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Boy, has it been busy the last couple of weeks! More appointments than I could shake a stick at, and a couple of weekend events as well. I’m very grateful that things pretty much went off without a hitch, and appointments were met, things a t home have been pretty quiet, and events were enjoyable.

One of the events that I went to last Sunday was German Fest in Milwaukee. I had toyed with the idea of biking the 16 or so miles up to church, and then continuing on the eight from church to the fest, but I’m happy that I didn’t do that. Instead, I put my bike in the car and drove up to church, changed quickly afterwards in the bathroom, then biked the 8 up to German Fest. I had never biked along the Lakefront Path before, and it was really beautiful, albeit busy with people, making it impossible to go very fast. For me, one of the draws is that I get to see people I know, and so that was really fun. (I just wish my German dress still fit me.)

I biked the 8 miles back to the car, and at the end I was tired, and I was grateful I didn’t have 16 more to go, but I didn’t feel terrible either. Last year, I parked in a place where it was a four mile ride from my car to the fest, and on the way back, I felt like I was dying. However, I probably hadn’t even been on a bike in at least 2-3 years before then. And now, well, between the Thursday afternoon before German Fest and the following Friday afternoon, I biked over fifty miles, and it was challenging, but fun. 🙂 I’m grateful for the opportunity to be working on my health.

Silly thing, but my older son was looking for 32 gigabyte SD cards for something. I figured that that was easy enough; as long as I can remember, those things aren’t wildly expensive. Imagine my shock when I walked into Best Buy to get one, and they all seemed to be over $45. Insane. I told him to hold off on buying one, and though I often have miscellaneous extra memory cards and such around, there was nothing that would help him in this instance. Mind you, though, that I haven’t purchased any of these in at least 3 years. The next day, he and his sister went to the gym, and I decided to check out WalMart. Wouldn’t you know, but the price was almost as bad. However, there were two associates who came up right by me, one of them holding a plastic case. Wouldn’t you know, but there were two 32GB SD cards in it. They seemed to be confused about where they wanted to put the item, as it had originally come from the outdoor section, as these two were marketed for trail cams. Nobody is looking for SD cards in the outdoor section! I’m sure this is why this was marked down to $8.50. I proceeded to ask if I could buy it, and they were happy to oblige me, as that also meant that they didn’t have to find a place to put them in the case. I am very grateful I didn’t have to shell out three times as much for the same item.

After German Fest, I went over to my church’s church picnic. That was fun, too. The location is great, and it’s nice to hang out with good people. Summer days are beautiful like that.

Speaking of summer days, we finally got some rain. I don’t think it rained at all in July until the 27th and it was kind of sad seeing everybody’s lawns turning brown. I had mowed right around the last week of June, and I had meant to a couple of weeks after that, and I actually started to, but after about 10 minutes of mowing, I twisted my ankle and it hurt too much to keep going. By the next day already, I didn’t know if it was safe to mow, but it was interesting to see how those strips that I did mow turned very, very brown, and I’m grateful I didn’t cut the whole lawn and have it looking like that.

On the weather front, we had strong storms that came through on the 27th. Friends of mine in Milwaukee had power knocked out, but here, thankfully, we kept power, there was no hail, etc. Unfortunately, this was not the case in all of Wisconsin, and the town of Menasha, in particular, got hit badly. My kids and I signed up for an event months ago that takes place in this area; once I heard that there was a tornado, I checked back to see if the event had been cancelled. It didn’t seem to be, so we drove up to the area and just happened to end up on the street here that this man is driving on in the first 3 minutes of the video here.

How did I end up in Menasha? Well, our first destination was in a small town called Combined Locks. The driving on the interstate had been miserable due to rain, and at a certain point, I couldn’t take it any more, and looked for the first exit off, knowing I could come up the western side of Lake Winnebago to get to where I wanted to go. It just happens that Menasha is pretty much on the western side of the tip of Lake Winnebago, so by getting off the interstate, it pretty much meant going through Menasha. It was weird, too, because at first, I just noticed that there were a lot of tree branches and stuff on the sides of the road, and it kind of dawned on me that that must have been a result of the storm. I did not know that within about 15 minutes, we’d be driving through a disaster zone like this. The crazy thing is, though, that once I got through Menasha, my destination was about six miles down the road, and over there, things looked completely normal. For as bad as the tornado was though, it’s amazing that not a single person was killed – certainly something to be grateful for.

The event that the little kids and I went to was a bike ride/music festival called “Bike to the Beat“. The event took place on Saturday, but the four of us made a little mini-vacation out of it, and it was an awful lot of fun. The drive up was absolutely horrendous, lasting 4 hours when 2.5 is more normal. It rained the whole time and there were accidents and road construction in the Milwaukee area. I was so incredibly grateful both to get off the interstate and to actually arrive at the hotel.

BIke to the Beat was amazing, even apart from a couple of wrinkles in the day, and I am grateful that there were no mechanical issues with the bikes, we had all the tools, I didn’t forget any pedals or anything, etc. More than that though, the kids enjoyed the hotel a lot and we took a little detour through Manitowoc on the way back, and it was really a good trip. I’m the type of person who is always trying to anticipate what might go wrong in order to avoid any pitfalls, and when things go off with no major issues, I am grateful.

I’m grateful, too, that after far too long, I got to video chat with a dear friend. I’m grateful, too that through everything, the friendship holds.

Wow, it’s been a full couple of weeks! Thank you all for your patience with me! I am certainly grateful for all of you!

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