A too short break from reality..

Last weekend Den and I met some friends at Thomson, IL Army Corp campground on the mighty Mississippi River…We arrived Thursday and spent 4 nights there, attending the Quad City Air Show on Saturday…It only takes us about 2 hours to get to Thomson..They are concrete pads with 50 Amp, nicely separated into 4 different loops and a spot for tents..

 

Above is our friend’s spot…and on the right, well, the May Flies had a hatching and they were THICK!!! This is called Thomson Causeway and the campground is basically on a peninsula…Here are a few more photos I took..

Left, a big fella with frog legs…on the right..well…I guess it’s the same description…tehee…

This is a very marshy area and they protect the turtles when they lay their eggs…The college kids come in and put a marker and mesh screen over each place the eggs are …to keep someone from walking on the site..and the raccoons from digging the eggs up and eating them…

This “mama” was laying eggs right up the road from us.. The park has “Turtle Crossing” signs everywhere..Yep, they are very protective of their hard shelled friends…

We attended the airshow on Saturday..It was 90 + degrees and no shade to be found anywhere…We sat there from 11AM until 4:30PM in the burning sun..and I am paying for it now…not to mention it was still hard for me to look upward after my neck surgery…

The grand finale was a re-creation of Pearl Harbor called Tora, Tora, Tora…It was amazing..

There is a  nice Ill State Park up the road past Savannah, IL called Pallisades State Park.  We drove through there looking at the sites and happened upon a beautiful overlook of the Mississippi River..

Great river views…The sites are mostly gravel in the campground, but they have a LOT of sites!!

So, that pretty much covers our trip…We had a great time…Oh, and yes, we did hit a couple “joints” in Savannah, IL for adult beverages…

A selfie taken at Iron Horse Social Club..What a neat old back bar in a very historic building …

This place had an inside bar AND an outside venue with a band playing..Now why would anyone sit inside, when you could enjoy the outside??? The name of this place was…are you ready?….Poopy’s..Yep, and I have no idea why, but it is a little gold mine..even with that name…Lots of motorcycles hanging out here..and we “elders” driving a pick up stuck out like a sore thumb…You would think we had the word “SENIORS” stamped on our foreheads…We were pure “Q-Tips”..white hair and white sneakers…

Not being used to jamming so much fun and drink into such a short trip, we were pretty pooped..(did I just really use that word?) when we got home…We arrived home by Noon Monday so we could unload the Hiker and Den could mow the hay grass…Later that afternoon, the heat and humidity began to wane and a great breeze blew from the North…Not THAT  great , as it turned out…I watched as our patio umbrella began to “lift off” from our glass table and ran out on our deck just in time to see it completely take flight and come down ….direct hit on the glass table…

Well SHEEEEEEEE-IT!!!!!!

Yep.

A Short Trip…Wish It Was Longer!!

Dennis pulled our Hiker up on the drive and turned it around…We are leaving tomorrow on a long weekend to Thomson, IL,..Thomson Causeway Campground..We will be meeting some friends and attending the Quad Cities Airshow around Bettendorf Iowa, across the Mississippi River. We  have stayed there before and love it..I sure wish it was longer..we usually stay a couple weeks, but other obligations prohibit that right now…

WOOT! WOOT! I would rather be in my Hiker than in my house!!

Here are some photos of the campground, taken right after we got our Hiker…

I am beyond excited to get back camping, if only for a few days..Hopefully, we can get a couple weeks in this late Summer…I will post photos of our trip when we get back ..We aren’t taking our computer, so I will wait until we get back next week…WOOHOO!!!!

 

FINALLY…a surgical success story!!

WOOT!WOOT!!!!!! My surgeon, Dr. Cord Sturgeon, called me yesterday to tell me that pathology had discovered an overactive parathyroid gland embedded in my excised right thyroid lobe…This is what I have been praying for and pursuing the past 2 years…AT LAST!!!!!

I’M DOIN’ THE HAPPY DANCE!!!!!!!

Two days after my surgery, we had a Cave-A-Palooza here with the Wolff and Cave families…and a few of their friends…I was a bit tired, but rallied when I got to spend time with the grandkids…

These were my Saturday morning “coffee buddies” on our front porch!!!

We spent Saturday afternoon in our nephew’s swimming pool. I didn’t get in, and had to be careful not to get my incision in the sun.  The temp hit 90 degrees and that water was sooooo tempting…

After a day at the pool, Peyton Heiser offered to babysit the kids and the adults went “downtown” and did a Sandwich, IL Pub Crawl…Well, we only went to 4 pubs, and no one crawled. I kept my cocktails to a minimum and it was great to get out and relax…

The “Cave” sisters….

Us “girls” at the train car patio…Me, Terrie in the back, left to right Val, Chris, Cindy and Jenny…friends of Chris and John’s.

