Jim's Surgery

Jim made it through his surgery. He is still in a lot of pain. They are trying to get that under control now. He will come home tomorrow if they can control his pain. He will be out of work for at least 2 weeks before he can go back on light duty. James is here helping us now and Courtney will be here Tues. night. I'm so glad it's still summer break and the kids can help us. I will be picking up lots of overtime to make up for loosing Jim's income for a while.

Vacation pics

Here are the pictures from my vacation:

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We are home

We are home. Actually got home last night but spent today cleaning the house and doing laundry. I have to take Jim to the hospital tomorrow morning (oh I guess it's this morning) at 5:00. His surgery is scheduled for 7:30. Will post more when I have time. have to go get a few hours of sleep now, 3 1/2 hours to be exact, before we head out to the hospital.

What's a vacation without excitement right?

Well Jim dropped us off at the west Omaha bus stop around 7:50am on Thurs. The bus was late though so we didn't leave until around 10:25. We made up time though and got to Denver on time. We were scheduled for a 3 hour and 25 minute layover there but ended up being 5 hours and 25 minutes. The bus we were supposed to get on had broken down twice on it's way to Denver. When the driver got there we finally got loaded up and left Denver around 12:45am. One guy didn't have a seat so after about 30 minutes I put Jordan on my lap and let him sit in her seat. We stopped in Cheyenne, WY and got a new bus. It took about 30 minutes to switch all our luggage from the bus we were on to the new one.

We left Cheyenne around 3:00am. Well around 4:30 the bus pulled over on the side of the road and there was smoke all over and it stunk! The transmission had blown out! UGGH! The poor bus driver. This was the 3rd bus to break down on him in one day and to top it all of it was supposed to be his day off and he had gotten called in to work. Anyway, the bus driver and few other guys on the bus went to the back to check out the transmission but nothing they did worked so we unloaded the bus and all wondered around a wheat field and construction site where they were putting in a new road until around 6:30 when another bus came to get us. The only problem was this bus already had 12 people on it! So now we were really overpacked. They thought they could fit 72 people into a bus with 47 seats. HMMMMM... you do the math there. 2 guys gave up right away and started hitch hiking. They got picked up before the other bus came. Then 3 more decided they weren't going to try to squish in the new bus so they were still sitting out there hitch hiking when we left on the new bus around 7:00am. We stopped in a town about 10 miles away to get on yet another bus.
We rode on this bus into Casper, WY and the driver was done at that point. We got a new driver in Casper that wasn't worth a crap. She never announce the stops or anything. We only had her for a short time and then we stopped in Sheridan, WY (I think). At this point the bus was out of toilet paper and I asked the driver if she had anymore. She said no but I could ask the other bus driver that was getting on. WHAT??? What kind of company drives hundreds of mile and doesn't carry extra toilet paper on the bus? The new driver got on and said he was running short on his hours and the only way he wouldn't go over is if we drove straight through to Billings without stopping. I asked him if he had any extra TP. He said no so I said "Well can you wait here for a second while I run in that gas station and buy some because we can't go 4 hours with out any toilet paper on this bus." He said Yeah, I guess if you want to. DUH! The lady in the gas station was really nice though and just gave me an extra hole she had in the bathroom instead of me having to buy any.
After we got on the road he informed us we wouldn't be to Billings until around 2:30pm or 3:00 pm. He said the busses going west would not wait but we could catch the next bus that left at 1:00 am! Oh my gosh I was fuming at this point. I was thinking to myself what the heck am I going to do at the Billings, MT bus stop for 10 hours. Anyway, as we were pulling off the interstate into Billings the driver told us they did hold the busses for us. Thank God!
It took them about 20 minutes to switch our luggage and then we boarded the bus. I didn't think anything could get worse than it was but I was wrong! This bus absolutely reaked! I don't know when the last time they had dumped the toilet. We were about 5 rows up from the back and it was so bad. I really felt bad for the people right in the back. The lady wouldn't do anything about it either. We stopped in Butte around 7:15pm for our dinner break and to get some fresh air. We left Butte gagging on the smell on the bus.
We stopped in St. Regis, MT to switch drivers and for a 30 minute break. The new driver was really nice. He opened the top hatch to let the smell out and also went in the store and got an ionizer to take more of the smell out.
We got into Coeur d'Alene, ID around 1:15 this morning. My dad and my nephew Robbie were there to get us. We thought it was hot back home but it's over 100 degrees here and my dad doesn't have AC. It may be a long week without any air. My grandma King is coming here in about a half hour. I'm not sure how many days she will stay. We are going out tonight for my sister Crystal's 25th birthday. I will be going to visit Renee and Dina later this week.
That's about it for now. Just wanted to let everyone know we got here safe. It was an adventure though. I'm hoping the trip home will be less eventful.

