Travel and Family

William’s summer long hospital stay was followed up by just a few weeks of normal life. After our trip to Washington D.C. and Virginia, John became very sick in late September. After a week of high fevers and abdominal pain at home, he spent over a week in the hospital, had numerous tests and eventually, invasive gall bladder surgery. After that, he had to spend another month at home recuperating and still dealing with some post–surgical issues. Now he and Baby William have very nearly matching (and long) abdominal scars. I’ve always said those two have an uncanny connection, and so it continues. So, for the month or so that John was pretty seriously ill, it just didn’t feel right to leave him at home or in the hospital just so I could go out and do some of the activities I had planned for this Fall. I did, however, have one great find – an antique bench for our living/dining room. I came across it one afternoon at an antique store near the hospital as I was taking a walk just to get o...

Here are some old photos and other items I've found as I'm going through some old photo albums My older siblings, David, Jill and Larry Krause -- probably in 1956. Hayley at around 10 months. April, right around age 2. John and me -- around 1980 or so. The back of the printed program from my Grandmother, Margaret Gertrude Trager Krause's funeral. .

To some people a vacation means doing nothing. If I want to lay around and do nothing, I’ll just stay home and save the money. To me a vacation means getting out and seeing new places, trying new foods, and, best of all, learning something new. Staying in bed beyond, say, 8:00 (at home or on the road) becomes kind of tortuous for me. I often just get up and leave the room for a walk, jog or to get a snack and read the local paper while my poor exhausted traveling companions snooze away. (Some of my favorite times have often been these little solitary reprieves.) So, with that, earlier this year, I got an email from United Airlines saying that I had 49,750 frequent flyer miles that were about to expire if I didn ’t use them within a week or two. So, back in February, I had to look ahead and think of someplace John and I could fly to later on this year. In the end, (after buying up a missing 250 miles) we just picked Washington D.C. We’re both history nerds and love United States and Ci...

My last blog was on July 3rd and since then, I’ve had many new experiences, not the kind I would have planned on but the kind that have made me appreciate my faith, the strength of prayer and every member of my family more. It all began in Yosemite. Our family enjoys camping together. We’ve camped at the beaches for years – Doheny State Beach is a favorite and we’ve camped at Zion National Park and back in 2009 in Yosemite. This year, we had reservations at the Upper Pines Campground in Yosemite Valley. This means that several months ago, we set a strategy – choosing a week and a range of campsites and gave everyone the date and time that the coveted and hard to get reservations would open. On a Sunday morning in March we all woke up early and had our hoped for reservations chosen on the National Park Service Reservation website www.recreation.gov . At exactly 7:00 a.m., the moment the reservations opened, we all pressed enter. I had two computers logged in, kept pressing enter on bo...

We've had tickets to U2's 360 concert tour for a year and a half. We got them as part of a package of Angels baseball tickets I got for John's Christmas gift back in 2009 (for the concert in June 2010). Bono injured his back last year and the concert was postponed. So, I've had yellowing concert tickets pinned to my bulletin board for 18 months. On Friday night, we were so excited to go to the concert. We went to Lone Star for dinner on the way (yea restaurants.com). We paid to park, got a good spot and as we were going through security, we were told that the old tickets we had were for Saturday night. (It was impossible to find out -- I searched on the internet and even called and talked to someone at the Angels tickets office.) We got our $25 parking fee back, went to McDonald's for ice cream cones and just went home -- we both tried to have a good attitude knowing we'd be coming back the next night -- which we did. Saturday night felt like a total deja vu exp...

My niece, Amy and her baby daughter, Aspen are visiting from Utah this week-- staying with Heidi and her family. On Saturday a bunch of us hit the road and headed down the 15 for a day of fun in San Diego. We started the day at the Mormon Battalion Historic Site. http://lds.org/placestovisit/eng/historical-sites/san-diego-mormon-battalion-historic-site Ella was the biggest kid on the tour and, therefore, got to have the heavy gear loaded on her tiny shoulders. After the tour, we all went outside to get a sampling of life in early California -- we got to do laundry, pretend to make bricks, and pan for gold. Boppie pannin ' for gold. Prospector Ned lookin ' to strike it rich. April makin ' her way thorugh that never ending laundry. Amy and Aspen. Heidi's got the right hat on, but she's makin ' it look way to easy. Ned and John took this pretty seriously! Asher and Ella looking so cute at the brick making a...