After the show we ended up just hanging out by the cars for about an hour waiting for the parking lot to clear out so that we could go home. We still had to pack the cars and Grandma and Grandpa's trailer up that night so that we could leave early the next morning to head home. We didn't get to bed until about 4 am.

We woke up on the 5th at around 7 a.m. loaded ourselves into the car and began driving back. Landon and I had agreed to help Grandma get her trailer to Bear Lake so Landon drove Marty's truck with trailer and Grandma and I drove the van with the kiddos. We had to go about 65 mph for the whole trip and also ended up missing a turn off due to Landon distracting Diane with wildlife outside the car. It took us 16 hours to get from Colorado to Utah. It was a long trip especially for my poor pregnant body, but we made it without too many problems.

We could not have asked for a more perfect vacation for our family this summer. It is always comforting to be in your parent's home plus we did a lot of very fun things. We are sad that we probably won't be able to go back to Colorado Springs before Grandpa and Grandma move from there, but if that is our last trip to the Springs, I will be happy for it was a fantastic trip!

The Move to Tooele

Yep, that's right. We finally made it to our destination with the move. We are in Tooele!

This move really did go well, even with the setbacks that always come with moving. We have to acknowledge how blessed we have been in the entire situation. We were able to sell our house with it on the market for less than three weeks. We were able to close on it in less than a month. We had tons of help from family and friends to get us out of the house. We were able to find a home that is lovely and fits our needs well in the neighborhood that we loved in Tooele at a really good deal. We had wonderful help from family in Utah who gave us a place to live until we could close on our new home, and once again family and friends who were willing to help us get all of our stuff into the new house.

We closed on our home in Pocatello the first week of June after having moved all of our things into storage units and a small apartment in Lehi, UT. We had very high hopes that we would only be in the apartment about a week, but it ended up being just short of a month. (I have to once again thank Landon's Uncle Mark for letting us stay in the apartment. It was a life saver!)

Our home in Tooele was bank owned which made things go a little slower than we would have liked. Stacked on top of that we did a USDA loan so that we would not have to pay PMI (saving us a bundle on monthly payments) but that also stacked up the paperwork and red tape that our loan had to go through. Every week we would say, hopefully by Friday we will be in our house, and by Thursday we were feeling sad because we still had no keys. The day did finally come the last week of June and boy were we excited!

The first thing I did was go buy paint to paint a couple of walls in the living room. I would have loved to paint the whole house before moving our things in, but where the closing took so long we were anxious to get in. The exception to this anxiety was the living room walls. I inherited a beast of a piano from my parents when they moved to Boise. Landon curses the thing every time we move and threatens to sell it. It is a full upright grand and weighs a ton. Needless to say, once it is moved into the house, it doesn't move again. So, I got to paint the walls in the living room that the piano would live on so that it didn't have to move again. It was really nice to put our own spin on this home that we had been waiting for forever.

Landon began the grueling task of trying to get our possessions out of the storage units and to our home. We got the keys to the house on Thursday and he moved one load of stuff from the storage unit in West Valley to our home that night. The next day my parents were in Salt Lake at Huntsmans so they came out that night to help us some more. Landon and my Dad took several loads from the storage unit in Tooele to our home trying to get us back to our Fridge so that we could begin living in our home. They worked seriously fast and were able to get the Fridge in that night while my mom brought me boxes to unload into my kitchen. I have to admit it was really fun unpacking my kitchen with my mom. This is a task that I normally hate because I feel at a loss as to where to start, but since I grew up in my Mom's kitchen we have similar thoughts on how a kitchen should be laid out and it was really nice to have her opinion as to where things should go. We found ourselves many times suggesting things go in the same place or my mom would look in a drawer to tell me that something would go great there only to find that I had already placed said item in the drawer. Thanks Mom and Dad for all of your help! We would not have been ready for the next day without you.

The following Saturday morning Landon's mom, Diane, joined us from Pocatello to help us do some more moving. When I picked her up from the shuttle I told her that Trevor had cried the previous two nights because we had to go back and sleep in the apartment instead of staying at our brown house. That was all it took for Grandma's determination to kick in (which if you haven't ever seen it, it is a force to be reckoned with) and she began the process of getting things in place for us to move our beds and dressers to the new "brown house" that day. She called in the help of some of Landon's cousins and by 3:00 p.m. my van and trailer were loaded up and we were heading for our home with plans to sleep there that night.

When we got to our house we had just enough time to open it up when the Elder's Quorum arrived and began unloading things. We have been blessed with fantastic neighbors and ward members who worked incredibly hard for us that afternoon. They worked for about 2 1/2 hours and were able to get all the rest of our things out of the storage unit in Tooele and most of the big furniture into the house. I also had help from some of the neighbor ladies and kids to bring boxes into the house from the garage and taken to the correct area so that I could unpack them. We had about 7 or 8 men from our ward and then the neighbor ladies that without them, I don't know what we would have done. Gosh I love the gospel and the ward family!

