Friday, July 21, 2017

The Big One: Vacation 2017

Last year, we attended Nubability Camp with Zeke, just the adults and Zeke.  The camp featured limb difference coaches who mentor and coach limb difference athletes.  The biggest take away for us has been Zeke seeing people who look just like him and seeing those people, especially the adults, succeed and do all the things everyone else does.  This year, all of us attended. It's in southern Illinois so that in and of itself was an endeavor.  Did I mention we were going to take our travel trailer?  Because we are slightly crazy.  And then it seemed like we should take advantage of being away from home and see something new.  Lake Michigan sounded good.  So Nebraska to Illinois to Indiana then back home.  I think we managed to hit all of the major Midwestern cities, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, and Omaha.  (We skirted them but it still sounds pretty cool.)  Eight days on the road which may have been a day or two longer than what was really wise.  Here are the highlights.
Swimming with Coach Lefty...yep there's a reason his nickname is 'Lefty.'


Kenson trying out lacrosse.  He loved it and returned to play for 5 of the 6 open choice sessions.



Volleyball for Conleigh 


Zeke and  Kenson's focus sport was football.



This was the group of campers who participated in football for their focus sport plus their coaches.
Zeke really enjoyed Coach Eddy who is the coach on the left.  



Conleigh's focus sport was cheerleading.
They worked on two cheers to share with the whole camp.


She was quite excited that they got to do lifts.



Kai was not old enough to participate but he still got to do some fun things like have his face painted by the talented Tisha.

Batman!

And a pirate!


We all look happy.  
(No one wants to hear the audio of the actual sibling arguments and the parents who are losing their cool.)


Chilling in the camper-we camped for 5 nights in a row. 
We also stayed in hotels for a few nights so we camped 6 out of 8 nights on the road.
Yes, I feel like I deserve an award.  
(But my cousin in currently a full time rver with his four kids so I guess my medal will have to wait.)
We really experienced the gamut of camping experiences from torrential rains to semi sketchy mobile home parks to a very nice KOA to no showers on site. 


The last part of our vacation-Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan.
 This was the first time my kids had seen the beach.  
They had so much fun.
 Football in the water with Dad, sand castles, wading, skipping rocks, digging holes-lots of smiles all around.