HE IS HOME

This morning Amanda asked me at 7 a.m. if we could go get Logan now.

AWWWWWWW!

I guess she missed him after all! : ) We picked him up just before lunch time and I think Logan missed us too. He said he had a great time but was very happy to be home. And I think he was going through wii withdrawal. hee, hee, hee!

Christmas In July

I think this is a first for the record books for me. I've always been an early shopper for Christmas gifts, but this year takes the cake. Some friends of mine here in Wichita tipped me off that Target was having their 75% off toy clearance today so, of course, Amanda and I had to check it out. I found so many great deals that I ended up getting all my Christmas shopping done for all the kids in my family! : ) The hard part will be remembering where I hid them all come December.

The Boy LIVES!

Day 4, with no word from Logan since Sunday night...

Eric came home from work today in a tizzy. Enough was ENOUGH! "We're calling the camp!" He called several numbers before finally reaching the directer of the camp. He explained how there was no emergency, he just wanted to speak with his son. She tracked Logan down (after Karaoke and before the ice cream social) and was able to talk to him for a few minutes. He's having a grand time, swimming lots and making new of friends. I wasn't able to talk to Logan (I was at a meeting) but I feel better as well, knowing that the boy is alive and well.

No Word and Fun In The Sun

I guess Logan is having such a bang up time that he's forgotten all about us. We haven't heard from him since the first day of camp. : (

Amanda is still in a super good mood. We've been rearranging her room and swimming a lot. At the YMCA pool yesterday we went to the "deep end" (4 feet deep, but she can't touch) and she was jumping in, swimming to me and diving for her dive sticks all with out a life jacket on. I think it's official. My baby can swim! Oh, and she has a tan that is sinful. Sometimes life just isn't fair.

Phone Calls and Tea Parties

Logan called from camp last night about 10:15. I was already in bed so Eric got to talk to him. It was passed along that Logan is having a great time, likes his counselor, and took a bunch of pictures. Hopefully he'll call again tonight. I'll try to stay up just in case.

In other news, Amanda is not missing her brother at all. She is loving all the attention and is the sweetest little girl you've ever seen. Today, we went swimming, out to lunch, and shopping and she was a doll the whole time. After returning home, see talked us both into having a tea party with her and at dinner time she brought her doll Rosa Linda to the table and put her in her brother's chair. She even asked me if she could have her brother's bed... ya, I don't think she's missing him much.

Off To Camp

My baby is off to camp! He's gone until Friday to Camp Quality at Tawakoni Campground in Augusta, KS. We all gathered at Wesley Medical Center to meet with nurses and staff for a final checkup before boarding the bus. He will be getting to know other kids that have survived cancer or are currently undergoing treatment and has been assigned a special camp counselor ("Andrew") that will be his (and only his) counselor for the week. I'm sure he will come back thoroughly spoiled with some wonderful memories. We sent him with two disposable cameras with instructions to ration the pictures (he LOVES to take photos) and our phone numbers with instructions to CALL!!! (He can call us when ever he wants, but we can only call him if it's an emergency).

Bye, Baby!!! Mommy will miss you terribly and worry much!

Why do I even buy them toys?

Logan, Amanda, and Eric were playing a rousing game of table top ice hockey today. As the ice melted, it coated the counter with a layer of water, making the ice brick (or puck if you will) slide like a hot knife through butter.

Home Sweet Home

Wow! What a whirlwind tour it has been. 5 states in 8 days! We arrived home yesterday afternoon to two VERY excited little HUGE doggies whom we had left behind in for a week, (the neighbors checked on them for us...) and a wonderfully clean house that we immediately trashed! Why to I insist on cleaning before we leave? I certainly didn't get to enjoy the pleasure of coming home to a clean house. (Well, I guess I did for all of 10 seconds)

The dogs did great in our absence. No messes in the house. Nothing torn up. Our only complaint was smell and a quick dog bath remedied that problem. Everyone in the monkey home is doing well... however, today is our only family day. Logan leaves for his cancer survivor camp tomorrow! He'll be gone 6 days and his parents are a little nervous.

More to come later.

Eye check

Friday morning we took the family for eye appointments in KC (to our eye doctor and friend). Good news! Logan does not have any perminent eye damage from the chemo! : ) It was passed along to us from his teacher in May that he was having trouble seeing the board and we were concerned, but NO MORE! YEA FOR ANOTHER VICTORY!!!

Back in Cilivlization

We are in Seattle getting ready to fly back home after a wonderful week long vacation driving up the coast of California, Oregon, and into Washington. We didn't have Internet service like I'd thought we would and our cell phone service was very sketchy so I feel like we've been out of touch with the world. Anyway, I'm going to post some photos from our trip, but I'm going to post date them to the actual day. Follow along on our trip if you like.

