Krassimir's birthday!

Seventeen years old - next year he will be officially an adult (whatever that means!) AND will break even on number of birthdays celebrated with his family instead of without. *Almost* there.

As a food hater, there's not much to make for a fun supper, so we did pasta and sauce, which is a less-hated meal, and Rinnah made home made chocolate pudding, which was robust enough to hold seventeen candles!

He doesn't blow, but he's seen enough birthdays that he knows what to expect, and likes have the fuss made over him!

 We certainly don't need any more *stuff* around here, so presents were few, but one thing Matt and I found for him hit the nail on the head - it's a rubber dog toy - a textured ring - and he and his new ring are inseparable!

Family vacation: Day 1

 First step was to bring Mira to her buddies at Crescent Cove. They do a *really* good job there of knowing the kids who stay and of caring for them while they're there.

Kisses goodbye, and she's off.

Next step: load the van! (AND the trailer!) We don't usually use all of the seats in Big Blue because it's pretty tight, but when we need to, we can do 3 (the wide one which used to be the old back row), 3 (the narrower one) and 4 instead of the normal setup where we have the narrow 3, then the 2, and then the four. With this set up, and Mira not with us, and Owen coming up a day later, we had room for the girls' friend, Hope. Here we go!

Our first step was at our dear friends, the Martins (if you've read this blog long enough, you'll remember Chad as the guy who came and helped Matt with all sorts of things on the addition!  (He's mentioned in this post and here are some of his kids at the bottom of this post! Oh - and one with a photo!) They moved away a little over two years ago and WE MISS THEM!!) This was our first chance to visit at their house and see their farm-in-progress, and they made room for us to spend the night.

All of the girls (except Bobbi) in one room!

Got a kick out of this - this is our old bathtub that we removed from our old bathroom before putting on the accessible bathroom! They're using it in an outdoor shower area he's creating.

A few couch cushions, and the trailer behind the four-wheeler worked to bring Bobbi (and the rest of us) on a tour of their property!

It was hard to leave the next day. These people are so special to us, and their home was such a welcoming oasis permeated by the love of Jesus. I hope we can make it up there again!

Our whole crew...and Hope. I just realized that we're almost all color coordinated! Pinks and teals and royal blue? You'd think we planned it!

This one just makes me smile. :)

And then we were off for Duluth, aiming to arrive there at noon...but that's another post.

North Shore!

 Here we all* are! (Minus the woman in the tie-dye shirt looking away from us toward the falls.) We didn't take everyone on all of our outings, but Gooseberry Falls is so accessible to so many people that it worked out well for us all to go.

More pictures later.

*All of us includes me and Matt, nine of the ten kids, Grandma, Rose and Shehan (her husband), and our niece (and her two year old - her husband had to work) and nephew.

**Oops (thank you to my sister for catching it) - and our friend Hope! We joke that Hope is our seventh daughter and that Owen is her family's fourth son. :) From the amount of time that he spends there and she spends here, it sure could be!

Black shoes

 Bobbi is super into clothes, and now that she has a job, she is responsible for all of her clothing purchases. Our favorite store is Goodwill (hard to argue with getting four new pairs of pants for under $20!!) and just last week we went on a new adventure - the Goodwill Outlet located in a warehouse in the Midway district. We had learned about this place (where you sort through bins of stuff and pay for it by the pound) from an older friend from church years ago, and Bobbi has always since then wanted to try out "the Goodwill Dump" or just "The Dump" as our friend called it!

So we went, and 10 pounds later (at $1.79 a pound), Bobbi came home with some treasures, including these!

They are practically brand new - in fact, it's hard to tell from looking at the soles if they've ever been worn at all - and we managed to find both shoes in the same bin! (A minor miracle, in some ways!)

And, you see, since Bobbi's wheelchair is still her primary mode of mobility, having shoes that fit properly isn't a big deal like it is for me. These are in between a size 8 (which is what she wears with her ankle-foot orthotics on) and a size 4 (which is what she wears without her AFOs), so, while they don't "fit" her, they also fall within the range of shoes that we're used to seeing her wear, so it works!

At her job, dress code requires "black" shoes, but doesn't specify anything beyond the color. So she wore these last Friday to work. The manager on duty was giving her a friendly bit of teasing as she came in. "Wow! Aren't you fancy today! We must be paying you too much!" She had the perfect comeback ready to fire back. "Well, actually, I found these at the Goodwill...Dump!!! $2.70."

That's my girl. :)

Second poke

 

The five of us who are 16 and older got our second dose of the Pfizer vaccine today. We're taking our chances that we (me and Matt) won't both feel too icky tomorrow. :) Otherwise Rose is going to have a busy day! Above you can see us waiting the mandatory 15 minutes to make sure we don't pass out!

Gillette purchased and remodeled a dingy old one-level warehouse two blocks from their main campus for a vaccination clinic for their patients and all family caregivers of their patients. One of the nurses there today said, "Oh! You're Mira's family!" She's never actually worked with Mira, but, in her words, "You can't work at Gillette without knowing Mira." I guess I knew that Mira-girl was a big deal, but didn't realize what a big deal she is over there! 

