A little overwhelmed

 After almost 2 weeks of beautiful scenery, my family and I are back from vacation. It has been a long 2 weeks filled with lots to see and do, and to be honest, with all that we took in, and all of the packing/umpacking we've done, I'm a little overwhelmed. The pictures we took and the words I type won't do it justice, but here goes. The trip started off with us going to a wedding in Columbus, Ohio. I wasn't looking forward to it, but didn't let it ruin our time there. The day before the wedding, we went to the Columbus Zoo. 

We went to the stingray tank first, and Kyler and I got to touch some of them. There was a part where you could purchase minnows to feed them, and somebody next to us got some and started feeding them, and they all went crazy coming to that part of the tank. One ray in particular went up to us and put its head out of the tank and just stayed against the wall for a minute or so like that. A keeper told us that it wanted us to pet it, and it just floored me that a ray could be that smart. 

We saw some bats.

One of the elephants had recently had a baby, so that was kind of cool to see. There were so many more animals we saw, and I think Karen has most of those pictures on her phone. As always, a fun trip to the Columbus Zoo. 

We saw lots of funny places while driving to Ohio. A gas station called 'Sheetz' where you could buy gas station food and probably get the 'sheetz'.  

And a food joint called 'Fatz', where I assume all of the heavy eaters go. Thank you, folks. I'm here all day.....

The wedding was nice and different all at the same time. No, Brody Koerner wasn't there, but I did get to talk with his dad a little. Kyler talked to him more, asking him what state he was born in, telling him that he was 5 and when his birthday was, and also letting him know that we were in Ohio and went to a zoo. 

Karen's cousin Genie and her fiancee Jeremiah had a great wedding. They seem truly in love, and it was cool seeing them interact during the ceremony. At the end, all of his groomsmen put on Storm Trooper masks and there was lots of dancing and stuff in the wedding. Both the bride and groom are kind of into 'nerdy' stuff, so with a lot of that thrown in, it was fun, but also different. I didn't get many pictures of the wedding, but did get one of Kyler and Karen dancing afterwards. 

We drove to Denver, Colorado after the wedding, and I tell you what, no offense to people living in Kansas, but there is nothing there besides wind turbines and tumbleweed. We stopped at a rest area, and saw what we think were 2 wind turbine blades being delivered by trucks. They were truly something to behold. I touched one of them, but didn't get a selfie just in case doing that was illegal. 

See? Nothing but tumbleweed. 

We got to Colorado, and it was beautiful to see the rockie mountains and snow. 

On our last day in Ohio, we went to a Target, and they actually had Series 1 and Opening Day on the shelves. I purchased a hanging pack and hanging box of Series 1, a blaster of Opening Day, and we got some snow gear, and it all fit into 1 bag. Sometime between when we were in Ohio and Columbus, the cards  disappeared. I think they either got swiped by a hotel maid, they fell out of the bag when we opened our van door, or someone swiped them out of our van. Karen's van has one of those stupid 'keyless remotes' where you have to press the start button to start the car, but I just don't get the value in it. Yeah it won't start if the key isn't near the car, but neither will a car with a normal key. I feel with the keyless cars, you don't neccessarily think about the key as much, so you tend to forget it is there, which leads you to not locking the doors of your car because you don't want to have to worry about carrying the keys. Karen always keeps her keys in her purse, but rarely does she touch them because of the keyless thing. I keep mine on a keyring and one of those mountain climber things. Out of our cars in the past 7-8 years, hers has gotten broken into twice (three if you count the cards going missing). Mine has been once, but when mine did, the car was locked, so there wasn't anything you could do about it. Regular keys for the win. 

Well, I called Target, and they gave me a gift card for the cost of the blaster, and we managed to find the same assortment of cards at a Target in Colorado, so I basically got the same cards, and was out around 12 bucks. No biggie, at least I could find some 2022's. No Heritage, though. 

Somewhere between Ohio and Colorado, we lost Kyler's favorite stuffed owl. We ate at a Waffle House, and he had had it before we got there in the car, and when we came back to our car, it was gone. I assume it fell out of the car while opening the door at Waffle House. There was a little girl with her dad at Waffle House who both finished before we left, and if I had to guess, she saw the owl on the floor of the parking lot and took it. We were able to find the same owl for sale on Mercari by typing a description of it, and the new owl actually made it home to our house before we did, and Kyler so far thinks it's the same one. 

It snowed a little in Denver when we slept the first night, so Kyler got to see snow for the first time, and I saw it for the first time since 2004 or so. 

He liked it, and made a snow angel, snowballs, and a (really small) snowman.

Somehow, I didn't get a picture of myself in snow gear. 

