Wisconsin by the numbers

What a great trip to the Dells (my Chicagoland team mocked me for calling it Wisconsin Dells):

• 4 hour drive
• 2 stops along the way, including 1 stop at Cohen's favorite rest stop in the world: walls he can climb up and walk along
• 3 days and 2 nights at Great Wolf Lodge
• 1 terrified toddler of the people in character costumes
• 2 hours later bedtime and 1 hour earlier wake-up for Cohen aand Jensen since they had to share a room and they have completely different sleeping preferences ("Jensen, will you please just stop talking so I can finally sleep?").
• 2 Cohen bathroom runs per hour at the waterpark
• 0 bathroom runs for most of the kids there. What are swim diapers really for anyway? I have never seen so many kids peeing in public. And I was a Boy Scout. Seriously, you could look in any direction and see the telltale signs on the faces of overfilled children testing the chlorine effectiveness in the pools. But I digress...
• 3 story cargo net climb for Dad, to Cohen's shock and to the shagrin of onlookers below
• Unknown number of inappropriate swimsuits worn by others that made me feel like I'm much better looking in my sweet swim shirt than I thought
• 14 inch fish (we caught 2) from the tourist trap kid fishing ponds in my feeble attempt to git some country back in my city boys. Didn't work. Though Cohen was impressed with the foreign exchange student working the gutting station who seemed to enjoy ripping the beating heart out of the fish just a little too much.
• 15,000 steps per day
• 6 Moosejaw root beers
• 12 dollars in tolls on the way home
• 45 extra minutes for trusting Google Maps to safely lead us through a 35-mile construction project
• 1 happy family with tuckered-out kids and tuckereder parents

We got back Friday, Liz was tired and sore, but it was from the walking and not from the chemo. So we got a sitter on Saturday and ran errands! It was a great date: Goodwill for donations, Old Navy and Gap for boys clothes, Eddie Bauer to make me feel super adventurous and want to buy a lot of safari pants. It felt...normal. I was starting to forget what normal feels like. It's definitely a new normal, but I love seeing Liz regaining her strength and exercising her considerable will.

Herceptin, Perjeta, and blood work yesterday. Her numbers are still great. Hopefully hair and nails will come back and the tingling pain in hands and feet will go away within the next 3 months, 6 at most (we hope!). Glad to be home. Gladder to be doing "normal" things again as a family.

Go Team Liz.