Owen, actually, got to do this outing on his first day out of sixteen days of isolation due to his friend (the one family that he's spent time with over the last year!) getting a postive COVID test. Owen got to come home and go right to his room - we'd already removed Krassimir's things and set up the large pack n play that we use for him when we travel in the playroom in the new basement - and that's where he spent the next sixteen days. Well, there, or on the soccer field - I told him as long as no one else was on the fields he could go outside and kick his ball around. When, a few days later, Owen took a mail-in saliva test and got the positive result the next day, he was glad that he could at least now have his friend that he got it from join him on the soccer field! Owen went through the whole thing with no symptoms. Possibly because he's young and resilient, and possibly because he'd had his first dose of the vaccine already. Anyway, he then had ten days from the test, which ended up falling out to a total of sixteen days of isolation. Not exactly how he'd planned to spend his spring break OR the first two weeks of his new part-time job! But he made it through, and is now good to go. We were sure glad we got him stuck away so soon, because he was isolated before what they consider his "contagious period" (two days before he tested b/c he was asymptomatic) so the rest of us could go about our business as usual.

So that's the excitement around here, lately! (Tomorrow the completed Bobbette shows up - that's some *real* excitement!!)

more about the Bobbette

 Four and a half years ago we took our little family on a trip up north to the North Shore of Lake Superior.

In the background is Split Rock lighthouse. In the foreground is our means for hiking with a non-mobile child.

Perched on a rock

At Gooseberry Falls (which is wheelchair accessible until you get right down by the falls themselves)

...at which point Dad can carry down the rest of the way.

Another method for carrying someone who is not yet mobile!

All of us outside of the hotel we stayed at, which is made from converted railcars!

 

We've been talking seriously for the last year about doing it again, but this time around, it's a little more complex. First of all, Krassi is bigger than he was four and a half years ago, and though we still do the "sack of potatoes" carry with him a lot, it's a little tougher now than it was...and Bobbi doesn't work as well that way! Tsvetomira can stay with Crescent Cove, but we wanted some way to have both Bobbi and Krassi be able to be involved with the active parts of our days if we made the effort to take a family trip!

So, we researched, and found this, which is pretty much amazing in pretty much every way: the Joelette.

But the price tag was a little (significantly!) steep for us, particularly because although we have three kids who could potentially use it (Bobbi, Krassi, and likely Reuben some day, too), it's not like we go hiking every weekend!! So, we thought, can we rent it from someone? Nope - closest we could find is in Colorado, and just wasn't feasible.

So, we researched some more and found this, which is not as amazing: (link here). But it has a much more accessible price tag. But would it be worth it for the cost? No foot rest, and, more significantly, would really require ALL carrying, and not have the benefit of the wheel to roll along and support weight during easier/smoother stretches of the hike.

Months passed, and then we remembered that we knew someone (distantly) who makes custom bicycles!!! So we thought, why not? We sent him an email asking if he thought he could rig something up with the more important features of the really nice vehicle with a price tag more reminiscent of the not so nice vehicle, and he said...yes!!!

His family passed through the Cities on their way to Wisconsin last week and left the in-process "Bobbette" as they've named it, with us to try out so he can make any last adjustments before powder coating it (in Bobbi's color of choice - espresso - like her beloved coffee!!)

It works SO WELL. It's so well balanced that when you're just running it along on the ground, both the front and the back person feel like the other must be doing all of the work because it's so easy to work with. He's got a great cushion incorporated in as well as a nice secure harness. The footrest needs a bit of adjustment, but otherwise, we can't really think of anything that needs to change! It's so perfect! (And he managed to figure out a way to get it to fold down small, which was a feature we said we didn't need to have, but because it DOES fold, we can take it in the back of Big Blue without needing to hook up the trailer or take Owen's pick up truck!)

It's so easy to use that even Rinnah is sufficient to be the front "sherpa" when we're going on fairly straightforward terrain.

Here we are this past weekend down by the Mississippi River at a hiking spot (Pike Island) we've enjoyed in the past...but not ever with Bobbi! We paused a bit to throw rocks, so Matt's just holding it on his own. There's an option to flip the wheel back so it can sit stable on four legs when we're stopping for any length of time, but it wasn't worth doing for this short pause.

Set up and take down is pretty quick.

We managed to do a lift over some driftwood at the shore, and even to go up a rough cut flight of stairs. There are two mini-handles on either side of the chair, too, so if we needed to we could easily have four (or up to six, if each person took one handle) people to lift and move if/when the terrain requires.

North Shore, here we come! We have reservations at the same hotel for the first week of June, and we're really looking forward to an adventure. We're bringing Rose and her husband along, as well as our adult niece (and her two-year-old) to stay with Grandma who can't really be left alone anymore, and the girls' best friend, Hope, who we consider to be our seventh daughter. And probably our nephew (Owen and Krassi's age), because even though he's not really into hiking, he and Owen will enjoy the time together, and we've got the rest of the family anyway! (The two of them are our kids' only cousins on Matt's side.)

Go ahead and check out Randy's web page (click on his logo below for the link) - he's the one creating and fashioning the Bobbette for us!

meet the Bobbette...

 

...our new (in process) all-terrain hiking machine!

I'm not up to typing more now, but we're so excited about this that I wanted to share a little taste with you, and will get you the rest of the story soon...(er or later).