Good to be Home

Our family is back home after a whirlwind trip to Arkansas. John's grandfather passed away last Tuesday, and we left Wednesday for his funeral. It is a grueling trip, but we were very thankful to be able to be there to honor him.

We had really hoped to fly instead of drive, but the cheapest plane tickets John found were $700 apiece...and there are five of us. We knew we could drive for way less than that...but it meant driving 18 hours. It's never pleasant, but it's always worth it. Especially when we get to see our kids enjoying their cousins. Their only cousins are on John's side of the family, and they LOVE them so much.

We have tentatively been planning to make a two-week trip to Arkansas sometime later this summer. I'm not even willing to discuss it at this point (give me a few weeks). I tell people that drive is so much like labor...I need to forget how bad it is before I'm ready to do it again. Note that I stopped after having three children! smile! I will say that it has gotten much easier to travel that distance as our children have gotten bigger. Abbey being potty-trained makes a really big difference. Apparently, she's overcome her fear of public restrooms being that we had to stop once an hour for her yesterday morning. And we've also discovered books on cd. We listened to Frindle, Anastasia Krupnik, Amber Brown is NOT a Crayon, and Henry and Ribsy during our drive. Enlightening stuff! The dvd player is nice too, but I make them alternate between movies and books...mainly because I can't stand the dvd player noise in my ear (it hooks onto the back of my seat).

Since we got home yesterday afternoon, I guess that makes today the kid's first official day of summer vacation. I was thinking we might head to the library. They signed up last week for the summer reading program, and they've been asking if I'd let them count all the books we listened to as hours read. Hmmmm...because each book is roughly three recorded hours, they'd be finished with the entire game card TODAY...so no way! They're bummed, and I'm the mean mom. Whatever.

A few minutes ago, I heard and recognized one of my favorite sounds. It was the sound of the Air Force Thunderbirds flying overhead. We live about 5 miles north of the Air Force Academy and every year at the AF graduation, the Thunderbirds perform. The perk for us is that they practice flying overhead for a few days. They practice their stunts and their formation flying and it's just super cool. So, in a little while, we're heading out back to take in some amazing sights. Awesome! Just another one of the many reasons we love living here.

Another reason would have to be the cool mountain air. We were greeted by it yesterday afternoon, and with temps in the low 60s, it was a welcome change from the mid 90s we experienced in Arkansas. 90+ temps with 90% humidity is really HOT. I don't miss that or those pesky mosquitoes one bit!