At the beginning of November, Mark had an extra day off work so he surprised me with a trip down to what I thought was Wabasha. As we were headed down, he prayed for our trip, as we always do when we go somewhere. His prayer was something like this, "Dear Heavenly Father, I pray for a safe trip and that the kids are good for Nancy and Keith and for Lindsay's parents. And that we ahve a safe trip down to Dubuque." I looked at him with a "what?!" kind of look. He was surprising me for my birthday with a trip down Memory Lane to Dubuque. What a sweet husband I have!!!
So we dropped off the kids at Nancy and Keith's house and then made our way down. We were about an hour away, I was listening to an old Newsboys tape (hehe) and out from a ditch on the left came a big deer. I didn't even see him until he was about to the center line. I slammed on my brakes, which didn't help at all, and SMACK!!!! The car quit but we were still moving down the road. Mark woke up just then and said, "Deer, huh?" I said, "Yeah" as we're still going down the road. Mark asked, "You gonna stop?" I said, "But the car quit, and I...uh...uh...don't...uh...." Then finally my senses came back to me and we stopped a half mile down the road from where I hit the deer. Mark being in the profession that he is, knew exactly what to do. I was soooo glad that he did.
My cousin Randy came up from Dubuque and got us and then the next day we looked for a van to buy after trying to figure out what to do. Randy said that we could borrow one of his vehicles if we needed to. That was really nice of him. But we knew from the tow person that helped us, our van was totalled. At the end of the next day, we bought a Town and Country. What we thought was a great deal and had lots more features then our Windstar. We were very excited!
Now a month later the engine light came on so we brought it into the repair place, and $1700 later, we have a nice little vehicle. hehe Even though we had to pay so much to fix it, it's still better than our other van. But I'm going to keep calling the dealership that sold it to us and keep saying something even though he's blown me off 3 times. Ugh!
But overall our trip to Dubuque was very nice! We had a great time!!
We went to the Mines of Spain to where Mark had taken me on a scavenger hunt 12 years ago for my birthday. It was beautiful. (I was going to post the pictures of the Mines here and have had this post ready since the beginning of December but I kept forgetting to get them off of Mark's phone...sooo here's a really late post WITHOUT the pictures. :D)
These pictures are from the Mall of America where we went for Melissa's birthday. First we went to IHOP for a yummy brunch and then to here to entertain the kids at Lego World. It was a very nice day!
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| The loved the escalators so my mom brought them up and down and up and down.... |
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| Here we all are! |
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| Just the kiddos. |
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| The sisters |
The boys were ready to come in after about 5 minutes but not Laina!
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| She loved the snow!!! |
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| I put Chester out there (although forgot to take a picture..hmm) to be with her so she wasn't a lone and I kept close watch at the patio door. :) |
Next: Thanksgiving but hardly any pictures. hehe
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| Me and little Liddy!! She's sooooooo sweet and cute and I just wanna kiss her cheeks!!!! |
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| Jack-Jack Attack!! Playing with a shoe! |
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| And wrestling with Sutton. |
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| Not sure why this picture is turned...it wasn't when I put it in here. |
This is after we got up our Christmas tree! Laina and Sutton wanted to read a book.
Bodie wanted to play with the Christmas tree box. :)
It's all decorated and lit up in our new house! :)
These are just pictures I took to put on Valentines' Day for a calendar I made.
