Summer and the Roadtrip Part 1

School ended on Friday, June 18th, had a party for my mom's 60th on Saturday, said good bye to my sister and her kids who were visiting for a few weeks, and we packed up our new (used), most awesome-ist, pimped out, pastor's wife ride of a suburban and headed east on Sunday. Destination...Minneapolis.

The first day we drove to my cousin's house in Montana and we stayed there two nights. The kids had fun with their 2nd cousins, whom we LOVE, and we chilled in the hammock, watched the World Cup games, enjoyed some great company & scenery, and even watched the little kids dress up as princesses, superheros and dinosaurs and go on the trampoline-it was hilarious!

You may think we are crazy for driving our family of seven from WA to MN, but hey, we had a fantastic time and I even heard my kids say that they liked this as much as our Hawaii trips (I thought they were crazy, but I didn't let on since this will happen MUCH more often than Hawaii I am guessing!). We seriously surprised ourselves with how well the first 4 days went! The kids are at a great age and really love to travel, see friends and family, and just explore. Our new car has dual entertainment and I think it is possibly one of the sweetest inventions! The kids could watch a movie or listen to a book on tape in the back, and we could listen to our own thing up front-very cool! We said that in the mornings the kids had to travel like 'the olden days' (remember this is relative to their ages) and they couldn't use electronics. They had a bunch of things in their backpacks to do, so they never seemed bored. In the afternoons, we took turns with who got to choose the video or book on tape. For the most part, they watched a few hours of Little House on the Prairie-season 2. They absolutely loved it. And since we were traveling through Montana and the Dakotas, it seemed very fitting!

After going through Montana and North Dakota in two days of driving, we finished our last day of our first leg in the Minnesota twin cities-but not before seeing a cow sticking out of a VW or stopping in Fargo, ND to see a favorite boutique of mine, Hot Mama, in a location I hadn't been to before. (wow--that was a crazy run on sentence, but I am too tired to fix it!) Some people do this with baseball stadiums, I do it with Hot Mamas!

Upon arriving in Minneapolis, we stayed with our dear friends Mike and Becky. We had a fabulous time with them thanks to Hotel Donna and Herb-thanks again! The kids loved reconnecting and even retreating to the basement one night for a tornado watch. We were jam packed during our days there with Daron in meetings for the Evangelical Covenant Church, our denomination that Alive is a part of, and me gallivanting through the cities visiting with my aunt, old(young??)friends, and even taking one of their yoga classes-thanks Syd! I always wish I had more time when we are in the cities to see more friends and family, but this time we had to take what we could get and for Daron this was a work trip-which he loved by the way, and felt SO thankful that he had the opportunity to go to this.

Last, but not least, as we were leaving the twin cities, we got to meet up with some friends of Fia and Kwame's from Eban House, their adoption center, in Ghana. This mom and I have been cyber friends for the last year and they live in Minnesota, so it was so fun for not only Fia and Kwame, but the rest of us to see these two special girls again that we fell in love with in Ghana during our visits. They are two very neat girls and it was great to meet their mom and sister and see them SOOO happy. It was a great experience and I forever treasure any time we can get together with friends from Ghana and in our adoption community.

Okay...now I must wrap this up and will post Part 2 of our summer road trip soon. Next stop: Libertyville, Lake Geneva, WI, and Rockford, IL....