The Schmidts

Last week Sam and I had the awesome opportunity to go with family to my brother Jacob's mission. The Manchester, NH mission, which included parts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It included great family time, beautiful country, great historic sights and wonderful people. Yes, Justin is still in pilot training and could therefore not join us. :( We sure missed him. Our trip went like this: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - flew into Manchester, NH that night about 9:45pm picked up our Yukon XL and found a hotel to spend the night Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - Toured the city of Boston - it wasn't part of Jake's mission, besides the temple, but how could we pass up the chance to go to Boston. So much of our country's beginning history is there. We took a trolley tour that included the following: USS Constitution - One of the 6 original frigates of the US Navy Holocaust Memorial Old North Church Paul Revere Mall A cruise of the Boston Harbor Boston Massacre site ...

Knowing Sam and I would be leaving Justin this week I made sure to plan a fun weekend for the three of us. We threw our mattress in the front room and went to sleep at 10pm. Justin and I were exhausted. I had grabbed us the movie "Cars" from the library, but we chose to go to sleep. We had been running on 7 hours or less of sleep all week. Sam was up at 6:50am and we were off on a bike ride by 7:30am to grab donuts at J's Donuts. It was a 17 mile bike ride round trip. Going by bike helped me justify having donuts for breakfast. We returned home around 9am. Justin serviced the motorcycle and car as well as put on new tires so I could feel safe traveling to and from Wichita. We attended a birthday party at the splash pad which Sam loves, and then we watched game six of the East Conference Series - we're cheering for the Indiana Pacers! Game seven is tonight. We both enjoyed going to bed early and getting up early. We rarely do that on weekends. Well, usuall...

For the Memorial Day holiday, not sure why, but Justin got Friday off too.  It was our first four day weekend since Christmas. And we loved every minute of it. Friday, we were completely lazy besides packing. We took off early Saturday morning. The Robins were so nice to invite us to go camping. We had a blast! On the way down we had the opportunity to help clean up the mess left by a recent tornado in Carney, OK. Elder, Justin Robins, Justin Schmidt at the clean up, they fed us lunch We were helping clear their fields so they could harvest w/o breaking their machinery It was humbling and eye opening to see the destruction. It really hit home for all of us. Weather can be so unpredictable. Within one mile there were houses untouched and other houses completely demolished. After the clean up we drove to find out camp site at the KOA in Choctaw, OK. The KOA had a swimming pool. The water was chilly but Sam still wanted to play in it, even if it took hi...