Tuesday June 19, 2007 Let’s Visit Grandmas and Grandpas!

I woke up at 3:00 AM and never really went back to sleep, although I rested. Nick was up at 4 AM, and this time sitting on the couch downstairs with John didn’t do the trick: he was up for the morning. So much for not letting him sleep late yesterday afternoon. Oatmeal and a shared banana comprised breakfast, and then off in “nasha machina” (our car) to the “mahgahZEEN” (store). They were both asleep within five minutes, so we decided it would be a great day to visit the grandparents, all about an hour away and near each other. The money spent on gas for two hours of sleep for Nick: a bargain without a doubt. We stopped at my parents’ home first. They were out painting a porch railing. The boys were asleep, so we let them peek through the windows. They offered us lunch but we didn’t dare wake the boys and didn’t know when they would awaken. Then it was on to Beaver Dam. We went to Shopko first, then to John’s parents’ home. Nick indicated he was hungry. My parents had already eaten by then so we shared a chicken soup lunch before going to Menards for the all-important sandbox. The Beaver Dam Menards has a very large indoor play area with their outdoor play equipment set up for children to use on-site: houses and slides, ships with periscopes, etc. I was leery at first about watching both at once, but they were having such fun (and behaving so well) I asked John to finished checking out and loading the van before we took the boys away.

We stopped back at my parents’ home where they had the old red wooden wagon out and waiting. Both boys enjoyed riding while Grandpa pulled them around the driveway and church parking lot. Then Nick very shyly wanted to pull it. He found it much easier when Dennis wasn’t riding! On the way home Dennis stayed awake – likely had to do with a sopping wet, majorly leaking diaper – but Nick was out, as hoped.

We stopped off at the clinic where I work to schedule their first appointments. Okay, so we really stopped so I could show them off to everyone, especially since they have been following our adventure so closely via e-mails and the Blog. One of the physician assistants who works in the Walk-in Clinic and Occupational Health speaks Russian. I wanted to introduce them to her and thought it would be a treat for Nick to meet someone who understood him, but he was so zoned-out from fatigue he didn’t respond in anyway to her overtures. Maybe another day. After a quick grocery store stop we went home.

Our weekly Bible Study group at church meets on Tuesday nights at 7:00. We know we have had their prayers and support throughout this process, and have missed the fellowship and digging into the Word with them. It is hard to say when we will be able to rejoin the group, especially with bath and bedtime occurring between 7:30 and 8:30 and the difficulty of getting them (Nick) down to bed. But we did want to see them and have them meet the boys so we stopped by for a few minutes at the beginning of class.