There has been some videos on the news of people that live by hospitals coming out to their balconies at shift change time (which is usually 7am or 7pm) and clapping and cheering for the doctors and nurses and other health care staff that are working so hard right now helping all the patients with COVID 19. It is very touching and it is great that the people living by the hospitals show support for them.
Our neighbor across the street has apparently also seen these videos and is trying to get a neighborhood nightly ritual going. They have been posting on FB and texts to the neighborhood asking to have people come out at 7pm every night and clap for one minute for the health care workers. Might I point out that there are no actual health care workers.
The first time they did it, we were not aware of what they were doing. Ryan and Matthew were playing catch in the street by the front yard. All of the sudden their whole Stutzman family came out and without saying a word start clapping and cheering. Ryan and Matthew didn’t know what they were doing and thought they were clapping at them for some reason. They stopped and looked at them and then after the minute ended without a word they all turned around and went back in their house.
The next night we got a text from a different neighbor explaining what was going on and said that it was going to be something that happened every night at 7pm. We forgot and missed it that night.
Tonight we set an alarm because we got more text invites and didn’t want to be the stick in the mudds. So at 6:59 I dragged the kids to the front porch and told them we were going to clap for 1 minute for all the healthcare workers. At 7 o’clock sharp the Stutzman family came out and started clapping…our family and one other family were the only other families I could see. We all clapped for a minute then at 7:01 the Stutzman family stopped and walked back into their house. The entire time we were clapping my kids repeatedly asked me questions like, “Why are we doing this?” “When are the doctors coming?” “Why are we clapping if no one is here?” “Can the doctors and nurses see us and we just don’t know?”
It was a little weird. Again, if they were actual people to clap for I would be all for it…but since there isn’t…I think it is strange for people to come out on the porch and clap for a minute with out any converstation and then go back inside. At least say hi and wave or something.
The last 24 hours have been a busy one for our little neighborhood area. They say things happen in threes but we might be going for three sets of threes.
To start it off, yesterday I was doing some lawn work and trimming up some bushes for Spring. I was using our electric trimmer and the automatic shut off switch that is supposed to release when you take your hand of the power button got stuck and I wasn’t being careful enough so I cut my middle left finger through the side into my nail. I had a glove on and was hoping when I pulled it off that it wouldn’t be bad enough to need stitches but could tell immediately that was not the case. So I went in to wash it off and was debating with myself to just super glue it instead of going into the doctors with all this virus crap. Ryan saw it and said I had to go get stitches. I told him to call my regular doctor instead of going to the ER. He tried calling Steve to see if he could stitch me up but he didn’t answer. My doctor wasn’t in but another doctor said he could do it. Ryan drove me there but he couldn’t come in. Everyone was wearing masks, and by that I mean the skeleton crew that was working. I didn’t see any other patient. I had to fill out a bunch of paper work to screen me for any possible sign of Covid 19. Then there were only some chairs labeled that I was ‘allowed’ to sit in. Talk about feeling like you are in some apocalyptic movie but it is your actual life. The doctor said it needed one or two stitches. While his two nurses where getting the room ready for ‘the finger lady’ they had a very loud conversation with each other about how it is ridiculous that people can’t follow directions and stay home and not do unnecessary things. Then they specifically mentioned that yard work and house work are not necessary. They were sure to leave the door open too in case I couldn’t hear them through that. I was pretty ticked. The doctor numbed me up and gave me my stitches. When he left the nurse told me to come back in a week to have the stitches taken out. I told her I could take my own stitches out so I didn’t have to come back and put up with her poor bedside manner again. Then I walked out. That was a lot nicer than the other things going on in my head. Give me a break. I know lots of nurses and health care workers that are caring and compassionate. It is kind of part of the job. Why go into healthcare to help people in stressful hard situations if you are that unpleasant of a person.
Later that night we had a really gnarly thunderstorm and shortly after a loud crack of thunder a bunch of sirens came over by us. Someone’s house had been struck by lightning and caught fire. I don’t know how extensive the damage was before they were able to put it out.
