High Gear, warp speed, and overdrive!

You know what?  I still cringe when people mention North Dakota.  I'm not sure if that reaction will ever leave any of us.  If your getting tired of hearing about it, rest assured we are tired of feeling this way.

I don't know if we'll ever fully put behind us the feeling of betrayal we felt when our  pastor turned his back on the racism our kids were experiencing at church and in the parsonage.  He heard our kids called the N word and yet he never, ever dealt with this.  Because of this we have yet to be able to return to a church....any church.

However this situation caused us to have a profound effect on our faith.  We know for certain that God looked out for us and got us away those who pretend to be one thing, yet quietly lack ANY moral backbone. 

In fact North Dakota is so negative to us that when we traveled out to Missoula to visit our friends in March, we drove the longer route and went across South Dakota and Wyoming solely to avoid having to set foot in N.D.  But we have all become stronger due to others' bigotry. 

We had a brief get-together with some of our Renegade friends in Montana and got to meet the newest Renegade.  He's a delightful, happy little baby and I'm so glad I got to smoosh on him when he was just an itty bitty newborn.  The kids had a rockin' good time as usual together and the grown ups learned how to drink banned beverages in Styrofoam coffee cups.....just to stay sane while supervising our kids at the Tribal YMCA. 

April came and went and saw Madison turn 17!  We now have 2 college visits scheduled; one at Grinnell College in 2 weeks and one at San Jose State University next month.  She also has Middlebury College and Sweet Briar College in the line up and somewhere down the list....Oregon State and Portland State.  She wants to double major in International Relations and Arabic with a minor in Spanish. Her career goals remain set on the CIA and I firmly believe this kid can do it.

Marc continues to love his DEA office here and enjoys that its a much larger office than the one in Bismarck.  He's busy, but being the boss allows him to be home with more consistency.  YEAH!

Richnigthder has made the travelling baseball team and the practices have already started.  It will be a very busy summer with his schedule alone.  Jerome remains happy...happy....happy!  He's doing a summer day camp for a couple weeks and is really excited about it.  Thomas is 6 months out now from his complete knee reconstruction surgery and you can't tell that he had a huge surgery.  Now we wait until next fall to have the other knee done.  He wants the summer to tear it up on his motorcycle....and I suppose have time to continue wrecking the bum knee even more.  As for me, I don't have any time for myself.  I am constantly on the move keeping kids in check.

I did squeeze in a quick trip to Oregon with the little boys.  They had never been there and had a great time with my 3 sisters, nieces and nephews.  We went to a psychic and Tarot Card reader and that was a blast and shockingly dead on the money accurate.  My sister Kathleen and her husband, Art just took a transfer to Little Rock and I am SO excited since it is the first time in 10 years that I have had family closer than 1500 miles.  For us it will be a straight shot down  I-35 and I can't wait to spend a holiday with them.

Now I'm off to order Madison's cheerleading outfit.  Yep.  In addition to Dressage, Speech Team, and
writing for the school paper, she's made the Varsity Cheerleader team.  Good God this house is in high gear and constantly moving.  And secretly, I love it!