Our big adventure–the final saga

Our trip home through Georgia, Tennessee, and Illinois was relatively uneventful. Other than tired children and a cheap hotel in the middle of nowhere, we did not run into any problems and made it home in 2 1/2 days.

Having fun in spite of the cheap hotel room

“Yes, cancel all of my appointments for tomorrow……”
“Hello, would you have an opening at 3:00 for a pedicure–the sand was terrible on my nails!”

Our little diva, hard at work

The little one knows how to travel….

Our big adventure-part 2

After Orlando, we continued on to Miami–which was the main focus of our trip! Josh’s sister Jill lives there, and we were thrilled to have a chance to visit her. ( We did it under the guise of Josh running a soccer camp at her school.) Just kidding–he agreed to do the camp, and I convinced him to take us along! His other sister Joy was down there too, so we all got to hang out together for a few days. We arrived just in time for Josh to celebrate his….ummm….29th birthday.
Because the toddlers and I had never been to Florida, it was an exciting time for the three of us. The girls loved staying steps away from two swimming pools, a playground, and some ponies! Plus, we were able to take them to the ocean for the first time!

It was so fun to see them take it all in. Jill was a wonderful hostess, and we were able to view Miami culture first-hand (including the “great” drivers!) Of course the girls did not want to leave….but we didn’t want to stay around in case Hurricane Chris decided to make an appearance after all.

Our big adventure

Well, we survived a 10-day trek across the country with a 2 year old and a 3 year old. What we were thinking, I will never know—but the Lord protected us, gave us an extra measure of patience, and took us away from UNBEARABLE temperatures in our hometown!
I will document the trip in segments…otherwise, you will have a blogger overload!
The first part of our journey took us through Ohio, Georgia, and central Florida:

I had not seen my aunt, uncle and cousins in 3 years, so it was very fun to reconnect with them. My cousin Thomas used to work at Chuck E. Cheese and had hundreds of tokens left, so we took the girls there and let them play games to their hearts’ content. (We all played too, to earn tickets for them.) I think we ended up with 2,900 tickets or something, so they purchased every cheap trinket they desired. Just what we needed to pack along with us…… It was fun to see them all though. Patrick had just arrived home from a missions trip, so he was slightly out of it. He still graciously let the girls sleep in his room and played with them. It was wonderful to see them all. Family is great!


We then drove to the home of Kimberly Johnson. She is a friend of Josh’s family, and allowed us to stop over for a night. It was a blessing to meet her sweet and gentlemenly boys, and receive a short tour of the school where she works. Her husband built up the sports program at the school and it was a testimony to his faithfulness. He went to be with the Lord this May, but it was a tremendous challenge to me to watch his family carry on with extreme faith in our God. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of them (I do not take advantage of photographic moments like my father-in-law or my mother.) They also treated us to delicious brick-oven pizza–which I was wary of but ended up liking! “My Cousin Vinny’s” gets my vote.


The last part of this segment of the journey was spent in Orlando. No, we did not venture into Disney World. The prices of the tickets deterred us from that little side trip…..besides the fact that we did not relish the thought of jaunting around a major amusement park with two toddlers in humid weather. So instead, we stayed in a hotel with a pool, played up the glorious aspect of Downtown Disney to our children, bought them some princess trinkets, and continued on our way.