It was a busy weekend and I was pretty tired after everyone left…Yesterday, Den and I had to go take our aunt to see Uncle Clarence at the nursing home, so by last night I was ready to crash..and I did…I feel really good today, and managed to get our Hiker back to normal after using it as a “hotel room”  one of the families that stayed the weekend…It is great to feel normal again…in fact, better than normal..I’m not sure why, but my bad headaches haven’t returned after the doc yanked my bad parathyroid…Not sure if that is why, but I will take any good stuff I can get from the surgical results, right?  I have to go back to see the surgeon June 28th and then I won’t go back to Chicago until September for one more check of my thyroid levels with my Endocrinologist…YAAAAAAY!!

Mean while, our only granddaughter has been in Spain, performing at various cathedrals with the Kaneland High School Madrigals..

The cathedrals they are singing in our absolutely fabulous…Such wonderful old architecture ..and the crowds love them…

I managed to snag a short videio of them singing at one of their performances…Here is the link…Madrigals  Turn up your sound and click on that link…it is a short video but wonderful~~~

Thanks to all of you for the wonderful prayers and well wishes for my surgery…I promise I will not dwell on it any longer…I have better things to blog about, now that my attitude is improving every day!!!..and so is my humor!!

A short sample of the Kaneland HS Madigrals in Spain

OK…I am posting a link below to hear a small sample of the Kaneland High School Madrigals singing in Barcelona Cathedral in Spain…Our granddaughter is in this video when they pan completely to the left…Turn up your sound and enjoy..It is a very short video…

 

Madrigals……..

“ A difficult case”…that would be ME.

  OK, my surgery is over and I am back home…I was very excited to get this done and pretty much had convinced myself it would be a “piece of cake”.. Dennis and I took the 5:25 AM train into Chicago and arrived at the hospital about 7:45 with time for Den to have a cup of joe. I was to report to the 5th floor for day surgery at 8:30AM and was 10 minutes early. I put on my backless gown and they started an IV..My surgery was scheduled for 10AM, and they injected my IV with some lala drug before they took me down to the OR…I barely (and I to mean BARELY) remember them sliding me onto the cutting table…What seemed like seconds later I woke up groggy with a splitting headache in recovery…looked at the clock and it said 3PM…SAY WHAAAAAT?? What the Heck happened that took THAT long.

My Doc came over and asked me how I felt..I told him “like I got run over by a truck”…and he smiled and said, “So do I”..What was suppose to be no long than 1 1/2 hour surgery turned into 4 hours…with one hour in recovery..As I found out later, once I could focus, my thyroid was a huge mess of scar tissue from my last “unsuccessful surgery”…Doc said he had never seen such a bad job, and actually said there was so much scar tissue it was like cement..He had to go very slowly to get anything done…Apparently , I was born with one of my 4 parathyroid glands INSIDE the right lobe of my thyroid..highly unusual, but it does happen..He couldn’t dig into my right lobe for fear of tearing something else, so he too the entire lobe out, working very carefully with all of the scar tissue..They sent it to the pathologist to slice and dice and see if they could find it..that will take 4-5 days. Leave it to me to be “a difficult case”.

But this time I don’t have staples, I have dissolvable stitches inside and Derma Bond tape outside…and my incision doesn’t hurt…

My only problem is that being in surgery much longer than expected…and with my horrible sinuses, I am coughing a lot of junk out of my lungs, but if that’s the worse I have I can deal with it..I’m just glad it’s OVER, and I hope the pathology report shows they got that naughty parathyroid…A good sign was that my Calcium levels in my blood went down immediately after surgery..

Well, that’s enough medical stuff…I do want to thank all of you for the well wishes and prayers for me…I am confident that I will feel much better and hope to NEVER have surgery again…sheesh!!!

On a good note, (and you know I will now interject some family stuff), we are having a mini Cave-a-Palooza here this weekend…Our Wolff daughter, hubby and 2 cubs are coming and bringing a couple friends from Zionsville..Also, our son, Kelly and his  wife, Cindy will be here..The  Heisers will be here too, but they are on kid short..Our granddaughter, Taylor, is in Spain with the Kaneland High School Madrigals for 5 different concerts in the cathedrals…How exciting for her…and all of them.

Above is the entire group of kids that make up the Kaneland High School Madrigals..Tay in the lime green t-shirt left end..and on the right is their tour schedule where they are singing…

I love that photo above of them all with the quote. Right is a few of the group, Tay second from left front row…These were all taken here before they left..

How wonderful to stand in front of the Barcelona Cathedral…Love this girl!!! I have some video of their practice but cannot seem to load it..If I do figure it out, rest assured I will post it in a blog!!!!

That’s about it for now…Time for bed….