Matthew’s friend a street over had the fire department show up at his house today. His older brother ordered a new battery for his phone. When he put it in, it started getting really hot, he dropped it on the floor so it wouldn’t burn him and it caught the carpet on fire! They got it out pretty quick so it is just a small area of carpet they will have to replace.
Tonight Ryan and I went on a walk after dinner. We started hearing all kinds of sirens around us. When we got around the park we saw a bunch of lights in the school playground. The neighbors that were out watching said it was some kind of a medical emergency. We kept going and headed back in the direction of our house.
When we turned the corner there were a bunch more police cars blocking off the roads. We had to walk that way to get back to our house. We asked the neighbors in that area what was happening and they said that there had been shots fired at “Crazy John’s house” which is on the next corner up from where we were. We walked back home and there were police cars across the street from us in our neighbors back yard blocking off the house from that direction. Then we could hear the police announcing over their speaker, “This is the Olathe Police Department, John come out with your hands up.” They said it about five times. Then he must have come out because shortly after that they all left. I haven’t heard if anyone was hurt of not.
The black circles were the fires. Yellow circle is the medical emergency. Blue dot is our house and location of the hedge trimmer incident. Blue circle it the shots fired area where “crazy John” lives.
Lots of craziness. Hopefully it is done. You can tell that some people are starting to get a little crazy with all the changes because of the virus. I don’t know if any of these were related or not, just reports and posts I see on the internet are starting to have some crazies coming out. We were worried our kids were going to be panicked when we got home with all the police cars around. A while back our neighbors had a fire truck come to their house while we were gone because of a medical emergency and the kids were freaking out about it. Luckily when we got home tonight they were all in there evening electronic comas and where none the wiser to the whole situation.
This is going to get weird. It already is weird but when I stop and focus on it, it feels even more weird. It is like I am in one of those movies where someone is stranded or lost at sea and they start counting the days. It has been 12 days since they asked people to so a 14 day self quarantine. They announced yesterday that starting this Tuesday at noon there will be an even more strict 30 quarantine going into effect. Basically all businesses that are not essential are to be closed and other than emergencies, no one should leave their house unless it is to go to the bank, grocery store, hardware store, or doctor office. I have also heard that they will start fining people that are not following the quarantine and multiple offenders can even get up to 6 months of jail time. I have not verified that so I don’t know if it is true or not. This is when things could start getting ugly.
Matthew and Allison seem to be doing ok so far. I can tell Emilee is stressed, the past day or so I can tell she is getting some pent up energy and she keeps asking a lot of the same questions over and over. Maybe I will start a rating system for how we are all doing mentally.
We had church today. This is the first time in my life that I have ever had to have the sacrament done in my own home. I thought is was a really good meeting. I could feel the Spirit. It is a huge blessing and comfort that we have the Lords gospel and it is organized and clear how to do things. Even when new situations that haven’t ever really happened before come up there is a clear process and way to do things. We kept it pretty simple and did an opening song,prayer,business, sacrament song, Ryan blessed the sacrament and Matthew passed it, then we read scriptures and had a closing song and prayer. Our Primary pianist and chorister made a video for the kids to watch for singing time so we did that afterwards. We assigned out some parts for next weeks church.
We had a planning meeting today also for this upcoming week. We talked about making sure all our bodies needs are met-physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. We discussed things that each of us need to do each day like;
Switch off between exercising and stretching for 45 minutes each day
Personal prayer and scriptures
Family prayer and scriptures
Read for fun for a minimum of 30 minutes a day
Go outside everyday
Daily chores
Laundry helper (kids will rotate each week)
Cooking helper
Practice piano minimum of 20 minutes each day
Teaching life skills with mom ~2 times a week
Hygiene habits with mom ~2 times a week
There is other things that vary a little bit but those are the things that will be standard each week. School stuff will get added in there too when the school stuff is out online from the district more. Life skills and hygiene habits are short little sessions with mom that review some aspect of hygiene (like using a q-tip) or life skills (how to sweep a floor) that they already know or should know but need a review. For example today we covered how to shower. They thought it was hilarious and were mortified that I had a stick figure drawing to help illustrate but all of them discovered 2-3 things that they were forgetting or not doing right.