Heading to Washington

Jordan and I will be leaving in the morning on our trip to my dads. We will be back on the 24th. My dad has slow dial up internet but I will try to check in a few times while I'm there. Hope everyone has a good couple of weeks.

I'm getting geared up for homeschool. I stopped at Dollar Tree on my way to work today and picked up 11 workbooks. Some people on my homeschool email lists were saying they had put out their back to school stuff. They had a lot more workbooks I could have picked up but I controlled myself. There is a dollar tree near my dad's too so I may stop in there and see if they have any different. These were mostly letters, numbers and some early phonics. I have two other big work books for her to go through also. We have been working on a worksheet a day for this summer but after our trip we will really start getting into it. I'm hoping she will be more cooperative than she's been lately though. It's been almost impossible to get her to do anything lately.

Hope you had a great 4th!

We had a pretty relaxed day. Jim and Jordie had gone to the city fireworks Tues. night. I had got $5 worth of small fireworks for Jordie--just some sparklers, poppers and 3 small fountains. Jordan played with the neighbor kids almost all day. They played ball, swam in her wading pool and just ran around. I spent alot of the day doing more homeschool research. We had BBQ hamburgers, pasta salad, corn on the cob and watermelon for dinner. Then the oldest neighbor girl watched Jordie for us while we went on a motorcycle ride with her parents. We were gone for about an hour. It was a nice ride. We went up in the Ponca Hills and then down to Dodge Park to the river. There were a bunch of deer up in a field in the Ponca Hills. They didn't even seem afraid of the noisy motorcycles. Later after it got dark Jordan joined the neighbor kids in their yard to watch the different fire works going on around the neighborhood. Fireworks are supposed to be illegal in Omaha but they don't really enforce that. There were some HUGE fireworks set off last night around here. I finally made Jordan come in at 10:30 but there were still lots of fireworks going on and she would not go to sleep until around12;30. She stayed in her room though. I didn't go to sleep until around 2:00 so Jordie and I both slept in until 10:00 today. I'm going to just take care of chores around the house today and tomorrow I will be running around paying bills. That's about it from this corner of the world.

I'm gonna do it!

I've decided I am going to home school Jordan for sure now. If I totally screw it up I can send her to kindergarten at any time or just wait until next year. She is very excited about the thought of homeschooling. She knows her cousin Parker is home school and said she wants to be like him :) We are just going to take it real slow and learn together how to do this. I have a couple of workbooks and there is a load of information on the Internet. I'm going to try to keep her in one class a month at the zoo. She has really enjoyed the two classes she's been to this summer. I'm also checking into home school groups here in Omaha. I know they are out there. I just need to find them. So everyone please be in prayer that we can do this and things will go smoothly. Jordan is so stubborn about paper and pencil work. She could sit at a computer all day working on activities though. I've got to come to a compromise with her somehow.

Still thinking of homeschooling

I'm still debating on homeschooling Jordan. I thought I had made the decision to send her to public school but I keep coming back to the thought I should homeschool her. Please pray that I will make the right decision.