We had a wonderful summer. At the end of August Richard's Dad had to go to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. His heart wall was too thick and surgery was necessary. We drove out there and on the way got to spend time with Luke, Sandy, Celeste and Grant. We had a little birthday party for Grant's first birthday. It was so hot so we really enjoyed going to their local pool. We also stopped and had lunch with Natalie's(Joel's wife)parents and spent the night with Uncle Skeeter and Aunt Muriel in Rockford, IL. We joined Richard's Mom Marilyn and his sister Kris to be there for Ken's surgery. The surgery was on August 28. All went well and the next morning Ken was sitting up and eating jello. We left on August 29 since things had gone well. Richard had decided to get four new tires installed on our 2001 Town & Country in Rochester. On the way home we had just eaten dinner and got back on the Indiana Turnpike when we heard a funny noise. We started driving very slowly on the shoulder of the road to try and figure out what the problem was. Richard shook each of the tires and they seemed fine. We kept driving slowly and all of a sudden the left back wheel & tire flew off the car, over our two lanes, the median and the other two lanes of traffic and into the grass. A guy who patrols the road came and he was able, with great difficulty because of tall grass, find the tire. Two police cars came by because they heard it was our CAR that had flown across the road. We called AAA and got towed to Sturgis, MI, about 20 miles in the right direction where there was a GoodYear dealer. As they were removing the van from the tow truck I noticed a sign on the shop...closed for the holiday weekend. Oh well. We stayed at the Wood Motel (0 star rating!) which was within walking distance of our van. The next day Richard was able to get the Firestone dealer across the street to find some lug nuts and put the spare tire on the van so we could get home. We certainly felt God's hand of protection. Miraculously our wild tire did not hit any other cars and this was Friday night of Labor Day weekend!
We just got a call and Ken, Marilyn & Kris are back in Nebraska. Please pray that Ken will continue to recover well!