Allison is going to get a little garden started this week with her dad. She is hoping to be able to do a salad garden with lettuce, peppers, and carrots. She wants to take over the whole back yard but I told her she has to start small and if it goes well she can expand.
Ryan is going to build the shelves in the basement bedroom closet. Emilee and I are going to finish condensing the toy room and her room while I finish getting the basement bedroom converted from a toy room to a bedroom. Matthew is planning on focusing a lot on his hitting and throwing for baseball.
It is all just odd. The world we lived and worked and socialized in less than two weeks ago has completely changed. Basically it has been canceled. There is nothing to prepare or get ready for, nothing to go to. It is a weird feeling. No reason to go to bed, no reason to get up in the morning. No plans. At. All. I can see how isolation can get to people. I wouldn’t say it is getting to me yet. I am pretty good at being alone but I have always had the option to change that when I decide I am not good with it anymore. I have my family too, so technically I am not alone. People that are single or live alone are in for a long couple months. Ryan is lucky to still have a job to work at home from too. So many people have been let go or had to close their business and that starts a whole other train of people that become affected as well. The economy was strong-growing and thriving in fact but this is a huge set back to recover from. I wish they would just implement a ‘pause’ in all of the financial stuff until this is over so people don’t have to declare bankruptcy or lose their job. It is going to be a job to get everthing ‘back to normal’.
I am sick of social media. The memes are funny but the rest of it just drives me crazy. Lots of rumors, misinformed or uniformed people ‘explaining’ things, people criticizing others. There is lots of good stuff going on as well. Many businesses and people are donating supplies or food or services during this time. I have taken a break from pretty much all of the news for the next little while. Ryan will let me know if I need to know something.
The icing on the cake today it that we found another gift from our crappy builder this morning. It has been raining a lot and one of our living room windows has water dripping inside from somewhere. We are thinking it is probably flashing or something but…getting it fixed is going to be a pickle. It might just be a ‘caulk the crap out of it’ until all this is over fix.
I’ve been getting a few things done around our house the last little while that have been on my list. Some of them I have done myself, others I hired out. The two that are the most exciting is out fireplace and the basement bathroom.
We have a gas fireplace and I have wanted to get a fan on it to make it functional not just pretty. The first time they came I asked them to show me how to adjust the flame and we found out that our stupid builder put a propane insert in instead of a gas one. I started this blog after we moved in but to catch everyone up. Our builder was a jerk on purpose and an idiot on accident so we had a lot of issues. So I was disappointed but not surprised when I found out they had installed the wrong fireplace insert. I was very relieved when they were able to find a conversion kit for $125 instead of needing a new $4000 insert. So they fixed that and then put the blower in. Now I can sit in front of my fireplace and read a book and get nice cozy warm toes.
The next big one that just got finished is our basement bathroom! They did the final paint touch-ups the day before they started all the quarantine stuff with COVID 19. Perfect timing! The plan is to move guest room downstairs when people visit. All the ‘rooms’ are done in the basement now. There is still a little finish work to done eventually but our house is getting closer and closer to our finished plans.
I don’t have a picture with all the finishings in it but you get the idea. 🙂
“Navigating these unprecedented events” Ugg, that is the buzz phrase you hear within ten seconds of listening or reading any type of news right now. The Coronavirus or COVID 19 for short that hit China in December 2019 and has had them in quarantine for almost 2 months has now spread to the rest of the world and been declared a global pandemic and things have been starting to get a little crazy.
Reports about things going on with the virus were in the news and it was a common topic but it wasn’t until about mid week last week that things started to escalate quite a bit. They announced that international travel was shutting down and started to cancel events for the next upcoming week or two. Our Spring Break was supposed to start this week. Ryan and Matthew were headed to Arizona for Spring Training with the Royals. It included a stop in Oklahoma for a NBA game and New Mexico to visit the Albuquerque temple. They were going to leave on Friday but by that time college and professional basketball had been canceled, temples were closed and baseball was postponed indefinitely. They ended up not going. The girls and I were going to go to Oklahoma for a few days to explore Tulsa a little bit but decided to hold off as well. Things were changing almost by the hour so we didn’t want to get somewhere and then get stuck without any supplies or have to move in with someone else and use their supplies.
