Summer 2024: MN to WI

Yesterday, DJ flew into Minnesota from Virginia. He had been back home working while the kids and I spent the last several weeks in MN with family and friends.

We left town a little before 10 AM and drove into the Twin Cities to see one of DJ’s Marine Corps friends from when we lived on Camp Pendleton, way back in the day. We had lunch with him and his family at their house. Amelia enjoyed, and spent most of the time while we were there, chalking on their sidewalk with their two girls. We spent just over 2 hours at their house before getting back on the road.

Ironically, just after crossing the bridge into Wisconsin, I got a phone call from an unknown Minneapolis phone number. I answered. It was one of my cousins from my dad’s side of the family. She was on the same road as us and had just passed our camper and truck and thought it looked familiar. Small world. It was unexpected and fun to chat with her for a few minutes and catch up.

For our first night on our way back home to Virginia, we drove to Hayward, Wisconsin. We have not camped in WI yet, so this will be our 22nd state we have camped in since getting Amelia’s original Make-A-Wish camper in September 2020.

Dinner tonight at the campsite was leftover pizza from the little pizza party we had with both sets of our parents at DJ’s parent’s house last night. It’s nice that both of our parents live in the same small town and it’s easy to float back and forth and overlap time between the two families.

Miss Amelia did well in the car today, her car seat harness gives her some more wiggle room, but is more difficult to access her gtube for giving feeds on the road. I adjusted by leaving her extension connected and kinda tucked under the car seat harness so she would hopefully leave it alone between syringes of gtube feed. It went well. She is getting 3 supplemental gtube feeds/day and I give her several 60 mL syringes spaced out 5-10 minutes in between to mimic using a pump(we don’t use her pump as it’s more effort than it’s worth most of the time, but that’s a different story).

Since DJ has been home working, Amelia has gotten used to falling asleep and sleeping on the queen bed with me. We were snuggling in after her meds in the photo above. Last night we moved her after she fell asleep. Tonight we did the same.

I just got new headphones that are open-ear conduction style from Amazon Prime Days, and was listening to the last of my audiobook while snuggling and waiting for her to fall asleep. I already enjoy the headphones as they allow me to more easily hear and listen for Amelia. (I have Beats Solo3 and AirPods as well… but my ear piercings tend to get sore if I wear either for extended periods of time… totally a first world problem). So, long story short… I’m excited for more audiobook listening!

We typically don’t get to our campsites as early as we did tonight (about 5 PM)… so we have had some chill time… DJ took the kids to look at the river while I listened to my audiobook and prepped Amelia’s meds and washed our dishes (mainly syringes and gtube feed supplies).

The boys played catch. We showered. The boys are having snack and watching a (?) Star Wars Clone Wars episode on Jackson’s iPad. We are headed to bed soon-ish.