Preparations

Why we shouldn't have planned this trip for this year.... none of which I knew when the idea was first germinated:

1) Louisa said she had the whole month of July off from the temple this year. So I thought well, maybe that is enough time to finally make this trip. What we didn't know was that she would discover that volunteers needed to be in the temple district to serve and since she wasn't in the SL temple district she wouldn't be going back to the temple after they closed. So in the end that month window just didn't exist. We could have done it anytime.

2) Russ isn't going because he already had almost 2 months off recuperating from knee replacement surgery which we hadn't expected to do this year when I first started planning the trip. Neither he nor I feel comfortable having him take another two weeks so soon.

3) Baby Boy Kruger decided to come in July. I don't know that I had really put the two of those together in time to really understand the implications, ie I could BE IN WISCONSIN when my first grandchild is born. I made the itinerary for going before his due date thinking that most first babies are late.... I really couldn't do too much rearranging because we are trying to get to both the pageant in Walnut Grove as well as the one in De Smet, and they are only on the first three weekends in July.

4) We ended up with an out of state wedding in August. I am way excited. But it was one more major planning experience for this summer. At least it wasn't in JULY! :-)