This was the beginning of our quarantine. We were still including friends.🤦♀️ The kids were trying to make themselves a human table. There were four chairs under each of their bums and then we took them away one at a time until it was them supporting themselves.
Over the weekend they said that they would let us know if school would resume or not after spring break. They ended up announcing they were going to extend school closing through April 5th-an extra two weeks, but the next day the Governor of Kansas said all Kansas schools were closed for the rest of the school year. Our district is hoping to have some online school stuff available for the kids to do starting in April. Tons of people on social media are freaking out about doing home school and posting about what they are doing. I don’t feel the need to jump right into that boat since this is our original Spring Break anyway. I have plenty of life skills that I can teach and review with them in the absence of school. We are currently focusing on close quarter social skills, maintaining a clean environment, expanding our ‘things I can do without a screen’ knowledge, color sorting and linear folds with laundry, cooking basics and above. We have daily review courses in personnal hygiene, germ transferring, and washing your hands. Our trampoline has been used more in the past week then the last year and we are planning on going through all of our games and puzzles too. I have offered piano lessons but no one has taken me up on that. I have been getting lots of practice in though. I have also been doing lots of reading.
Local and federal governments have requested everyone to self quarantine themselves with their families for two weeks. EVERYTHING is closed. Everything that is entertainment I guess. Movie theaters, any indoor play areas, restaurants are drive thru only if they are still open. The stores have been cleared out of any staples including milk, eggs, bread, rice, beans, toilet paper, and anything that kills germs like clorox wipes or hand sanitizer. All sports or extra curricular activities are canceled or put off until summer. Everyone that can is supposed to work from home. Most businesses are closing so those people are out of work until further notice. Church has been canceled. Dental offices have been asked to cancel all non emergency appointments. If you are out for some reason everyone is requested to use ‘social distancing’ another buzz phrase that will be forever etched in everyone’s brain. It means to not touch anyone and keep a minimum of 6 feet away from people at all times. All of this is to “flatten the curve” which means to lessen the exposure and keep the numbers of people needing treatment down so that hospitals and doctor offices are not overwhelmed and unable to treat people.
If I remember right there are five different phases that a pandemic will go through before it is considered over. It is estimated that we are still in the first phase, which means we have not reached the peak of individuals that will be infected and numbers are still expected to increase exponentially.
How is this for a knowledge tree. Ryan’s bosses, girlfriends, son is an aide or secretary on Air Force Two, which transports a lot of secretary of state or defense government officials. He said that they are very close to shutting everything down and allowing no travel or people to leave their homes at all. A few states have shut down all non-essential stores and businesses and I am sure more will follow. The only way I can see them not allowing people to leave their homes at all is if they declare martial law-which is INSANE.
On top of that there was a 5.7 earthquake in Salt Lake Utah yesterday. DeAnna and her family are ok. Hopefully there aren’t anymore of them.
Changes like this, especially so quickly naturally bring panic and worry with them. It is wonderful to have a living prophet to help us be prepared and ready for things so we can be calm and not stress as much as we would if we weren’t prepared. The prophet has been telling us for years to get prepared by having a month up to a year supply of food, water, and money in case something were to happen. This has definitely been a reminder for how fast things can change. One a Wednesday evening we were at a Girl Scout meeting, doing home work and gymnastics, business as usual. The next day stores are out of everything and people are going a little crazy getting ready to quarantine themselves for two weeks. The Prophet also implemented a new home based church supported curriculum a little over a year ago in our church so we can even continue right on with our spiritual study without much of a hitch even though church has been canceled. It is very comforting to know that there is a sure place to look for guidance when life starts getting crazy.
