The First Day of School

Today was "Meet the Teacher" day at the kids school. They went to school for an hour today. It was a way to see their classroom and meet their teacher and the kids in their class. The kids were so excited this morning. Tomorrow will be their first full day. They are very excited to be eating lunch at school tomorrow. I will be working at home while they are at school. I am in training right now. I will try to update tomorrow on the kids first "real" day at school. It is a bitter sweet day. I can't believe my babies are off to school. I have been in a retrospective mood today,thinking about where the years have gone, but I am glad they are so excited and happy to be going to school. I will continue to savor each day with my kids, and celebrate each season of their life with them. I am reminded that God only gives David and I a very short time to have them at home with us. I pray I will be the kind of mother God wants me to be to them. I pray Jesus will go with them and hold their hand when I can't.

Vacation

The McGary family took a mini vacation to Wisconsin Dells last Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In June the area had terrible floods and lost a lot of their summer season, so they were offering a lot of deals. Wisconsin Dells is about four hours from Chicago.

We bought a new van at the beginning of the month from my brother, who is a manager of a Toyota used car lot. David and I have affectionately named her "Vandesa". The van comes equipped with a DVD player, so we just popped in a movie for the kids and were on our way.

We got there Thursday night and went to a Paint It Pottery store. Our room came with a voucher for the pottery store, tickets to ride a steam train, tickets to Mt. Olympus, a gift certificate for a pizza, and a smore bucket to make Samores by the hotels nightly camp fire.

We had a lot of fun at the pottery shop. We then went to have spagetti (Sam's favorite).

On Friday we went toa local outlet mall to get David swim trunks, because I packed the wrong trucks, then we went to Mt. Olympus. Lucy rode her first real roller coaster and she loved it. She loved that it was something just her and Daddy did together. Our Lucy has no fear! Sam said, "I'm not riding that thing!" and his eyes got huge. He wouldn't have been tall enough anyway. He loved riding the kiddie go carts. Poor Lucy kept running into the wall! When they were done with that ride, Sam told he was ready to get his driver's license and speed like Daddy! The kids had fun playing in the kids water park area. They especially liked the kids water slides.

On Saturday we had breakfast at this place named Paul Bunyan's it was a restraunt where they served you home made food family style. It was delcious. After breakfast we went to ride the train, and then it was off to day 2 at the water park.

We drove home sunday morning. On the way home we stopped at a wisconsin chess shop and bought, cheese, crackers and meat for lunch. We ate a picnic lunch at the Illinois welcome center where there was picnic tables and a play ground for the kids. We had a wonderful time.

The next time we go into Wisconsin I would love to stop at Laura Ingalls Wilder's birth plce. It is about two hours from The Dells. Laura's home town is having Laura Ingalls Wilder Days in Septemeber. I told David that would be like heaven to me. He doesn't exactly think it would be heaven:)-oh well maybe next year!