Car Wash

I know I've been saying this for a few weeks now . . . but I think we're about to wrap up our illnesses. Brennen actually slept in his bed last night for the first time in forever. I did not have a cough-puke episode in the middle of the night for the first time in forever, yay! It seems like during the day, we get a little bit of gumption. I know that I tire out quickly and easily, so after helping with the boys' fundraiser car wash, I was pretty much done for the day (although they had other plans, which will be its own post :)

Last year for the car wash, I kind of sat in the van and watched. This year I knew how to help. I was the laundry lady, taking in the wet cloths and hanging them on the line (which I rigged up like they did last year) to dry. There wasn't much sun and there wasn't much breeze, so they did not dry quickly, but lots of cars got spiffied up and we could have used dry towels twice as fast. Thankfully, they had great weather and they met their goal of raising $500 for the season! Sometimes they had seven cars, side by side, to be washed. It's a good team-building morning for the guys :)

Staycation Day 8 and 8.5

We never really counted this day as part of our original vacation, but I'll stick to the theme :) At Graysen's prompting Brennen and I took Dimetapp while assembling a vacation-themed puzzle the night before. Brennen also took NyQuill, which is apparently not great (at least for women over 60). We were both up coughing all night anyway, and I was determined to take him to the doctor in the morning. He thought he was getting better, and I could barely keep my eyes open at 10:30 a.m., so we put the doctor call on hold. Buck started working on the garage, I went back to bed. I didn't get back out of bed until 7 p.m.! I never, never stay the day in bed! Body aches and extreme drowsiness, what is going on germs? This is not how we want to spend our summer.

While I was "sleeping," Buck had an appointment, took the boys to dinner, and then took them to football practice. He wasn't feeling well either, so we both took Covid tests when he got back. We were both negative, of course. Also during that time, Noah arrived for a visit. He and Caelan went to get chicken and brought me back some. Then, I went back to bed at 9 p.m.

I slept pretty well until 12:30 . . . then I heard Brennen hacking up a lung downstairs, Buck snoring (because he's all congested) next to me, I wasn't sure where Noah was because Gabby lives in the guest room--but I guessed (correctly) the upstairs couch; I contemplated going to sleep in the van, but wasn't sure how hot it would be, and finally settled for the floor. Buck was up at 5 with a sore throat, so I jumped back in bed, recognizing that if I could fall asleep quickly enough, I could sleep through the snoring when he returned. It worked. Caelan said she was up at 4 a.m. itchy all over with a rash that has been slowly spreading on her arms and legs. Brennen said he finally fell asleep at 6 a.m., Gabby left for work at 6:30; Noah is a light sleeper and probably didn't sleep much at all. Oh, what a night!

We really can't count that as a vacation day. So, I'll include today . . . day 8.5 since we are all at least up and moving, Buck went to work, and I helped Caelan and Noah make noodles, which was my final staycation day planned activity. 

Caelan decided they were a bit too thick, but the broth was delicious! Hopefully the healthful components of said soup will bring us more quickly to a point of wellness.

Here is a picture of the 1500 piece Van Gogh puzzle Caelan and Brennen apparently raced to finish while I was zonked, lol! I only got to do the yellow flowers . . . it was a fun one, Caelan said one of her favorites. Also, if they pose goofy, I'm gonna post goofy :)

An update to the update: Buck got the tire fixed at the tire shop. He will get the van back in use tonight when he gets home from work. Brennen and I were up all night coughing again, so I took Brennen to a walk-in clinic. I know my cough is close to the end, his just never ends without help. The lady checked his lungs, throat, temp--all clear. Ears had lots of fluid and she didn't want it turn into a sinus infection. He got a five-day pack of prednisone, a box of Cherry Ludens (he's impressed!), and instructions to take Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold for five days before bed, along with Delsym in the day (he hasn't taken Delsym this whole time, because he thought it was the orange kind . . . it's been the purple all along :) We also got our breathing treatment machine Albuterol prescription refreshed. All-in-all a successful visit!

Staycation Day 7

We decided after several mornings up and out of the house early, our bodies needed some actual rest, Brennen's mostly. We didn't attend church, and instead Buck taught Graysen how to change the van tire to the donut. He did a good job!

Caelan took care of the chicken chores while I went to work washing dozens of eggs. So many eggs. I bought a double supply of green plastic egg cartons last week, so we had more fridge storage options. Now we can house eight dozen! Woot! (one container is in the dishwasher, but we have more than enough eggs to fill it when the dishwasher is done).