This is a screen shot of one of my favorite meme’s going around right now. There is a lot. I have decided to take a social media break for a while.
This past weekend I made a quick trip to see my sister Sherri in Florida. She had a miscarriage earlier this month and was understandably sad and I wanted to see her for myself. I was supposed to get there Thursday around 7 pm but my flight was delayed a lot so it was almost 1 am Friday morning by the time I got there. We were still able to cram in some fun before my 6 am flight Sunday morning.
Friday we went out to have some sister time. We started with getting our nails done then she was wanting to update her ward robe for work so shopping was next. I am not a big shopper on my own. I am becoming more and more of an online shopper actually. I don’t get to shop with my sisters very often though so it is always fun when I get the chance. When I am shopping with Sherri I feel like I am shopping with myself. We have very similar taste and styles. We paused long enough to eat lunch at Ford’s Garage, which was quite an interesting experience. My brain had a hard time reconciling the really good food we were eating with the very authentic ambiance of being in a repair shop, right down to the smell of oil. It was good food though. After lunch we continued shopping a few more hours and then called it a night. We ate chocolate almonds and watched a movie together.
The next day Kenny was having a hard time understanding the concept of a sister weekend so we hung out around their house mostly. We finished a flower bed they had been clearing out. It was nice to be working outside in beautiful 80 degree sunshiny weather. Sunshine is such a cheerful thing. It can make me happy instantly just by walking outside and having the sun shining. We went through a bunch of stuff for our FAT Adventure business and talked about some stuff we want to try and change. Sherri and I went and returned a few things that we changed our mind about when we were shopping the day before then we all went to dinner at a pizza place. Sherri and I stayed up talking late that night. She drove me to the airport to catch my 6 am flight the next morning. It was a fast trip. It is amazing that I can be in Tampa Florida at 6 am and make it home to my house in Kansas in time for 10:30 church. It is less amazing but still crazy that I can leave Tampa and its comfy 80 degree weather and then arrive in Kansas where it is 30 degrees and I have ice on my car windows.
I am very grateful and blessed to have both of my sisters. I am glad that we are friends. I am sad sometimes that we don’t get to live closer to each other but I am glad that we can talk a lot and see each other a few times a year (hopefully). They are both amazing people and I love them a lot.
Spring Break was a week earlier than usual this year, and with as much time off in February as we had by the time it came to Spring Break I felt like we had already been having a Spring Break.
Ryan and I talked about doing something further away like maybe Chicago or Gulf Shores. Neither of us got around to planning it though and we had asked our friends the McDonald’s to do something with us. By the time we did get around to planning it we decided to do a long weekend in St Louis with the McDonald’s and spend the rest of the week at home.
Monday was my catch up day. I told the kids that I was going to be checking as much off my to do list as I could then we would have more Spring Break like activities the rest of the week. Monday was actually the first sunny day with temperatures in the 40’s instead of teens so it felt wonderful to be outside. I ‘made’ the kids go to the park for 30 minutes at least. Three hours later I had to drag them home with sun burned faces. After a quick refueling they were back outside playing baseball and riding bikes, playing tag, roller skating, digging in the dirt, and having a great time being outside. It definitely gave us all Spring fever. It was just a teaser though because the rest of the week was cold windy and rainy.
Tuesday was cold and rainy so we decided to go swimming at the Olathe Community Center with the rest of the people in Olathe. Despite the large crowd the kids still had fun. Emilee in particular can’t wait until it is swimming weather again.
Allison picked our activity on Wednesday. A few weeks earlier she had gone to the Johnson County Museum with her girl scout troop. She loved the kids area and has been begging to go back again. We invited our cousins to go with us. The boys stayed behind to play some video games and the girls came with us. They played at the museum until we were all hungry and then we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch. We topped the day off with a sleepover.
Johnson County Museum
‘modern art’ toys
Spinning chairs at the museum.