Bridges, Lighthouses and Wildlife

Our fourth day brought many a lighthouse and bridge into our view finder... and a few animals as well.



Coquille River Lighthouse

Coos Bay Bridge - Coos Bay, Oregon

Sea Lion

Umpqua River Lighthouse - Reedsport, Oregon

Siuslaw River Bridge - Florence, Oregon

Water crashing below Yaquina Head Lighthouse - Newport, Oregon

Eric dubbed this "Bird Sh*t Rock"... I'm sure you can see why. (I don't think the rock is naturally white) : )

We saw two new birds for my life list here... the Common Murre and the Pigeon Gullemot. We also saw 15 or so Harbor Seals off the beach, but they were too far away to capture a good photo of.

Oregon Coastline

Waking up to a foggy morning in the forest. We hit the road bright and early... driving up the coast into Oregon.

There are many historic bridges on Highway 101. Eric tried to take as many photos as possible of the bridges. This was our first and also the highest bridge in Oregon standing 345 feet in the air. We couldn't even see to the bottom from this angle.

Panoramic view of one of the many beaches along the coast.

While Eric was interested in the engineering marvels of the historic bridges, I was interested in beauty of the many lighthouses along the coast.

Did we mentioned that is is 55 degrees and WINDY along the coast! (Sorry to those of you sweating your butts off back home! : )

We were able to take a tour of the lighthouse and walk all the way to the top of the light tower. Here is the reflective lens with only a small light bulb making all that light. The mirrors reflect the light back to concentrate it in a specific beam.
Another bridge by our second campsite.

Sunset on the beach...the clouds hid the sun from us : (

Redwood Forest

Saturday we hiked and explored the Redwood Forest in Northern California. We saw a tree that they estimated to be more that 1,500 years old!

Eric is walking on a tree that had fallen down. They had to cut it where it crossed the trail, but we could walk on over a 400 feet of tree from root ball to the cut!

Eric counted back 35 years on the growth rings for this tree. He's pointing to where he was in this tree's life on the day he was born. (and this was one of the smaller trees!)

Wild Elk are commonly seen in the park.

Here is our first campsite of the trip. We opted for a Environmental Campsite... basically you park your car and carry all your gear and hike to the campsite. VERY COOL! It was about 5 minute walk... not too bad, but we were camping in bear country so we had to be very careful about food storage.

Arrive and Drive

Friday I flew into Sacramento to join up with Eric (who was already here for work) and we rented a car, drove over the Cascade Mountains to get to the coast. While driving back down the other side, we came upon a FOREST FIRE! It was VERY dry here so I guess it wasn't so surprising, but as we were driving around all the emergency vehicles we discovered that the fire was stated by a wrecked vehicle catching on fire.

**I took video, but the file is big and the Internet here is slow. I'll try to upload it once we get home**

Rules of the Game

Soooooo, today on the way home from swimming, Logan and Amanda were playing the "quiet" game. You know the game I'm talking about, right? The ones our parents invented on long car rides (before the invention of portable DVD players) to shut us kids up for a few minutes. Well is seems my kids really enjoy that game and are pretty competitive. Okay, back to my story. On the way home Logan and Amanda start their game... then began making up rules to the game.

Lo - "Okay, STOP! No making any noise from your mouth including 'wind' noise."

Nanna - "STOP! No blowing through your nose"

Lo - "STOP! No making funny faces to make me laugh."

Nanna - "STOP! No almost-touching me!"

Lo - "STOP! No fake farting, but real farting is okay."

"ha, ha, ha, ha" Went the mommy!

Then someone (probably Logan) came up with the anti-quiet game. "Let's see who can make fart noises on their arm all the way home." Thank goodness we were only 2 minutes away. Amanda almost hyperventilated.

STOP THE PRESSES

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MY

-

CHILDREN

-

ARE
-

TAKING

-

A

-

NAP

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- This is why I don't take a stroller to the zoo! : )

Let's see how long I can ride this happy train... 30 minutes and counting.

What We've Been Up To This Week

We've had a very busy week. First with our impromptu trip to Tulsa. Then with my sister, her three kids, and my mom coming for a visit. And top off the fun with a 3 day long Independence Day celebration... it makes for ONE GIANT BLOG POST!

____________________________

Logan lost his 4th tooth!
And we took our visitors to the Sedgwick County Zoo...



My sister even snapped a rare photo of me! (Why am I always behind the camera?!?)


Then I showed my mom the cool new features of my camera : )

(She HATES having her picture taken so I don't have very many of her)

We had a fireworks tailgate party... AND THE RAIN WAITED FOR US! (Thank you Mother Nature!)

And celebrated on our own here at home with our Day-After fireworks purchases.

Eric and I got a little teary-eyed thinking about last year's 4th. That was right in the middle of Logan's first round of chemo. Look how far we've come! YEA!