1200 miles

Hello out there!

We are home again. The last week in the Sprengeler household has been quite eventful, albeit long and rather arduous. Mike and I took a week off and drove all over rural MN looking at potential practice locations. 1200 miles later, we are finally home. Before the week started, we had already checked out Grand Rapids, Park Rapids, and Staples. We are blessed to have such willing grandparents, aunties, and uncles to watch our kiddos while we drove all over the place, visited hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and towns, and spent some time with some truly great people. Monday was Ortonville, Tuesday was Paynesville, Wednesday was Mora, Thursday was Perham, and Friday was Long Prairie.

All in all, we were really excited and impressed with rural folks. They are such nice, generous, down-to-earth people. I am thrilled that we have jobs that can go anywhere...even a tiny town in the "middle of nowhere." Now we just have to decide. I think we will probably take a second look at a few places and have our minds made up by Christmastime. Now I have to sit and write out a million thank you cards for all the tours, homemade dinners, gifts, etc. Perham even babysat Mary for us while we toured!

...and if that wasn't enough to do in a week of craziness...we decided to make Saturday our annual trip to the State Fair. The camera died before we got in, so I sadly don't have any pictures. We did make it eight hours with Julia, who actually fell asleep in her stroller while sitting up, with her head drooping forward onto a metal bar. It was pretty funny. The new food at the fair this year (which I did not buy) was "chocolate covered bacon on a stick." Ew. I wonder if it was breaded....

We didn't get the bucket of Sweet Martha's cookies and do the Moo Booth (all you can drink milk) this year because it was just TOO crowded...but we did manage to eat:

Kettle Corn

Foot Long Hot Dog

a TWO foot long HUGE corn dog (whoa...)

Frozen Apple cider

a Gyro thingy

Deep Fried Candy Bar on a stick

Frozen Coffee thing

Mini Donuts

Fresh Potato Chips (a bowl the size of your head...)

...and FOUR things of cheese curds between six of us, plus Julia.

ugh...I should never do things like making lists of the crap I ate at the fair. That couldn't be a healthy move. So much for the postpartum dieting.... ;-)