WI: loose ends

One of the times we headed to the boat for an evening ride Rylee missed a step on the dock and fell in the water. fully clothed. She was so bummed about it, initially scared and wanted to immediately change her clothes (as if THAT were out of the ordinary - I know I was warned but we have a minimum of 3 clothing changes every day. 2 of which before 10am.) Well, since we were already to the dock she was not allowed to make said clothing change. Autie M gave her her coat to wear and she stood stoic and alone the entire ride. Poor girl.

On a drive "to town" Michael spotted a bear on the side of the road. We pulled over to get a closer look as he was heading toward the bushes. Michael grabbed the camera and started yelling "Hey!! over here!! I'm talking to you, Bear!" In an attempt to get the bear to look his way, or be on the front page of the local newspaper. Either way, the bear kindof looked our way then mosied on into the woods. It was still kinda cool.

After a wonderful week and half it was time for us to head home. We stopped by the old house in Eau Claire for Michael to say "good-bye" of sorts to the home he grew up in. The girls played a little while we (mostly he) reminisced.

Here's the front:

and back:

And just for fun, here's the house/family before they moved in. Michael was 9 years old.

We were also able to see Grandma Botsford a couple times while we were there. Before we left for the cabin we took the girls to see her and for her to meet Kelsey. She was recovering from a 'bout of pnemonia but looked really good. We had a great visit with her and the girls.

On our way home we stopped to see her again. She did not look as good. We all gave her hugs and told her how much we loved her and we were so glad we got to see her. We wanted to let her get back to resting and were anxious to get on the road. As we walked out of the center fighting back tears as we knew this would be the last time we would see her. We both assumed the next time we'd be back to Wisconsin would likely be for her funeral. . . . little did we know how quickly that would actually be. We were officially 'on the road' much later than we anticipated but we had a beautiful view to bid us farewell.

We saw a lot of lightning bugs on the side of the road, which is always fun. We tried pointing them out to Rylee. "look at the grass line and you'll see blinking lights" "oh, I see them! Cool!" It was a couple days later when I realized what she was seeing was the reflectors on the metal posts. haha. maybe next time. I wish I could say that the trip home went off without a hitch, but nope. We drove through the night and thankfully that part did. We got back on the road after a late breakfast and Michael asked if we could switch drivers, so we pulled over, grabbed a beverage and went to get back on the freeway. As I accelerated on the on ramp we heard a loud pop and the engine reved. Michael (and a helpful stranger) were able to push the car back to the gas station so we could figure out what to do next. We were lucky enough to find a repair shop that offered tow and shuttle services. Again, thankfully they were able to shuttle us into Texas (the car broke down in Oklahoma, about 20ish miles from the border) so we could rent a car. The girls fell asleep in the back of the shuttle truck. We got the rental car squared away, then headed back up to the repair shop to get the details on the car and the rest of our stuff. It was the transmission and would take several days to fix so we decided to go home and then come back and get it once it was finished. Our girls were seriously ROCKSTARS!! 5 hours later we were back on the freeway in the right direction and they never complained. I won the award for handling the situation most poorly. I suppose somebody has to do it. ;)