Travel and a field trip
/I think we are making up for lost time - time that we were stationed overseas and weren't able to or allowed to just hop in the car and drive as far as we wanted. Josh had a med conference in Seattle in mid March (the same conference he was attending last year in Denver when we found out we wouldn't be returning to Turkey as a family), flew back and spent a mere 26 hours in Minot before driving the boys and I down to Omaha to be at Rob and Lyn's for the time he was in Germany. I was joined there by Hannah and her three tots and Shelby. We spent Friday evening to Thursday morning (Hannah and the kiddos left on Wed at nap time) in communal living and enjoying sweet sister time. Though we established that it was all well under-planned and that we would not ever repeat that scenerio, we were all so thankful for the time we had together. Part of our motivation to heading to Omaha was to escape three large snow storm systems that were supposed to slam this area in the course of the week. Omaha was forecasted to be sunny and in the 50s all week. Oh the irony. It was warmer and sunnier in Minot for much of the week and was snowy, cold and cloudy in Omaha for the entire week we were there. Having 7 kiddos age 9 and down under one roof for that long with little to do (too cold for the zoo and scheduling conflicts for the museum) proved to be a stressful and rather exhausting challenge, and because of the last minute nature of the trip due to having to wait to see if weather would permit the drive, we didn't plan well. ha! We learned much and are, again, thankful for the time together and for the incredible servant hearted hosting of my mother and father-in-law.
The weather has been warming, thankfully, and we've all but lost our snow. It was really incredible to watch the landscape change so drastically over a few days. We went from 2 feet of frozen tundra in our front yard to being able to walk through the front yard to the mailbox without boots on in just a matter of days. We've been soaking up as much outdoor time as possible. What a treat this spring will be after the longest winter we've experienced as a family, and the first "real" winter our boys have ever been through.
Last Wednesday afternoon (the 3rd) Josh and I flew to Omaha sans boys. My sweet friend, Amy, and her gracious family watched the boys for the couple days we were gone. We stayed with Josh's parents and enjoyed key lime cheesecake with them on Wed night and left early Thursday morning to drive to a little farm town in Iowa for an interview for Josh for an ER job. I honestly cannot remember the last time I was in a situation like that, where I had to be aware of the conversation and engaged, and be.......proper and act civilized, but still be myself! hahaha! It took some restraint on my part to quiet down my otherwise loud personality throughout the day on Thursday, knowing that they brought both of us for the interview to be sure Josh would be a good fit for the hospital and that the job would be a good fit for our family. What a neat group of folks they were, and there will be no need in the future of Josh's job there to feel like I have to proper around them! They were just about as laid back as possible. Formality won't be necessary from now on and that's a relief! It was really fascinating listening to the financial and logistical side of what it takes to run a hospital. The energy, cost and time that go in to helping health and saving lives in our country is astounding and made me so thankful for our docs and nurses who devote their lives to helping others. And this is a rather small hospital. I'm sure the gears of larger hospitals have to be even more well oiled to keep the machine running - and it takes a lot of people with really intelligent, devoted brains to do so! We drove back to Omaha (about 90 minutes) and took a swing by a few houses we'd saved to our favorites in our zillow app, and were able to "un-heart" a couple of them because of locations. It feel so surreal to be looking at separating from the military and not having the government tell us where to go and how long to stay and what to do and what house we have to live in. We get to make those choices for ourselves and it feel intimidating - so much "adulting" in the next 6 months as we change seasons of life from being active duty to civilians! We met at Rob and Lyn's house for a quick lunch and then loaded back up to go house hunting with them, just for fun, before heading to the airport for our scheduled 5:30 flight. Because of the storms in Atlanta over the past week our flight, along with most other flights, was delayed and left us sitting for a few hours people watching as crowds grew and agitation was apparent. So many missed connections, ours included. We arrived in Minneapolis nearly 3 hours later than scheduled, so they stuck us on the last flight into Minot, which also ended up being delayed by an hour and a half. We.were.tanked by the time we pulled into our driveway at 1:45 a.m. A long few days indeed!
Because that didn't seem like enough activity, we woke early Saturday morning (after 5 hours of sleep) and took a field trip down to a local State Park for a maple sugaring demonstration day. Many of our homeschool co-op group was attending and we'd already told the boys we'd be going, but hadn't really reassessed it since the travel debacle. We gutted it out and made the drive down despite feeling like zombies. It was much chillier than forecasted, but we enjoyed the day none-the less.
