Spring Break 2008

Wow, what a week! We just returned home from a whirlwind cross-country tour. We spent over forty hours in the car. Yes, forty. It's a good thing we like to drive! (Thank you to our good friends who loaned us their Harry Potter CDs--they saved us. And we actually listened to the entire seventh book) First we spent a couple of days in Denver with my brother and his family. It's always so fun to be with them. Unfortunately, they weren't on break and had to go to work and school. But we found our own fun while they were attending to the matters at hand, and hung out with them when we could. We decided to spend an afternoon at the Denver zoo. It was terrific! The weather was gorgeous. I have been wanting to go to the zoo for a while now. Especially since Lucie is having so much fun learning about animals...their signs and their sounds. The highlights included... the carousel, the elephants (of course), the sea lion show, the baby mountain goats, and the baby tamarin. We all had a great time and even returned from our adventure with a mild sunburn.

Mom and Slady with the elephants

The carousel

This pic is a little blurry, but can you see the look of pure delight on her little face?

On Wednesday, we repacked the car and headed to Independence, Missouri. I guess you could say we had a mini-family reunion. Jim and Diane were so hospitable! They opened up the mission home to all of us. We were able to use it as a home base, even when they weren't there. It was so wonderful to see them and have them show us some of the historical sites in the area. (We were also able to see Cort and Trish in action at the visitor center--they looked great!) It brought back many fond memories of my own mission. We were able to spend some time with Dana and Kim and their kids and Zach and Sara. Dana and company drove up from Arkansas to hang out with us. Zach and Sara live about a half-hour away in Kansas, so they were able to break away from work and spend some time with us too. We don't get to see these aunts, uncles and cousins very often and we cherished the little time that we had with them.

Josh and S-lady

The cousins

Miss Kate

It's so fun to just let the kids play and sit around the table and talk and catch up on everything. We were also able to visit a local marble factory and watch a demonstration on making marbles by hand. Pretty cool! Who knew you could spend that much money in a marble store??



Thanks you guys, for making the time to meet up with us! But, it all ended too quickly, and it was back in the car.

We drove back to Denver on Saturday and then on to home today. It was wonderful to just all be together without any distractions. The kids were great. Bman and Slady have always been good travelers. I don't have to worry too much about them. I wasn't sure how Lucie would do. We haven't taken her on too many road trips since last summer. But, she did amazingly well. She got a little sick of it towards the end of the day on Saturday. She would sit in her car seat and say "out...out" over and over again. It was pretty cute even though she was miserable. We tried to stop and let her out when we could. She would run through the grass at the rest areas or blow dandelion fluff or frolic in the last patches of winter snow.

Lucie playing with a pump somewhere in Kansas.

Blowing dandelions

She's been so happy since we pulled into our drive-way. She keeps running to all of her favorite spots in the house. It think she's glad to be home. Pretty cute!