The next day, we went to a few local shops, had lunch, and swam in the hotel pool. Kyler didn't want to go in at first, but once he was, we couldn't pull him out. 

The next day we left for New Mexico to see Karen's cousin Devry, her husband Miguel, and their daughter Zeffie for a few days. 

We went to an aquarium in Alburquerque, as well as the zoo. 

Kyler loved the rays.

We also got to see a cool tank with jellyfish in it. 

The zoo was smaller than the one in Colubmus, but it did have a nice picnic area in the middle. 

I didn't take too many pictures of this zoo, just one of the tiger (War Eagle!),

and my favorite, the penguins!

Another day, we took a tour of a museum dedicated to the uranium mines of New Mexico. Before the museum, we went to a nice diner, and I had some of the best hash browns I had ever had, along with a bacon and cheese croissant. 

Part of the museum was underground, and it had everything set up like it was a real live working mine.

Kyler enjoyed exploring it.

I liked some of the old historic things like a card that they used to make sure everyone was out when they were about to explode part of the mine. 

That is basically what the finished uranium looked like. It seems amazing that they had the technology to figure out how much uranim was in rocks and stuff like 80 years ago. 

The next day, Devry took us up one of the mountains, and we got some great pics from the top of it. It was scary being that close to the edge, and the pictures don't do it justice. 

I got a piece of the rock from one of the places we hiked up it, and it is now with a few of the other rocks I got in my garden (more on that later). 

The last day in New Mexico, we hiked up this mountain to see where a volcano erupted from Mt. Taylor years ago. I got a piece of rock from a lava pile near a gas station. Felt like charcoal. 

MIguel, Devry, Zeffie, Karen, and Kyler hiking down the mountain. 

We later hiked down another side of the mountain to see an ice cave. It was really cold the further you went down, and I got a picture with Kyler at a snow pile, since I figured it could be the last chance we have to see snow for a while. 

The rock formations had ice piles in a number of places. 

The bottom of the ice caves had a good 20 foot section of ice. Since the caves never get hotter than 31 degrees, it stays frozen all year. 

We went bowling that night, and I got a 107 the first game, coming in second, and won the final game with a 109. It was Kyler's first time bowling, and he loved it.

On the way back to Devry and Miguel's, we drove up a mountain and got a look at the stars. It was amazing, but I tore a contact, so I just went the rest of the trip without them, so it was blurry. I still got a good view of the stars because it was so dark, and Karen got some good pictures. You could even see the Milky Way on one of them.

I was, however, glad to be getting back to the routine of being home. Devry and Miguel kind of go by their own time, and it affected my blood sugar some. One day we didn't eat lunch until like 4, so my blood sugar spiked down and I had to chug a regular soda once we got to the restaurant. I don't think we ended up doing dinner that night either because we had lunch so late and they kind of snacked. While I won't enjoy going back to work, I do enjoy my routine. Devry and Miguel were gracious hosts, and we just tried to go with the flow with them and I probably should've done a better job at bringing snacks and seeing what direction my sugar was going. 

It took us 2 days to drive back to Florida, and we arrived last night around 11PM. I finally got all of our crap out of bags, and have the house halfway liveable, and have done about 6 loads of laundry. The vacation was worth it though.

I know you all are wondering about what we pulled from the Target packs. Well, I got some mascots for Kyler, some new Rays and Tigers, a Griffey for Kyler (how can Topps put retired guys in Opening Day now?), and we pulled a Verlander relic and a Twins blue parallel. Nice pulls, and we still have 3 packs of the blaster to open, as well as the Series 1 pack and hanging box. Might do that when he gets home from school in an hour. 

I also got some plant things ready for today. The 2 white things with soil are seed starter things that Karen got. We will probably start some seeds in there and hopefully be able to transplant them. Last year, I grew some sunflowers to about 6 inches and transplanted them, but they died. I hope if I do it when they are an inch high like the package says that I will get better results this year. 

As for the rocks I collected on vacation, I got one from Colorado, the next one down is from the summit we climbed, then the lava rock, and last is a piece of petrified wood from the ice cave. 

I also got my back flower box ready for the spring. 

I tried my best to label what I have in there. Basically 3 pineapples in 3 different corners, a milkweed plant in the other one, 2 blueberry bushes on either side, an orchid tree in the middle, a few galdiolas at the bottom, some bulb plants popping up in various places, as well as a few marigolds to hopefully warn off the squirrels and stuff. I am hoping to plant lots of sunflowers in the box this spring, as well as whatever else I can manage to keep alive. Maybe I will plant some sunflowers around the sides of the house again, and harvest some pineapples this year. Not too much though, because as you can tell from this post about the vacation I've had, sometimes you can get overwhelmed. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy