I don’t think I have ever taken a vacation that has lasted over a week or ten days at the most. I seem to remember splitting them up. Well I will be leaving July 25th to start a vacation that will take me all the way to August 9th. That’s 16 days. Sixteen days away from baseball, work, and more baseball.

Well, kind of. The first three days of this vacation, Josh will be playing with an underclassmen team from his organization at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The American National director invited some kids to go up with them to play in a 17/18U Tournament. He called it a showcase. I’ll just call it some tournament experience. I am hoping this will give us some more clarity on Josh’s future baseball plans. Hopefully we will all have fun. He gets to stay in a room with other boys in the hotel while I will be rooming with another parent from our team. He left this morning with that parent. I will head up on Friday morning.

One of my favorite times of the year as a baseball fan is the last week of July. I love reading about the proposed trades and reading fans reactions of what could happen to their team. I will have to spend a whole lot less time paying attention to things this year as where I will be has limited cell service and no MLB Network on the TV.

Normally each year we go to a Christian family camp called Northern Pines (1) in Green Lake, Wisconsin. Josh has gone up the past few years both weeks to be a Child Care Advisor the first week and camp the second week. I was planning on taking him from Kenosha to there on Sunday and drive back that night or the next morning. On July 17th, I got a message from the Northern Pines director, Dean Jaderston, asking us if we could just stay up the full first week and work. I asked my boss the next day and she ok’d my taking the time off. Lyn could not take the time off. I recommended to Dean that he check with the Rau family since they are teachers and the other part of our transition team.

Since Lyn has to get there on Friday August 1st because we are part of the transition team, we needed to figure out a way for her to get up there. We could not find any reasonable price planes that took her to the local airports of Appleton or Madison, Wisconsin. Amtrak means train to train thru or train to bus with both thru Chicago. Lyn was not all that thrilled with that so we ended looking at flights to Milwaukee or even to St. Paul, MN where she could catch a ride across with the Rau family. Well, since Lyn could not come, Janelle Rau will be there 1st week now teaching. That means there was extra room in the Raumobile traveling from St. Paul. Milwaukee is about 90 miles away from Green Lake so that would mean about a three hour round trip to pick her up. The cost of the ticket directly to St. Paul was more than twice as much as the ticket to Milwaukee. Dilemma time…So we slept on it.

On Monday the 21st I told my buddy at work the story and he decided to look himself. Would you believe that the cheaper flight to Milwaukee goes thru St. Paul? A call to Todd Rau with an agreement he could pick her up at the airport on Friday morning in St. Paul and drive her over with his son and Lyn booked the flight. The airline just doesn’t need to know that she will not be checking in on her connecting flight from St. Paul to Milwaukee.

So I will be up at Northern Pines for both weeks. I get to hear 5 new speakers during the two conferences as I will be the sound and audio visual guy first week. Most importantly I will get to spend some time with friends I only get to see once a year who are now going first week along with my friends from second week. I look forward to strengthening these relationships and creating new ones. I think God is working in my family to get us ready for these weeks ahead. Come August 9th as we drive back from Wisconsin I hope to feel refreshed and ready to take on whatever life brings us.