And the Band-aids, you ask? Well, yesterday I broke a vase and stepped on a chunk of glass, and today I broke a vase and stepped on a shard of glass. The chunk didn't hurt, the shard drew blood. Graysen was sweet and brought me the Band-aids while Buck was off getting me some tweezers. We are losing vases like cars, lol! Today's broke when I was fulfilling a neighbor's request to borrow a big one for her farmer's market sunflowers; a tiny clink of glass on glass and those vases just shatter!

While I finished up the eggs, Caelan and Brennen worked on the corn our neighbor brought us from their family's farm. The first round sat in the bag so long we had to donate it to the chickens. Hopefully we can cook the second round up for people today :)

While I wrote this blog and finished up laundry, Buck took the boys to a car show. I told him to take pictures, because it is still vacation :) It's been a few days now and I don't have Buck's pics, so G$ lent me some of his. They said it was a great show and there was a wide variety of cars. It was also very hot!

After taking Graysen to his yard job, we headed to my brother's for country living fun :) He left the slip-n-slide up at Caelan's request. She and G$ had fun slipping and sliding while we worked on getting dinner together inside.

After really good burgers (and not so great corn), the guys set up all the guns for a lawn-style shooting range. My sister-in-law was a good sport and tried almost all of them, including Tinkerbell :)

Graysen loved all the open spaces to ride the minibike! He used his phone to see how fast he could get going on it. I'm not sure that he broke 30 mph, but he enjoyed trying. We really need to get him a helmet.

While we intended to play the board game my brother has been wanting to teach us for two years, Caelan started the movie Miss Congeniality and it sucked everyone in. Wildly chauvinistic at points, but also very funny most of the way through. It was a relaxing way to end the day. Our last *official* day of vacation.

Staycation Day 6

Hot, hot, hot! Heat advisories all over the place! We all rolled out of bed earlier than we wanted to. The boys had a flag football kick-off event with all the other area teams. Lots of kids are still detasseling, like Noah, so the turnout was maybe less than expected, but I'm told our boys had some wins in the throwing and punting skills challenges.

Meanwhile, Caelan and I attended her much-anticipated allergist appointment, which was wanh-wanh. The doctor basically said, "You must have touched something with your hand, and then touched your eye. It will probably never happen again. Also, don't touch your face." He didn't think the throat thing was related, IDK. He didn't do any testing, he just said if she has any further problems to bring her in while she is reacting and they'll maybe be able to find out what it is. He said, "we have a bullet, but no smoking gun." So, we came home to wait for the boys, to start laundry, and to work on cleaning the house--which still looks like something erupted in here.

Apparently during this time, my sister, one of my only readers, was at our nephew's birthday party and we completely missed her and the fam. Drat! By the time we got out there, it was early afternoon. We had a good time visiting with extended family, but I didn't take a single picture. Which fits in line with the not a single picture that Buck took at the football event. This will almost be a without a single picture blog post . . .

Except, we changed our staycation plan to go to a new-to-us putt-putt course and then a drive-in movie (super cool!) 1. because it was still blazing hot outside 2. because the kids weren't super excited about the cartoon dog movie showing and 3. we had another invitation. Our NGFs volunteer run a movie theater in a small town. They said they were showing Thor: Love and Thunder, which Caelan and I had not yet seen. We decided an air-conditioned movie for half the price sounded better than sweating it out for double. When we got ready to load into the van, we discovered the low-pressure warning light we'd gotten as we drove away from my brother's house had come to fruition. The back passenger tire was empty to the rim.

Gabby decided she wanted to stay home for some quiet and decorate a cake, so the other five of us piled into the red car and went to the movie. I didn't like the movie, but I liked that it was not painfully loud--I didn't leave with stress shoulders or a sound headache, yay! Also, my NGF bought Caelan candy because we brought less cash than we thought we needed :) That was sweet. Basically, the four of us who are still coughing and the one of them who is still coughing, took turns adding our own sound effects, coughing. I got a crazy tickle in my throat at the "most touching" point in the movie. Tears were running from my eyes, but it wasn't because of film. So much coughing!

We grabbed a quick pic with my NGF's oldest and then headed home to start the Van Gogh puzzle I bought at the bookstore the previous day. Brennen and I worked on that until he decided it was time for a breathing treatment.

In good news, Gabby's cake turned out really pretty!

