In the car...

Our road trip was one of the parts I looked most forward to. As some of you know, we were preparing for the ULTIMATE road trip to Telluride, CO this summer. I dreamed about driving out west. I went with my family when I was young. We bought a Chrysler Town and Country. The FIRST year they came out. All 6 of us spent 26 hours in that van and I still remember the wonderful time we had. It is one of the most vivid memories I have of traveling as a kid. But we had to unfortunately cancel our vacation because of Matt's pneumonia and the dumbest part was that I was most sad about missing the car ride!!!! So needless to say, we really did this one up. Stops at Starbucks whenever we felt like it, waited to get to Tennessee to eat so we could eat at a Backyard Burger, and breakfast on the way home at Cracker Barrel. There was another family staying in our condo who left their home at 3:00 in the morning. They go to bed early that night with the van packed up, then get the kids up and put them in the car while the dad drives. Then they wake up around 7:30, stop at Cracker Barrel and have only about 8 hours of the trip left! We did that on the way home and it was PERFECT!!

Lulabear did a LOT of reading. She loves to read.

Chlobug listened to her ipod most of the way!

I drove the first half to Nashville, and Matt drove the second half to Gulf Shores!!

I caught up with some podcasts and read lots of really really important magazines like "In Touch", "OK", "People" and "Life and Style"....my vacation indulgences!!!

Here is a picture RIGHT when we got home Sunday evening!!

This girl was HAPPY to be home!!!

And so were we....but loved every second. We were talking and we realized that this was the first vacation we have ever taken just the four of us. We didn't go visit anyone, we didn't travel with anyone...just us...

We were trying to figure out how to really accomplish this every year. Our issue isn't really money...we can do these vacations really cheap if you work hard enough. The issue was time. How to break up Matt's vacation time and fit in all of the visits to family since we live out of town. We committed this to prayer and you know what? As a part of Matt's review at work just this week, they gave him ANOTHER WEEK'S VACATION!!!!!! AWESOME!!!!!! THANK YOU GOD!