This is a picture of a Craft show from a few years ago. My sister, Elsie, the one in Blue, crochets hundreds and hundreds of finger puppets and sells them at Craft shows. This is a nice picture showing Diane holding a plant she bought, Debbie, Donna and me in the pink sweater.

If you don't have Diane's care pages about her upcoming surgery. I just got a new one this afternoon. She was scheduled to have surgery on the 4th of May but it is now scheduled for the 14th. She has to have another Ultra-sound and a more intensive MRI as there is some question as to how large the tumor is. The kind of surgery she has will be determined according to the size. How frustrating for Diane to have to go through more tests. At least I will be back from Alaska before she has her surgery.

I talked to Richard today. He seems to be doing well. He should be able to be back to work in about three weeks. He says he has to sleep on his back as it hurts to much too much to turn over.

Now I will tell you about the adventure that Donna and I have planned for July---------

On Friday, April 24th I had been pretty depressed because I had been fretting about Richard's and Diane's upcoming surgeries. I was telling Debbie how upset I was that day. After I talked to Debbie I decided to keep my mind busy and look up some things on the Internet. After work Debbie was going to meet up with Kent and they were going to look at tile for the backsplash over the sink. Debbie took me with her to cheer me up. On the way to Seattle, Debbie said"You need to think about the next place you want to go. How about South Dakota?" I just started laughing and said I can't believe you said South Dakota. I don't remember now why I was looking it up particulary but I told her I had been on line for almost half an hour reading about the Laura Ingalls Museum in DeSmet, South Dakota. Debbie mentioned South Dakota because she thought I would like to see Mt. Rushmore. Anyway, Debbie says it must be where I am supposed to go since we were both thinking about South Dakota that afternoon.

Donna and I are going because Donna has the summer off from teaching. Now I think she is more excited than me. It turns out there are so many things to see there. There are Laura Ingalls Wilder museums in both DeSmet and Walnut Grove, Minnesota. There are a number of places we want to see. We had so many on our list, we were not sure we would have time to go to Mount Rushmore but Donna juggled things around and we now have that on our list. Even Kent said if we didn't go to Mount Rushmore it would be like visiting Seattle and not seeing the space needle. It is still so interesting that Debbie and I were thinking about South Dakota on the same afternoon. Yes, Debbie, Mount Rushmore will stay on our list.

Donna and I will be leaving on our trip on July 21st and returning on July 28th. But first my Alaska trip which is almost here.

Then I started looking up Modale, Iowa where my mother was born and raised to see how far that would be. I still had the picture of Modale on the computer and Donna calls again and said Laif thought it would be nice if you could go where your mom was born. So that is now on our agenda. We will be flying into Minneapolis and renting a car one way. Donna has reserved one that we can drop off in Omaha. She found one that is not charging an arm and a leg. It is usually way more expensive one way. At the end of the trip, we will be flying back from Omaha. Modale is about 25 minutes from Omaha so that will be near the end of our trip.

Modale currently has a population of about 300 people. It is just a farming area. My mother said Modale was a water stop for the train. My mother was the night telephone operator when she was in high school. The night operator had a bed to sleep in and only got up if someone rang into the switchboard. Most nights there weren't any calls. It will be interesting to know that I am walking the ground my mother walked on.