2023 :: week 27

Summer Week #7

July 2

When we woke up Sunday we were all so tired. We had less than eight hours to drive before we made it home, but it felt like forever. Construction slowed our driving down and we did end up in the car for an extra hour. Most of our drive was green and flat. When we were about an hour past St. Louis I had to use the bathroom, so we stopped at a gas station. While I was inside Anthony decided to fill up our tank. Unfortunately, he happened to stop in front of the only diesel pump. As I walked out to the car he was walking towards me and told me, "I made a big mistake." He accidentally started pumping diesel into our van! Thankfully he realized pretty quickly and only put in about three gallons. At first we thought we would need to get our van towed and then the diesel siphoned out. After talking to a few people at the gas station we decided to push the van forward to a regular gasoline pump and fill the rest of the tank with premium unleaded gas (93 rating). We also added an octane treatment. Diesel fuel has very low octane (25-40 rating) so the hope was to dilute the effect of the diesel. It seemed to work. We made it home AND got amazing gas mileage. 

July 3

We were all pretty tired Monday. Anthony returned to work. The rest of us worked on unpacking, doing laundry and recalibrating to being at home. In the afternoon we went to the pool to help us ease in to "normalcy."

July 4

We had an awesome 4th of July this year. In the morning we went to the parade at the Lenexa Freedom Festival. In the afternoon we spent several hours at the pool. The Wilsons hosted a picnic at their house in the evening. We went to the parking lot at Bluejacket for Uncle Matt's 4th Annual fireworks show, then watched fireworks at the golf course. 

July 5

Lauren had her last softball game on Wednesday. Lauren has really enjoyed playing with the Monarchs for the past few years. Unfortunately, she will not continue to play because both softball and soccer require a pretty big time commitment and our family does not have the bandwidth for both. 

July 6

Blueberry picking is something I want to do every summer, but is sometimes hard to make happen. Thursday evening the stars aligned and we went blueberry picking. The temperature dipped into the low 80s and we had nothing on the calendar. We only picked for about half an hour, but harvested several pounds of the most delicious blueberries I have ever eaten. After we picked the kids climbed in the play area and we shared some muffins from the general store. On the way home we visited my parents are shared some of our pickings with them. It was close to a perfect night.

July 7

While we were in WV I noticed a hard lump on Miles' left leg. I asked Steven to feel it and he said he didn't think it was something to be worried about, but that we should get it x-rayed to make sure. The doctors at our pediatrician's office were amazing and got us in very quickly after we returned from our trip. After x-raying Miles' leg we have learned that he has a osteochondroma. An osteochondroma is an overgrowth of bone near the end of the bone and growth plate. It is not a problem at this point because it doesn't seem to cause Miles any discomfort, but he should be able to let us know if it is bothering him as he gets older. We will meet with an orthopedic doctor once a year to monitor the size and how Miles is feeling. 

July 8

Anthony and I spent several hours Saturday cleaning in our garage. We threw away a bunch of junk, organized, sorted and swept. I posted a few things on the local "buy nothing" facebook group and had takers almost immediately. There is so much more room to walk around now!