2 Year Anniversary, 6th Month Anniversary, Jury Duty, and County Fair

I began blogging on this date in 2008. I hope that you have enjoyed the over 300 entries in this blog and aren't you glad I haven't crammed all this into your email "in" box? We met Katie 6 months ago Monday! So glad to know her. She is still in a soft food diet, but continues to heal OK. On Monday and Tuesday I had to do jury duty. Mostly sat around and worked on stuff. I did not volunteer for grand jury (every Tues for 12 weeks), volunteered but not one of 4 drawn for coroners jury this Thursday, not called for 2 trials, but called for the last trial of the week (traffic). Seated on the jury (very comfortable chairs), but excused. When I left they had over a 50% excuse rate. Glad to be out, but had a nagging "didn't make the team" feeling afterward. The $25 I made those two days is more than I make per day directing researchers in the summer. Tuesday night we went to the Heart of Illinois Fair, it was fairly quiet there - except maybe the very loud tractor pulls. Katie was afraid to feed the animals at the petting zoo. The much anticipated funnel cake was not that good, but the rest of the fair food was OK. At one of the political booths we stopped by we unexpectedly met somebody who worked for Aaron Schock a few years ago and quite likely was the one who helped get Katie's adoption paperwork "unstuck" from Illinois bureaucracy. We were all glad to get that sort of closure.

Matthiessen State Park

The family made a trip to Matthiesen State Park today. We enjoyed our visit on June 21, 2009, (see blog entry) and wanted to visit again. We again had a REALLY great time walking through the cool sandstone dells of the park. Lots of waterfalls. On the way to the park and back we passed through the damage path of a tornado from the June 5 outbreak (see blog entry) near Magnolia, IL. The blackberries are ripening in the area, but are well protected by mosquitoes and poison ivy.

Nina and Pinta visit

Replicas of the Nina and Pinta (no Santa Maria) docked near the Spirit of Peoria riverboat this weekend. Kris and I visited the Nina in 2007 - it was such a tiny ship to cross the Atlantic. The real Pinta (right) was the same size as the Nina (left), but the replica was built bigger to accomodate more visitors. Karen and Kris are at the top of the ramp of the Pinta pic. See: http://www.thenina.com/schedule.htm for a schedule of other stops in the Midwest and elsewhere. After lunch at the Old Chicago restaurant nearby, I ran Katie through the fountain by the riverfront.

July 4, 2010

Yesterday we to the West Peoria Fourth of July parade and in the evening we went to Red, White and Booms along the riverfront. Both events were warm but we had fun! Today Katie and I took a brief walk along the riverfront. Her comfort level from the surgery changes from hour to hour. She is not fond of the soft food diet.

Sparklers

Sparklers tonight (first time for Katie with us). She acted like a typical 4 year old: enjoyed the sparklers but then she howled over a teeny spark hitting her toe. A little while later she was eager to do more sparklers. (This time I put closed toe shoes on her; she already had safety glasses.)

Giraffe accident

Kris and I were at the Peoria Zoo this morning and stopped by the site of that very strange accidental giraffe death on Tuesday. See: http://www.pjstar.com/news/x905157529/Africa-exhibit-giraffe-dies-in-strange-accident. The pic shows the gap in the fence and a cut tree located about as far from the observation deck as possible. It is sad to see the other giraffe alone in the pen. Giraffes are among my favorite animals.

On a brighter note, the rest of the zoo was nice with the dry sunny weather we have been having. Last day of class was today (hooray!). Katie continues to mend OK.

Katie's cleft palate surgery

Have not blogged in a while. It's not due to lack of pictures, we have just been pretty busy. Last week Kris was staying with Grandma and Grandpa Campbell at their cabin. Grandpa Campbell found a small painted turtle that Kris is caring for. We met the grandparents and Kris in Green Bay last weekend to pick her up (our van was still under repair so we rented a car), visit my Grandma Sommerfeld (I'm glad Katie got to meet her before her Alzheimer's was any more advanced), and visit Karen's family in Door County (lots more first meetings for Katie). This is the first time we have been to Green Bay/Door County since Christmastime. We could only spend the weekend up there because I am still (co)teaching, so we returned on Sunday. On Monday, Karen celebrated her birthday by having her first date night with me since before Katie was adopted - we spent a lot of dinner talking about out kids, then we went to see a "kids movie": Toy Story 3 in 3D. That's OK, it was a good movie, like all Pixar movies.

Yesterday morning we took Katie to the hospital to get ear tubes inserted and her cleft palate repaired. It is amazing to me that the doctor effectively built most of a roof on her mouth. She was in surgery from about 8 am to about 10 am. Though she has been hurting afterward (and is understandably tired and grumpy) she seems to be recovering on schedule. Last night Karen stayed with her at the hospital and Kris and I slept at home. It was hard for Karen to sleep with all the noise. We all got to go home at about noon today. Tomorrow I plan to go back to school (took yesterday and today off) to finish off that class. We hesitated about posting all of these pictures and apologize if some think they are too graphic, but our intent for some of these pictures was to educate.