Road Trip

I've heard it said a thousand times, "I need a vacation from my vacation...," but now I think I really understand that saying! Don't get me wrong, we had a fabulous family trip up "north" as we say down here in KY and wouldn't have done it differently...but we sure came home tired! We encountered blessing upon blessing as we connected with so many friends and family members this past week in Indiana. God is so good to us!

Viktor was off from school for "Reading Week" (you can't call it Spring Break in the Grad School world...too risky to think people might actually take a break from studying...ha) so we decided to use a vacation week from work and hit the road. First stop...Bloomington! We started out our time with our friends, Doug (whom Emily has affectionately named "Doggie") and Kristin. Kristin made a great meal and we enjoyed good conversation, as always. Somehow I walked away without any pictures of our time together...sad! However, Emily had a blast and even hijacked a few memory cards that we later found while unpacking (Kristin-they are in the mail!). We stayed out WAY beyond Emily's bedtime, but she was a trooper.

On Sunday we spent a much needed quiet day at the lake....

Emily helped Pop fix the flat tire in Mimi's SUV...

Viktor took out any school stress by splitting some wood...

Mimi and Emily spent a lot of time coloring, reading, and playing.

Even Uncle Eggie joined in the coloring fun. These two have waaay too much fun together!

On Monday we went into town to do some shopping with Mimi, then it was time to head to the bus lot to see Pop's school bus. Emily loves school buses and sings "The Wheels on the Bus" all the time. Whenever we see a school bus in town she says, "Pop schoolbus." She loved to watch all the buses come and go from the lot, but when Pop pulled up to the curb and the doors opened loudly, it freaked.her.out! She wanted nothing to do with the bus or Pop for the rest of the day. She was over it by dinnertime after he let her sit on his lap and eat his entire cup of bean soup....and she still loves to sing "The Wheels on the Bus."...no long term damage! :)

Monday evening we went to visit my grandmother for dinner. Here are the 3 generations using my dad's iPhone...hilarious. Emily has become quite the pro.

My grandma has always collected dolls and over the years has passed many of them down to me. I believe she only has this one baby doll left, which is one we gave her years ago from the American Girl Doll company. Well, Emily LOVES baby dolls and so I called my grandma a week or so before our visit and asked her if she would like to pass along her baby doll to Emily during our visit. She was delighted and it was so special to watch both of their faces light up as my grandma passed it along to Emily. Needless to say, Emily has hardly let go of that baby doll.

On Tuesday we were able to stop in at The Latest Glaze (the paint-your-own-pottery studio that my parent's own) to let Emily paint a mug. We had done her hand and foot prints last fall, but she is now old enough to paint her own treasures. Here she is picking out her paint colors with Pop...

Painting away...she loved it!

Tuesday afternoon we hopped in the car for a 4 hour trip up north to South Bend where we met up with the Gorsuch family. Chelsea and I are good friends from college and she and Wes now have a sweet girl, Claire, who is just about 7 months younger than Emily. It was great to see them and catch up a bit! Here are the girls exchanging kisses...

Fun times!

The girls!

That evening we made our way over to New Carlisle to stay with our friends Dan, Steph, and Buckeye Brutus (sorry Dan!). We enjoyed catching up, relaxing, baking cookies, drinking Ale 8, playing the Wii, touring Notre Dame, and being silly...(in case you can't tell, here Dan and Steph are teaching Emily how to be a monkey at breakfast...)

"Aunt Steph is the best!"-Emily
Steph put this huge dish of icing right in front of Emily...can you guess where most of it ended up!? :)

On Wednesday we made Stephanie's dream come true! Since they moved to this area (2 yrs ago), Steph has wanted to ride this cute little train around the mall. The only problem is that she has never had a kid to ride with. Well, Emily saved the day and we got a fun tour of the mall.
I'm not sure who enjoyed it more, Emily or Steph!

We love you guys!

Steph got me my first little tricycle!

On Thursday, we headed on over to Crown Point to visit the Ban family. I babysat these kiddos many years ago (starting when the oldest were 3 and 1) and they are a second family to me! I'm so thankful we were able to stop by and join in their family fun! With three kids ages 10, 13, and 15, there was never a dull moment! These kids kept Emily entertained for sure, but they also kept us entertained through their various extracurricular activities. Basketball, choir, theater, cross country, tennis, band, and soccer were all represented during our two day stay.

Here is Mae taking some quiet time to read one of Emily's favorite books...

LOVE IT!

She loves them!

On Friday I got to see Brick perform in the Community Theater production of "Back to the 80's Musical." This kid is talented!! He has a great voice, is a great performer, and totally radiates energy! What a joy to see these kids growing up!

An extra special blessing that came about on our trip is that we got to visit my grandparent's grave site. I didn't know my grandfather (he died years ago), but my Gram was so dear to me! Although I attended her funeral (Dec 2001), I was not able to attend the burial. It turns out that the cemetery was only 30 minutes away from where we were staying and so I made a lot of phone calls and was able to make a quick trip before heading back to KY. It was such a sweet time of remembering and I was thankful to share the time with Viktor and Emily, too. We took a tube of bubbles to blow and enjoyed a peaceful morning together as I shared memories of my favorite "Gram Cracker."