Thursday we played around the house and packed up to get ready to go on our weekend getaway. Friday morning we followed the McDonald’s to St Louis and spent the weekend there. We stopped for lunch and then went to The Arch. We had all seen it before but we had never been in it, or seen the museum with it. It was cool to see the view from the arch. The tiny round 5 person pod that takes you 600+ feet into the air was a little claustrophobic but bearable. After the arch we checked into our hotel and then went to Dave-N-Busters for dinner and to play in the arcade for the evening. Matthew figured out the timing on one of the ticket winning machines so he scored a bunch of tickets for everyone. It almost took longer for then to ‘shop’ with their tickets than it did to play the games. It was a fun night.
Then next morning after breakfast at the hotel (one of the kids favorite things about staying in a hotel) we went to the City Museum. It is an incredible place. It is an old ten story building that they have converted into a giant play area. We went a few years ago and it was a little nerve racking trying to keep track of the kids. They can crawl in a hole and come out in a completely different room. It is almost impossible to keep track of them. They are older now so I was a little less worried. We set a meeting spot and split up to explore. There is caves, and a catacomb area with a ten story slide. There are basically just mazes and places to crawl around all over. There is an outside portion the has tunnels and paths leading all around that is literally attached to the side of the building so you are hanging in the air. Everything is made with recycled material too. It is hard to explain but it is a pretty amazing place. We spent most of the day there exploring. When we were worn out, we ate lunch and then stopped at a well known ice cream place that I can not for the life of me remember the name of now. It was yummy though. We were meeting our long time friends the Schellman’s that night so we had about an hour to kill before we were supposed to meet them. We all decided to stop at the park and play because the weather was pretty nice. After dinner and visiting with the Schellman’s for a few hours we met back up with the McDonald’s at the hotel and the kids all swam for a few hours. The second best part about staying in a hotel. Sunday morning we went to church with the Schellman’s and then drove home. It was a fun weekend. It was nice to get out of town for a few days and enjoy some fun time with family and friends.
Fortune cookie at dinner on Spring Break
We went to St Louis with the McDonald’s
Top of the St Louis Arch
Entrance to the pod that takes you to the top of the arch.
The McDonald Pod
The Terry Pod
Riding up to the top of the arch in our five man pod.
Emilee and Allison both went to the red carpet mystery lunch that another Girl Scout Troop put on. Neither of them had been before so they didn’t quite understand what it was. They are given a menu with items to order in four separate courses. Each course has three choices from the menu but you can only pick each one once. After a course was finished they took your plate away so that you didn’t have anything to start the next course. The entire meal was macaroni noodles with spaghetti sauce, meatballs, and Parmesan cheese, lemonade, a bread stick, salad with ranch, and a Ding Dong for dessert. Emilee was not amused when they brought her the first course she had ordered. It was a knife, fork and meatballs. She lightened up and enjoyed it when her next course included a Hostess Ding Dong. Allison and her troop were swapping and trading their food so they could all get a good course. One of her courses was ranch, Parmesan cheese and a fork. After they finished eating they let all the girls walk the read carpet in the fancy dresses or whatever they wore and get pictures taken. Emilee was mortified, Allison ate it up. Overall it was a fun activity.
Wednesday was our beach day. As I mentioned it wasn’t really hot while we were there. We went to the Ft Desoto Beach. It is a beautiful beach, white sand, blue water. It was freezing though. It wouldn’t have been to bad but it was windy so once you got wet it was even colder. The kids still got in and played for a bit. The wind made some bigger waves so they thought that was cool. There wasn’t really anyone else there which meant the sea shells hadn’t been picked over for a while so the girls found some nice sea shells. We finished our beach day by building a sand castle then hurried back to the car to get warm. We were only at the beach for about an hour so we had time to go to the power plant by the ocean called TEKO. It pumps out a lot of warm water so it attracts hundreds of Manatees. They have put in a really nice boardwalk area to see them and the Mangroves. We saw lots of cool fish, a couple sharks, and tons of Manatees. They look like giant potatoes floating in the water. After we got home and cleaned up and ate dinner we watched the movie Coco together and called it a night.
Working their way out into the water.
Matthew is letting us know how cold the water is.
