A Wedding, Birthdays, Thanksgiving Dinner & One Long Road Trip
After a little less then 2 weeks of travel and over 5000 miles driven, we’re back home. My contribution to the driving was 3 hours and my son 5 hours. DH got to do the rest all by himself. He does wonderful but for one part of his anatomy that gets quite sore.
Miss Audrey was a trooper, riding many long hours in her car seat.
When we left Arizona we drove to Missouri where my nephew was getting married. Justus was asked to be the ring bearer. He was so scared embarrassed (I’m not sure what.) but he was like a soldier walking down the aisle so very stiff and he never did relax …
except when we got to the reception hall. While I was conversing with those at my table I was tapped on the shoulder and asked "Is that your little boy?" I almost didn’t need to look to know it probably was but I did and sure enough it was my little dear. He was descending from the 2nd floor but instead of walking down the stairs normally he was on the outside of the banister walking on the edge of the steps. At least he didn’t try sliding down the railing! Of course, I didn’t get overly excited about it since this was pretty mild boy stuff for my guys. (But being a responsible mom I did tell him "No more doing that kind of thing.")
Leaving Missouri on Sunday afternoon we drove to meet my parents in a little town of Illinois. They were brave enough to say "Yes, we’ll ride with you 15 hours to Pennsylvania and back." We were supposed to get a motel Sunday night but for whatever reason we didn’t. I never did find out since I was already sleeping. My mom was like a little owl and stayed up ALL night watching whoever was driving. She doesn’t want to do any driving but she can’t sleep either.
So we pulled in to my sisters driveway in Pennsylvania early Monday morning the same day as Serenity’s birthday.
Serenity is now 11 and is such a blessing in our home.
My brother-in-law thought that for fun(?) (ha, ha, just kidding Jon) we could repaint his living room and lay wood flooring, so that afternoon some of the preparations were made for the rest of the weeks work.
You know how hard it is to figure out what color of paint to use. Well my sister is no exception. Check out that back wall. It’s starting to look like an artists palette with all the different paint samples on it.
Whenever family comes to our house and sometimes even friends(!) we have a work project planned. We’ve completed all kinds of things during these times. It gives the guys something to do since we usually don’t want to load all 25 of us in vehicles to go somewhere. They have a good time working together – at least they’ve never told us differently. Ignorance is bliss, right?
Wednesday was Audrey’s 3rd birthday. I determined to finish her baby quilt, that I started about 3 years ago, before we left on our trip. I gave it to her and she loves it. I was wondering if it wouldn’t meant much to her since she’s bigger, but happily that wasn’t the case.
I used a pinwheel pattern and tried stippling for the first time.
Audrey found a mini Mickey Mouse cake pan and asked her daddy if he would make a cake with her. I love that my husband is such a good father. After they baked the cake they cut it up into pieces (no icing) and Audrey carried the plate around to everyone asking if they would like a piece of her birthday cake. At least if she didn’t say all that that’s what she meant!
Thanksgiving was so nice. Food and fellowship with friends, topped off with some music at the end of the evening.
Our week ended with a visit to an Amish family that we’ve met a few times on our visits to PA. They served a supper of soup, crackers, a veggie tray and homemade pretzels with a sweet and sour dip. The pretzels are top notch and easy to make too. I wrote about it once before on one of our past trips to PA.
What was interesting about the evening beside their using gas lights(!) was the amount of people they had come. In addition to the 24 of us they had many other family members come for supper and many that just dropped by for part of the evening. They also enjoy having a good time with simple amusements. I LOVE that. In this video-game, movie crazed generation it was completely refreshing. I didn’t see any whining from the children either. I wonder how they prevent that?
My husband is a great storyteller of things that has happened to him in the past, and it was sort of humorous, but they gathered around him wanting to hear more funny things. And they remembered stories from the previous years.
It makes me think of my husband’s family – when we get together we just have a grand time listening to the brothers reminiscing about stories from their childhood and beyond – and boy do they have some.
But back to our trip. We left PA Sunday morning at 5a.m. and drove straight through to Arizona, except for a 3 hour nap on the side of the road . 45 hours. You wouldn’t want to see a picture of us after 45 hours. You talk about bad hair. We looked pretty rough. If somebody had driven by our breakfast stop yesterday morning, when we were parked under an overpass (doesn’t that sound like an ideal location?) I’m sure they would have thought we looked like homeless waifs.
Today the house is permeated with an egg smell or devilled egg smell (depending on who you talk to) since the water hasn’t been turned on for a while (maybe something to do with our water softener). At least our hair will look better after our showers. I’m not making any promises though on how pretty we’ll smell.
Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments