Summer Has Ended

So technically summer has not ended but this coming week is school and summer vacation is gone for another year. Bella will start school next week. She is officially a kindergartner!! Yay!! Drew will go to preschool 2x a week and story time 1x a week on base. He also will be doing physical therapy 2x a week. Helen and Stephen will be doing Sequoia Charter Online School at home. We look forward to the school year and what is brings. I am excited to see all what each kid will learn.

The Summer Trip From Hell =) But All Worth It In The End!!

The good Ole family trip was fun but had some interesting points in the trip. We made it but I am not sure if I would adventure to driving again without Andy. Not that I can't do it, it is just not so much fun without him. We left Yuma to head to Mesa to pick my mom up and get the truck in for the 100,000 mile check-up. Well something simple turned to something complicated and expensive. When we finally left 5 days later than planned, we were driving in Payson, when a good Ole value popped off (didn't I just get the truck fixed??), I thought we had gotten a flat tire but it seemed to be a faulty truck value that Ford trucks seem to pop off. Easy fix but not what I wanted on our first day of driving. At that point, I made the decision that if anything else went wrong or had to turn back around to go to Phoenix, we were not going on the trip. God was in our favor that day. (We also had no other problems with the truck after this). We did not drive far that day, tempers and nerves were not the most relaxed to say the least. I then knew my biggest mistake was not listening to Andy telling me to go alone. Oh well, not much I can do......... The following days were long but easy. We headed to Kenosha, WI to visit our friends Jenny and family. We stayed a couple of days and were heading to our next adventure - Naperville, IL (We never made it) :0( The dog ended up getting overheated and almost died. So we rushed him to the vet and praying everything was going to be okay. It was a huge lesson that we learned and will never be more scared for him. It was a huge miscommunication on our family part - Two days later he seemed to be fine and back to his normal self. Instead of seeing Chicago and Naperville liked we planned, we went straight to Bowling Green, OH. We made reservations for a hotel and the person that made it was interesting. A long story short, we got charged multiple times for a hotel we did not stay at. The pet rooms are only smoking rooms and it was too much for us to handle. So off at 1100 raining Friday night to get another hotel that seems to be booked everywhere we go. How fun. We ended up in a interesting hotel that night. It was two beds with 6 tired people, it fit what we needed for the night. So Saturday we ended up getting into a nicer hotel for the day. We meet with family and looked at houses where Grandma and my parents and Bob lived at. Looked at where my mom went to school. It was fun but again felt like it was cut short due to everything else that happened.

Sunday morning we are finally headed to MI. Our first stop was seeing Jenny and Greg and the three beautiful and handsome babies they have. It was our first time to see the babies and seeing Jenny and Greg from a year ago. They were gracious enough to open up their house to our big crazy family and fed us too!! It was the right way to start our vacation with family in MI.

We drove out to Dad's and Janet's house who was so kind to have us stay with them. We had lots of fun adventures with Grandma and Grandpa. We got to swim at Clarklake a few times, saw the yacht club, the horses around the property, the falls with the lights, and of course the family reunion. It was a good to catch up with some of the family we have not seen in a long time, the kids to meet some of the family for the first time or second or third time but not really remembering who they were.

We went blueberry picking with our Aunt Carly and our three cousins. We also went to the lake together and had lunch. Aunt Carly agreed to come back to Grandma and Grandpa house for dinner. It was one of the best days we had there.

We also got to spend an afternoon with are other Grandma. It was so good to play and have lunch with her. It makes us realize how much we miss everyone when we get to see everyone once a year. We also spent the evening with Aunt Carly and Uncle Chad's Clan. We had so much fun eating dinner, playing outside (Thanks Uncle Chad for watching us so the "mommies" could talk), eating ice cream bars, and watching a movie and popcorn before we headed back to Grandma and Grandpa house.

The day of the big party was fun. We help set up and much as we could. Grandma and Grandpa gave each of us a job to do. We ate, drank soda, had yummy homemade maple candy from the family in Canada. Mom was excited to get the maple syrup from Canada. It was a fun day to see our cousins and meeting new ones for the first time. We got to see Uncle Alex, Jake, and Sam. It was the perfect day to end our almost end to our vacation.

Sunday was a relaxing day for all of us. We got to see the Yacht Club by Grandpa and Grandma's house, we went swimming for the last time, and had really good pizza!! Mom started to pack everything up because the next day was the trip to head home.

Monday was a okay day. Grandpa picked Crush up from the boarders. We packed the truck up, and then it down poured rained for awhile. Our other Grandma was getting worried because we had not picked her up yet. So again, the leaving to head home started off late. We said our sad goodbyes to Grandma and Grandpa to head back to Bowling Green to pick our other Grandma up. We finally get there and ended up eating dinner with some family. We drove a few hours and stopped for the night.

Mom's favorite place to visit was Norte Dame. So we drove around the campus and took pictures. Then it was just more driving, and driving, and you guessed it more driving. We made it to Denver Colorado where mom's oldest friend Elena let up stay for the night. She took us to a cool bar/grill that allowed you to play board games and toys at the table. Can you believe that?? Mom and Grandma were arguing which way to go. Since mom is the nice person went Grandma's way (We thought it was beautiful, but all wished we had gone the other way). The hotel in one city was really expensive and up mom went to the "million dollar mountain" or in other words a very scary mountains at night in our truck. Three of us were asleep (mom was grateful since we fight a lot in the car) and mom was even scarred. We were only allowed to go 5-15 mph majority of the time. We didn't know what was on the other side. If it was a big drop, no drop, or little drop. We just saw the top of the trees blowing in the wind, and started to rain. Mom and grandma even got along. We finally hit the next town. Tired, scared, and not knowing what was ahead we stayed there for the night. The next day we saw beautiful scenes from the mountains, lakes, green everywhere, and the dreadful mountain we climbed a few hours before. Needless to say, we think we were glad we stopped when we did. We had a cool hotel with two bedrooms and a living room.

We did get see the four corners again. Last year mom and dad went but it was closed for repairs. We saw lots of land, cows, and horses. It was fun but exhausting. We would do it all over again to spend the week in MI.

We are getting settled back home and gearing up for school to start!!