In bad news, the place we bought the fridge from called to ask for the serial number so they could get that drawer ordered . . . the drawer we thought they ordered two weeks ago, that would be here next week (forehead slap emoji). The girls improvised when they wanted to make iced coffee. They used a plastic baking tray to catch ice on top of the food, and then shut the ice maker off before we had to pick ice cubes out from between the frozen veggies :)

Staycation Day 5

This morning, Gabby got up ahead of the rest of us and prepped made-to-order omelets--she's gotten really good at making them this summer! She had neat little piles of all the things we wanted set out. As one of us would wake up, she'd make our omelet. When some didn't get up quite as quickly, she woke them and then made them an omelet :) It was pretty great! And good to get everyone moving, because today was a much longer drive than everything else--a day away.

Buck had a fairly early haircut, and I had bills to pay. He also stopped at the nutrition fruit and tea shop that is near his haircut place. They have the BIGGEST drinks, supposedly really good for you. I started mine at 10 a.m. and was still working on it at 3 p.m. That's a big drink!

We left about 30 minutes behind my planned schedule, but we ended up having lots of time for everything we wanted to do, including a few spur of the moment extras. Our first destination, while it was still "cool" out (it was not still cool out) was a beautiful community garden. The unusual plants in cascades down the hillsides were like an adventure in Wonderland. The ponds were filled with flowers and koi fish; it was really beautiful (and free)!

Our next stop, because we are well-rounded, was the number one auto museum in American (according to their signs :) Three floors, 150,000 square feet of every aspect of racing and speed history you can imagine. I had to ask Buck several times what certain displays were . . . like an entire wall of flat engine intake manifolds (I may have just totally made that up :) But also rooms and rooms full of toys and pedal cars and lunch boxes--I'm pretty sure we had a Strawberry Shortcake one, but I'm not sure which design. There were three options, and two looked very familiar.

So the tour of this museum was supposed to take three hours, so that's what I planned. But with teenagers it was closer to one hour, so we had time to fill! Caelan remembered going to an outdoor mall with Noah which also had a bookstore. We rolled up and Graysen said, "This place is bougie!" Lol, again, accurate. They went to look at shoes, Buck went to find food (he found ice cream), and I found way too many puzzles :) Caelan found a couple of C.S. Lewis books she wanted to start building her own collection. When we checked out, they mentioned that it was buy one get one half off cookie day, unlimited. Well, we only got one round of the deal and some ice water, but they also had an intriguing young adult book about Paris during the war--for only $5 with a cookie purchase. Who can pass up an historical fiction book for just five dollars? Not me :) I'm hoping it is better than the last Paris war book I read. I also found a gift for Mr. M's birthday party tomorrow. Good stop! And all three teens who went to the shoe store came out of the shoe store with new kicks--and I think Gabby bought them all, such a nice sister!

Let's see--oh, yes. Our next plan was an Escape Room. I looked at a lot of options in the area and decided to see if we could book earlier in the day at one that seemed family friendly. It was only a two star for difficulty, but I thought Sherlock Holmes, crown jewels, fun storyline! We crushed it. We solved the puzzles so quickly, it was barely over half an hour. Clearly we need more of a challenge than a two star rating :) However, it was not stressful, the room was super cute, there were lots of lock codes to solve, and the magnetic chessboard was pretty cool. We all got a sticker for completing the challenge.

We ended early enough that we could grant Gabby's wish for a cold treat. She found a rolled ice cream place on the map, nearby, so we loaded in the van and headed for this unique dairy delight. Because we were meeting Noah's family for dinner quite soon, we decided to share pre-meal desserts. Gabby and I had strawberry and Brennen and Caelan split a mint Oreo . . . Graysen got something to drink, and Buck carried a spoon from dish to dish :)

We had just enough time to drive to another side of town to meet Noah's family for burgers. But first we had to meet Noah's family :) Caelan and Gabby have both spent time with them, but this was the rest of our first time meeting mom, dad, two sisters, and a brother-in-law (the other brother and sweetheart already headed south for the start of school).

It was a good meeting! We packed 12 people around maybe five tables? And then sat there for two hours . . . the burger servers were like, "Can I get some of those trays out of your way? Alright then, thanks for coming in. Hint. Hint." And yet we stayed :) It seemed like the teens all got along well at the far end of table with the young marrieds. There was lots of laughing and telling Noah tales. Noah definitely gets the teasing from both sides of the table, but he's a good sport. He was also really tired and trying to keep pace with the parent conversation on one side of him and the "kid" conversation on the other.

We found Noah's parents to be easy to talk to and we had some things in common. We were told his dad was pretty introverted, but he chatted along with us as if he weren't :) They asked lots of questions about us and we asked lots of questions about them. It was a good chance to get to know each other, we're thankful God worked it out so we could all meet!