Summer Road Trip

Must catch up before we enter the fall birthday season, which leads quickly to the holiday season, and no time to blog. Here we go! I am leaving this at the top for the blog-checkers, but will change the date and put it in its proper place in a few days.

The first two weeks of vacation were spent at the pool. The kids have really enjoyed their time their this summer. Lenna advanced a level in swimming lessons and can now swim, dive, float, pick up dropped items, blow bubbles, and somersault- all while holding her nose! Andrew's confidence still exceeds his abilities but he can jump off the edge and paddle to the side, as well as swim under water through hoops and cresting ocean waves (that about gave me a heart attack when I saw it). He thinks he is a fish with goggles.

We then left on a month-long adventure that took us across the country and up both coasts for a total of about 8,000 miles. That's a lot of hours in a seat belt! Our adventure started with a two-day drive north to see the Cross side of our extended family. I wrote about all of the things we learned on that trip here. Lessons learned, and hoped not to be repeated. It also turned out to be our last long trip in our Saturn.

While we were there we enjoyed lots of family time and birthday cake. We celebrated 7 birthdays on our trip, each with its own flavor of cake. Yummy.

His "favorite girl cousin" is Mel, who patiently plays with him each time we visit.

Uncle Matt taught Andrew some Star Wars games and became his "Jedi Master" for the weekend. Andrew loved having a male companion amidst all that estrogen.

We spent Monday at Adventure World, a western-themed amusement park, with Aunt Tammy, Aunt Lauri, Aunt Julie, and Nana. Mini-golf, ropes course, video arcade, play land, bounce house, roller coaster, bumper boats, go carts, and carnival rides. All that and I only lost Andrew once. . .

After a long day in sun we returned to get ready for our flight. Which seems like a good stopping point for the chapter, right?