No Pitter-Patter of Little (or not so little) Feet

This week is Girls' Camp for the Young Women of our Stake.  The girls of our branch are spending 4 days and 3 nights at the John Johnson Farm in Hiram, Ohio.  Kayla is there with 12 other girls.  Kyle took the day off Tuesday and helped me drive the girls to camp, and supervised the setting up of the retired Scoutmaster tent.

 Kayla and her tentmate Meredith are working diligently with Kyle to set up the tent that was the envy of the other girls.  Like I said, retired scoutmaster tent, It has two private rooms and and screen porch all attached.

 Kayla and Meredith will sleep in style with their over sized cots, ceiling fans, and lots of space.  :)

 It is neat that they get to camp at the John Johnson farm.  This is a historic site of the church we attend.  So Kyle and I took another tour while we were up there.

 Have you ever watched the show on Food Network called "Diners, Drive-in and Dives?"  Kyle and I like to find those places from time to time.  Not necessarily the one's Guy Fieri visited, but one's that he could visit. 

 We found the Brick Tavern in Garretsville, OH.  Kyle had to try the Freddy burger.  It was huge.  I went for a gyro.  It was fantastic.  We shared part way through, because we want to try both, and because I have a sauce dislike.  Don't get me wrong I like a taste of the sauce, I don't like my food swimming in it so that's all I taste.  That is how the Gyro was, swimming in sauce.  Kyle makes fun of me for this quirk.  It's bad enough that it can ruin my meal if I can't get the sauce off (I usually forget to ask for light sauce or on the side).  I'd rather not eat it than gag on overkill drippings.  Oh well, I can take the criticisms.

Lately, we've been driving the youth around to a lot of places.  That's okay we signed up for our turns in the summer when I'm more available.  We took the YW to the temple on Friday night.  We had a fun trip.  It's always a fun place to be and learn.

The grounds at the temple are very pretty too.  We found this nice foot bridge over a small creek for them to pose on.

So were does that leave Kyle and I, home.  Alone.  No children.  So what do you do?  Weird.  After that is out of the way it sure is nice to have quiet alone time with my husband.  Tuesday we toured around the Hiram area.  Today I stayed home and got somethings done around the house, and we cooked dinner together and went to boy scouts to get the boys ready for scout camp next week.  Tomorrow, I'm going to clean some more things that I usually ignore.  Then we are going to Olive Garden. 

You know, my house has no pitter-patter, or stomping when (Kota) trots through the house.  (He's working as a counselor at Camp Nuhop and is gone all week.  We have a clean house, no Kayla droppings as I call them, she can destroy a place rather quickly, amazing how I don't miss that.  But, it's going to be weird when this is an everyday reality instead of a three day vacation.  What do you do when you aren't raising teens anymore and have adult children? 

Wacky Hormones

Have you ever had one of those days there is something wrong and you just don't know what it is?  I felt that way yesterday.  I just was grumpy, moody, irritatable, whiny....

Warning: this is about personal medical information, but I wanted to share with whomever wants to continue:

Okay, so I do know what was wrong with me.  I have poly-cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and am in the early stages of diabetes (prediabetes, treated just like having it).  This syndrome causes me to not have regular periods when I'm not taking medicine.  So I have been trying to have a period for three weeks (talk about frustrating), needless to say I have a hormone imblance and sometimes it tips the scale.  (like yesterday)  With this syndrome it causes very heavy periods that are very painful.

So after a couple hours of griping about everything that was unfair I felt much better!  (I don't think Kyle felt better) I did a bunch of reading up on the syndrome this weekend.  I have ways to control the irregular periods and hormone imbalance, I just was in denial of being medication dependent.  So back on the medication I go, hope everything balances back out.

I didn't realize how many things that PCOS could affect.  Some of the symptoms are depression and anxiety.  I didn't realize that.  That explains a lot in the last few months while I wasn't taking it. So no more feeling sorry for myself (mostly in secret), back on the meds and extra effort on diet control should help. 
Wish me luck.

I'm not sure why I shared, but this is what was on my mind.

Upper Sandusky or Bust?

Why spend a day in/around Upper Sandusky, Ohio?  These two kitties have something to do with it.

They needed spayed and neutered so we didn't get mutant kittens from them being brother and sister.  So we spent the day in the area while the cats were under vet care.  The original plan was to spend the day at the public pool there, but the rainy day gave us other options.

First we went the the Col. William Crawford memorial that was up in that area.  Col. Crawford is a several generations back great uncle of Kyle's.  He has a town and county named after him here in Ohio.  Why?  Because he was a Revolutionary War officer, who was tortured by Delware Indians who were working with the British.  We stopped by the historical marker in the area of his death.  There was a monument in the cemetary across the road from the marker as well as a little park about a mile away in the little town Crawford.

 This wheat field across from the cemetary made me think about "amber waves of grain" tributing the many Revolutionary, Civil and WWI, WWII vets that were buried in that little local cemetary.

 Crawford church in the town of Crawford.  The town of Crawford was so big that if you blinked you would have missed it.

So after we visited the family monuments we ventured into the town of Findlay and spent the other 7 hours waiting on the cats to be finished.  We found a quiet shopping mall and ventured around there for a couple of hours.  Kayla got to spend some of the babysitting money she has been saving.  Then we found a movie theater.  We went to see the "Green Latern."  If you like super hero flicks, this one is for you.  Then we went to Kohl's to kill another hour.  We enjoyed the time shopping and relaxing in the theater.

 Then we came back to get the two cats after their long day at the vets.  We drove all the way over here because they do low cost surgery.  We got them both taken care of, plus shots for $70.  That is half of what we would have spent locally.

