Vacation

We got back this afternoon from vacation.  It was so nice to be home...you don't realize how much you miss your own bed until you've been gone awhile, and well, two weeks was awhile for the kids and I.  Brad joined us on the first part of our vacation in Montana.  We spent the week in a house with my Mom and this side of the family.  There were 14 of us, so between cousins and Aunts and Uncles there wasn't a dull moment.

We ended up renting a minivan and driving with Grandma Cheri and Uncle Paul.  I wasn't sure how the kids would do on such a long road trip, it was over 1,000 miles in 2 days, but they did great.  I think what made it such a good trip for them was that there was one car seat in the back and one in the middle, so an adult was seated beside a kid the entire trip...someone to entertain them.  Mia of course wanted Grandma Cheri beside her the entire time...Grandma Cheri should get a spiritual reward for her patience with Mia the entire trip.  Mia is not very self-entertaining, she needed a constant companion almost the whole time.  :)  Her favorite activity was making sticker books and spelling words from ABC stickers we had brought along.  We spelled a lot of words.

Before the trip, Calvin would get his binky just at naps and at nighttime...we plan on soon losing the binkys, but I didn't want to do this to him before the trip.  He soon figured out that his binkys were in the backpack and he would scream as loud as he could in the car, "I want a binky!"  At first I wouldn't give in to him, but the last two days of driving, I just let him have his binky the entire time...it was the only way to keep him happy in the car.

When we were in Montana, the kids spent time fishing, hiking, throwing rocks in a lake...lots of fun kid activities.  We also took a trip to Yellowstone for the day and saw Buffalo up close, some waterfalls, and Old Faithful.  Calvin and I ended up getting the stomach flu for a day at the end of the vacation...no fun, but we recovered and are much better.

After Montana, we dropped Brad off at the airport and we then continued on to North Dakota to see my Grandma and Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins.  We were there for 5 days before we headed home.  The kids had a lot of fun out on the farm, my Uncle's farm.  There was plenty of wide open spaces to run freely.  It was just such a sweet time with my Grandma and family, they really enjoyed the little ones.

 Of course the drive home was long, it seemed much longer, and it probably was, but we made it!  And we are glad to be home.  Glad for the memories, but really glad to be home.