Look at that hair!

My niece, Brea, was born Wednesday, August 15, 2007. She was 20 inches long and weighed 6 lbs. 9 oz.

Her older cousins are very pumped their aunt produced a girl! 

Congratulations to her parents, Julie and Mike, and her older brother, Michael, and older sister, Taylor.

Summer Vacation - Fill-in days

Fill-in days while Grammy recovered

While we waited for Connie to get the okay to head home, I tried to do things with the girls while staying at my friend's house. Before my friend left on her own summer vacation, she took us to Holiday World, which back in my day was Santa Claus Land. It's much bigger now and mostly a water park, but the old Land of my day still has cheesy rides where you can get nice and sweaty before hitting the water park.

The girls enjoyed Holiday World. The next day my friend and her family left for their vacation, allowing us to stay behind in their home. It was beyond kind.

The weather in Evansville had hit the 100-degree mark, and so I decided to head somewhere cool. What better place than Indiana's caves?

Indiana has 100 caves that have been discovered. We went to Marengo Cave and signed up for the double tour, which took us through a 70 minute walking tour of one part of the cave and then a 40 minute tour on another part of the cave.

Marengo Cave was discovered by a girl and her brother. She overheard some school children talking about a sinkhole near the cemetery. She decided to investigate it before the other kids. She and her brother found the hole and went down into what they realized was a cave. It took them 3 days to tell the owner, and within a week he had it opened to the public. Ah, American Enterprise.

The tour we took was 200 feet below the ground. It was 52 degrees. (I had to spend $40 on sweatshirts for the girls before we entered....more enterprise) It was beautiful, and I got quite a lot of lovely photos with my new digital camera. The girls were very interested in both tours and retained most of what they learned. After the trips, we went gem mining, where we found surprisingly two bags full of precious gems that we will do nothing with if the bags should even make it home with us.

We ate lunch at a place where my mother used to take us as kids in Leavenworth, Indiana. The restaurant overlooks a beautiful part of the Ohio River and we watched barges with loads of coal pass by. We ate a home-cooked meal and then headed down the road to explore Wyandotte Cave. 

This is the cave where my mother was a guide in the late 50s, early 60's. It was right before closing, so we only got to take the small cave tour, but there were only five of us, and the guide was a good one and quite funny. His uncle used to work with Connie, so he was excited to meet me or to at least have heard about Connie.

This cave was quite different from Marengo. It was full of cute little furry bats in all shapes and sizes. Most were quietly hanging from the ceiling watching us, but occasionally we had them flying over our heads.

We also saw cave spiders, cave grasshoppers, which were very opaque, and a salamander. It was very wet and slippery, and there were bridges we had to cross where we could look down, down, down farther into the cave.

Wyandotte was discovered by two men rescuing their dog. The dog fell into a hole, and the cave was found during the rescue. (I probably would have just gotten a new dog) I'm fascinated by the findings of these people. Imagine discovering something like this while out wandering!

The tour lasted about thirty minutes, and we headed back to Evansville. I'm thinking next year I'll just start off with Indiana caving (maybe venture into some Kentucky caves) and do some canoeing down Blue River before going to the farm for the reunion.

Hey, maybe on the way back to Florida, I'll even stop into Nashville!

Summer Vacation - The Storm

Days 15 - 27

Our itinerary for the rest of the trip was four days in Nashville, TN exploring the sites, three days in Evansville, IN visiting friends, and then on to my brother's house in the South Bend, IN area. Unfortunately, there was a change in plans.

My mother noticed before she left Florida that her foot had dropped. This is a condition where the motor nerve (anterior tibial nerve) that innervates the muscles that pull the foot toward the knee is injured or diseased, and the result is complete weakness of those muscles The defect causes the foot to mostly be limp, and the weak foot involuntarily flops away from the body to produce what is referred to as a "foot drop."

Connie got a brace to wear on her foot, had an MRI of her back done, and off she went on vacation. In Mt. Carmel, IN, she had some work done via a massage therapist and a chiropractor. Two days later, she was in such pain that she had to go to the ER for a shot of painkiller for some relief. She insisted on going to Nashville the following day with my SIL and her children.

We made it to Nashville, and I got to see the city of Nashville while following the back of the ambulance as it took Connie to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

No sooner had we arrived at our Wyndham, then Connie was on the ground crying. The ambulance was summoned, and at Vanderbilt, she was given more pain medication, another MRI, and sent home with a steroid pack. By the next morning, we were frantically packing our belongings and heading back into the car for Evansville because we knew the hospitals and the area.

Connie rode in the backseat of Juanita's car. Susan and the kids and I followed in Connie's car, frantically using Onstar to find help. Kelly called her doctor father, who called us and gave us the name of a neurosurgeon he recommended. He sent us to St. Mary's Hospital and said to spout his name, although he wasn't sure what good would come of it.

My friend Robin met us at the ER. Susan took the kids to her parents and Juanita drove home while Robin and I dealt with the ER. Connie had another MRI, which showed a cyst tangled in the nerves between the L4 and the L5 of her spine.

Connie chose to have the operation to remove the cyst as the pain was so bad she was unable to walk to the bathroom. Because she was on a blood thinner, she had to go off of that medication and wait five days before they could operate. She was in the hospital up until the operation. The girls and I stayed at Robin's house.

The operation went well. The cyst was utterly void of liquid and hard and gunky and completely tangled in and around the nerves. The doctor scraped out the cyst and straightened one of the nerves that had gone flat. The operation was three hours long, with a two-hour recovery. By the third hour, she was back in her room and on her feet walking the corridor of the hospital. She was released the next evening.

Connie was unable to ride in a car for a long period of time so the trip to my brother's house was cancelled. Susan and her two kids stayed with us in a hotel for the week. We tried to keep busy with various activities and outings such as bowling and the zoo.

My brother popped in for an overnight visit, and at the end of the week, Susan returned home, Connie went to Juanita's, and the girls and I went back to Robin's house.

Five days later, Connie returned to the doctor, had her stitches removed, and got the okay to head home to Florida. We left that day.

Not the vacation we were expecting, but we were together, and in the end, all turned out well.