Emilee was nervous at first then she decided she loved it.
Collecting sea shells.
Getting water for our moat.
French Family.
The kids told us this was big enough and it was time to go!
In the shuttle heading to TEKO.
Manatee watching.
Giant gentle floating potatoes. 🙂
Thursday was another one of my favorite days we were there. We went to a place called Weeki Wachee. It is a natural spring that they have made a big swimming area with slides and a beach. They have a live mermaid show we went to first when we got there. Alli especially was very excited to see it, she loves mermaids. We all decided it was a big flop though. I think it is the same show they have been doing since it opened decades ago. They could make it really awesome but it was not that good. We went over to the swim area afterwards and once again had the place pretty much to ourselves. Once we got in the water it wasn’t bad at all. We had goggles so we could swim and see all the fish and other animals that were in the bay. When you held still for any period of time dozens of fish (we called them zebra fish because they were black and white striped) would come and surround you and it looked like they were just starring at you. There were lots of other fish, including a very active flying fish that much to our delight liked to show off his flying skills. There was a turtle or two swimming around too. We all were pretty impressed and thought it was awesome. The girls took turns burying each other in the sand too which they had wanted to do at the beach but didn’t.
Enjoying the sun at Weeki Wachee
Taking turns burying each other in the sand.
Getting used to the water.
Watching the ‘zebra fish’ and other fish.
Alli went down one of the slides.
After we played at the beach area for a while we walked over to the kayak rental area. Sherri and I and my kids rented two tandem kayaks and then went down the river on a 5.5 mile float trip. It was BEAUTIFUL!! It was breathtaking. The plants and trees around the water were thick and it felt like you were floating through a gorgeous jungle. The water was clear so you could see the bottom and all the plants and animals in between. It varied in depth from a few inches to around 20 feet deep. There were many places along the way where a little beach area opened up so you can pull over and stop for a bit if you want. We did it once or twice to stretch our legs. The hope is to see some manatees but there is a lot of other animals to see too. We saw a raccoon, tons of different kinds of fish and birds (the ones we knew the names of was a wild turkey, black vultures, crane and an Egrit) a snake (gross), far to many spiders and other bugs, and the last mile or two we saw two manatees! We paddled along side the first one for about a half mile or so. Against Matthew’s protests and best attempts to sabotage our efforts those of us that wanted to were able to touch him. They feel like potatoes too. It was pretty awesome, we just followed him along and he swam back and forth and underneath us. Eventually he slowed down and we went on ahead. When we started out it was about 70 and nice and warm, it took several hours to get down the river so it got a little chilly by the end. We were very glad to get home and take a warm shower. It was a pretty awesome day though.
Starting our kayak trip.
Matthew was a pretty good paddler
First stop. Sandy submerged beach.
Emilee had her eyes watching for animals at all times.
They liked how their feet sunk into the sand.
Second stop. Cute little sandy beach.
We never really felt hot, but we were all a little pink the next day.
Look at that water!
The scenery is beautiful!
This is the Manatee we paddled along with for a while.
Friday morning it was time to pack up and restock snacks and load the car up. We took our time getting ready. Kenny put new brakes and rotors on my car too. We left early afternoon and drove to Nashville the first day. We got home about seven on Saturday. I was supposed to pick Ryan up from the airport at midnight but his plane was delayed and I didn’t pick him up until 3 am. Today has been our recover from vacation day to be ready to get back to real life tomorrow.
It was an awesome Spring Break. We did a lot of fun cool things but I love just getting to see my sister and her family. I felt the same way when I went to see DeAnna. I love staying up late and talking about whatever and being there and seeing what their lives are like. I don’t know if we will ever live by each other which makes me sad because we would all love it. For now I have to take advantage of the times we do get to see each other and enjoy them as much as possible. I always have a bit of a mourning period after I leave from seeing one of them. We of course talk on the phone and text pretty often but it isn’t the same. We always pick right back up like we saw each other yesterday when we do get together. I am glad that all of our husbands are pretty good about helping us work out opportunities to see each other. It will never be often enough though.
