Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Minnesota Day #3 - Heading Home


Our less than 48 hours here in Minnesota sure seemed like it lasted many more hours than that. We had full days and spent so much undivided time with the kids. While packing up, the kids decided to make a cave with everything they could find in the room. So they arranged all the pillows, towels, chair cushions, and even dumped the suitcase Steve had just finished packing (Yikes!) on top of their "cave."

When we finally got back on the road, we were pretty beat. The kids did take some naps, which helped, as well as some milk shakes, but towards the end of the trip, they were getting WHINY! Then I put in a few of the audio books I had brought and that totally changed their attitudes. As an interest-led learning family, it still amazes me how much the kids learn through listening to stories and how much they love it. The vocabulary they daily use and the way they incorporate head stories into their pretend play in new ways, is priceless. Jared was glued to the story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,  and they both loved listening to The Giant Jam Sandwich.



Lost of jumping at rest areas also helped relieve tired muscles.


When we finally pulled up to our house, we were greeted by utility trucks and a man up in our front yard tree. Although we drove through the tail end of the storm, a huge storm hit our area while we were driving. Almost half of a tree crashed into our front yard, narrowly missing our living room picture window. We also found out our basement had flooded, dumping layers of black sludge and other stuff from the sewer all across the basement floor, as well as soaking several boxes that were up on shelves.

Our power was out, too, so we picked up some Chinese food, and ate dinner with candlelight at 9:00. The power came on about 12:30 that evening, and I was so thankful to God, because our freezer downstairs was packed with ribs for our 4th of July BBQ and that would have been a lot of money wasted.

The really eventful, packed three days we've had left us all tired, and I had hours of clean-up the next day. But God really was graceful in that we could have come home to a smashed in window and loads of water pouring into our home.

2 comments:

Trixie, Lily, and Sammy-Joe said...

I think road trips make the BEST vacation memories! When I was a kid we ALWAYS took road trips, even cross country. I don't even remember all of the actual destinations we went to, but I have such GREAT memories and nostalgia for those roadtrips!

Chris said...

We hardly travelled at all when I was young, except for one road trip to Flordia, so I'm so glad we're blessed to travel as much as we do with the kids. It really lets us give them our full attention 24/7. The hard thing, though, is when that can't happen all the time when we get back home! That darn laundry and cooking!