For the Saturday move, Grandma Diane helped us out by renting a U-haul so that our trips to the storage unit would be more successful. The U-haul also came in handy on Sunday when we returned to Lehi and our storage unit in West Valley and finished unloading them and got the rest of our things to our house. It was a very long weekend, but on Sunday night there was a great sense of relief to know that all of our things were finally in our possession at our home.

Monday morning brought the grueling task of trying to unpack as quickly as we could. We had planned a trip to Colorado Springs to visit Landon's parents and I was already two days late in leaving. Diane and I had to leave on Tuesday to get to Colorado in time to pick Landon up at the airport on Wednesday. Once again, Grandma's crazy determination and her many, many years of experience moving kicked in and we were able to get all of our necessities unpacked by Tuesday morning when we left.

I really do have to acknowledge all of the amazing help and support that our family has given us during this move. We never would have made it without it. We feel so very blessed by the Lord and guided by him to this place that we now call home. I just wish that it was closer to the family that we love and helped us soooo much.

Here we are. Tired and reeling, and happy to start trying to settle in. Here's hoping Tooele is everything we want it to be!

Update on Grandma Kitty

I realized that in my month long absence from blogging I left some things hanging on Grandma Kitty's condition and diagnosis of Cancer. I wanted to take the time now to do a little update on where we stand.

My Mom was diagnosed with neuroendocrine carcinoma. This is a cancer that usually starts in the small intestines or pancreas. One of the crappy things about this cancer is that the tumor kind of gets a mind of its own and can begin to put out hormones, which has caused really bad hot flashes for my mom. Once this cancer has metastasized it is terminal. Grandma Kitty's started in her small intestines and has spread to her liver and her lungs. This cancer will kill her, the question has just been when.

There are two kinds of neuroendocrine cancers, a fast growing and a slow growing. When my mom first met with the doctor at the Huntsman Cancer Institute he said that he thought her reports looked like it was the fast growing kind. What did that mean for us? It meant that if she did a hard dose of chemotherapy treatments for a year she could maybe live for 18 months to 2 years. If she did nothing, she would probably be dead in 3-6 months. Our hearts sunk and our minds reeled at the short amount of time we could be facing. The doctor was not certain that this was the her diagnosis, her tests were a little hard to read, so he ordered more tests.

It took about a week and a half to get all of the other tests done, more CT scans, an MRI, 24 hour urine, plus lots and lots of blood work. It was a very, very miserable week to ten days. My mind raced as to if my mom would even be around to see the birth of my new child and tried to deal with the fact that this baby that is to be her name sake may never even remember her. Like I said, really crappy wait.

As her test results came in she was able to meet with an oncologist in Boise whom consulted with the Doctor at Huntsmans and they decided that our situation was not quite as bad as originally thought. They decided that they believe she has the slow growing cancer. They said that with treatment she could live up to 10 more years. We were elated! Who would have thought you would ever be so happy that you cry to hear somebody say, "You only have 10 years left to live." But after looking the shorter route in the face we were very glad to take the extra time that the doctors were giving.

So, her treatment plan is now to take low doses of chemo shots once a month. They make her sick to her stomach and give her really bad diarrhea, but they slow the growth of the tumor. To start these out she had to do a two week run giving herself shots 3 times a day. It was pretty miserable, but she was excited to see the hot flashes subside. The next month they tried to give her a one dose shot to last the whole month, but the hot flashes returned so they had to give her some booster shots that she gives herself twice a day. They will keep playing with the dosage until they can hopefully have her on the once a month shot. We are really hoping that this medication will slow things down and buy us more time with her feeling as well as she can.

I have been amazed at my parents' strength as they have faced this challenge. My mom has always been the strong one emotionally in the family. My dad is a worrier. My mom has remained seemingly strong through the whole thing and puts on a really good face. My dad, has shown character I did not know possible. He broke down the first week that we found out, my mom told him he had to stay strong for her, and he has " screwed his courage to the sticking place" and pulled through for her. He asked her what she wanted to do with these last few years of her life and she told him that she wanted to see as many national parks as she could. So, that is the new plan. They have sold their boat and are trying to sell their truck, buying a traveling car and plan on seeing as many parks as they can, staying in hotels as they go. They are starting out this weekend with a trip to Zions National Park as they head home from Lake Powell.

I have known that my parents loved each other, and in my later teen years after watching them make it through some really tough times I knew they would be together forever. There love has not always been one that I would say was a sweet love or necessarily gentle. Fighting is somewhat of a sport for them. It has been something wonderful to watch as they have shown such sweet and tender moments of love for each other through this. They are done quietly and without pomp, but they are true and real. I am grateful for the time we have been given to try to show our Mama how much we love her and pay her back for all that she has done for the rest of us over the years.

So, here's to hoping for 10 years or more. We love you Grandma Kitty!