 Kayla was glad to get her babies back.  Even though Tina stunk so bad.  He was too tired from ansthesia to get up and use the litter box.  His fur smelled really bad.  Needless to say, the hour trip home was with the windows down.

Puttin' it Up

Kayla and I spent our day on the road and canning at the Brecksville Family Home Storage Center.  We are putting in items for our food storage and helping the branch get items for their food storage.  The link tells what you could/should store for your family.

With the rise of food costs and the state of the economy I think our food storage will help us out in the future.  There was a time in our past when Kyle and I both lost our jobs a couple of months a part.  Another time when I went to college and Kyle was the only one working.  Our food storage was used so that our grocery bill was less.

Kayla and I had a fun time.  We packed 72 cans (#10 size) of various items for people at the branch.  We laughed and worked all morning.  A member of the church from the Akron Ward came up today just to help people, boy were we glad for the extra hands. 

One of my favorite places to get food storage recipies is http://www.everydayfoodstorage.net/

I was talking with Sister Kesweder at the storehouse.  She said there will be a day when the bishop will call on members to give their food storage to neighbors, friends and family.  That got me to thinking.  I better keep packing it away. 

I'm doing a good job of keeping this summer goal.  I need to work on the others.  ;)

Father's Day, Reunion part 2

It really was an uneventful Father's Day today for Kyle.  We were go, go, go all week and I really didn't get to plan much for him.  I'll have to make it up to him later this week.  That doesn't change the fact that he never wants anything and really was happy with that.  I did make him heath bar cookies and he was quite happy with the treat.  (I also told him he needs to pick out a ladder he has been wanting at Home Depot, I want him to pick it because he's pretty particular about his tools.)

Kyle is a wonderful father to our children.  He is patient and kind.  He is the mediator in our home.  His natural talent at peacemaking is used often here.  His sense of humor always keeps us laughing.  That is usually the medicine we need to be happy.  He is such a great husband and father, I couldn't have chosen any better.  Happy Father's Day dear! 

Last week we did so many things with family it was hard to post everything.  We had an evening at Jim Kline's house.  He is a high school friend of Toby (my father-in-law) who had us all over for dinner.  It was fun.  The kids played around his pond, people fished and used the little pontoon boat.

I love the bridge connecting the land to the little man-made island.

Briar working hard with the tractor.  He was making the noises to go with the tractor.  Too cute!

Friday we went with Kaleb and Karson to Malabar Farm.  We took this picture from the Mt. Jeez overlook.

Kyle was trying to get a better view.

Karson was all kicked backed and enjoyed the ride.

The geese were beating the heat by staying in the shade.  They really squacked at us as we walked by.  I guess we were too close to their territory.

Back by Pugh's Cabin is a nice hiking trail that goes back to a little cave.  On the way is this giant rock that a glacier probably dropped off.

Kyle dubbed this rock, Elephant Rock; because it looks like Karson is riding an elephant.

Here is the cave I was talking about.

Karson is at the independent 2 year-old stage where he wanted to climb the rocks by himself.  He did a pretty good job too!

Here we were total tourists.  We paid the 25 cents to get some chicken feed and feed the chickens.  It was fun to watch them come running up to Karson and Kayla.  They are used to the visitors giving them a mid afternoon snack.  It was a busy fun week with family.  It's hard to get a year's worth of visits in in just a couple of weeks.  It was fun while it lasted.

Splish, Splash, Reunion

 It has been an eventful week.  This week alot of Kyle's family was in from Minnesota and California.  We spent a lot of time catching up with Brothers and sisters-in-law.  It is fun to see how the families are growing.  Kyle having 7 siblings creates a lot of nieces and nephews.

Today was the reason for all the gathering, the Crawford family reunion was at cousin Steve Hawley's house here in Hayesville.  We had a lot of food and a lot of fun playing in his pool.

 Karson was only brave enough to get his feet wet.Kaleb and Nicole have the youngest of the grandchildren, Elle.  But Klayton and Tricia haven't started having kids yet, they were the one's that got married last July.

Kim and Kolyn's kids are mixed in together here.  Lydia and Kadin jumpin' off the dive.  Kolton only wanted to be splashed occasionally, he really didn't want to get in.

Delany and Kadin enjoying the slide.

Kiley trying to decide if it was too cold or not.

Kyle watching out for Briar, but talking to Kamyrn.

It wouldn't be a hillbilly reunion without the cornhole games.  The men take this pretty serious.  Klayton is setting his up at regulation length.  Do you notice the "k" theme to the names?  Kyle's mom and dad named all 8 of the kids with "k" names and several of us keep the tradition going with our children, most of us with at least one child with a "k" even if it's their middle name.  (The eight: Kelly, Kolyn, Kyle, Kory (Korbit), Kim (Kimberly), Kasey, Kaleb and Klayton)

Lydia and Kamryn enjoying some food after a long swimming session.

 Kyle enjoys visiting with his brothers.  Even though the miles seperate us, they are a close knit family.  I love that about them.  You sit down and talk and it's as if you were talking to them yesterday.  Our children really have a good bond with them too.  They will cry when they go home, but it is a good cry.

 Kayla enjoying the pool too.  She is great at playing with her cousins.  I suppose when you don't see them very often, it doesn't matter how cool you are, you just play anyhow.

I love this picture of her coming out of the slide.  I might have to use this one for my fair entry this year.

Daddy cool getting ready to strut his stuff.  He is impressive to his cousins because he is the oldest here.  I'm glad he takes time to play with the kids.  He also took some time to act as lifeguard for them.

Dive-in, enjoy the splish, splash of a great family reunion.