Saturday, June 23, 2007

Wow, I have been terrible at updating my blog! It seems like since summer has gotten here I have not had a moment to myself!
K's sister graduated from high school this year and over Memorial Day we made the big nine hour drive to go to his parents' house for her open house. We left the Friday before and came home the Tuesday after. I have slowly been posting pics from that trip onto my Flickr page....I was hoping to do some more uploading this weekend, but I don't know if I will get to that yet or not. We had a good trip. We met his Mom, Dad, sister S, her boyfriend J, his Aunt D, and Uncle R in St Louis at the airport. Well, we tried to anyway. We ended up on the backside of the airport and with four people trying to give us directions over the phone and K trying to drive and get out of there we were all turned around so when we finally found a gas station we stopped and they came to us. We weren't all that far off but poor K had just had enough. We stopped at a Cracker Barrell to eat lunch and then headed back to his parents' house. We had supper and K's middle brother and his wife came and we all caught up and decorated the house. Later we looked at pictures that K's Mom had from way back, pictures that I had brought along, and the scrapbook that K's middle brother's wife had made for S.
Saturday we finished the decorating and hung out together for a while and talked. K's Uncle V and Aunt S came in late the night before and we got to see them in the morning as well as K's oldest brother and his family coming in that morning. The only hitch in the plan was S and J having car trouble with her car while they were picking up the cake. They ended up leaving her car in the Wal Mart parking lot and having J's Mom drive them to the house. S's open house was in the afternoon and she had quite a few people come. It was a good time. We all laughed as she was opening her cards after everyone left that someone had given her a Christmas card with a gift of money and didn't sign it. We joked that they didn't want to be known as the person who gave the Christmas card at a graduation! Everyone sort of scattered after that, a bunch of us went down to the lake and some fished while I took pictures. K's middle brother came down later and took some pics too. The guys grilled out for supper and we ate in the basement of the church. We took some cute family pics and at the end of those I started to not feel so well. I made it through a couple of retakes but ended up making a run for the bathroom quickly afterwards. I went back to the bedroom we were staying in and pretty much just crashed on the bed for the rest of the night.
I woke up feeling better on Sunday and we went to St Louis to take in a few of the sights and take his Uncle R and Aunt D back to the airport. We went to the Arch and looked around a bit. We didn't make it up in the arch as it was Memorial Day weekend and the lines were HUGE. Not to mention the fact that you pretty much have to go through airport security to get in there! We were on a bit of a time crunch with having to get his Aunt and Uncle to the airport too. I had never been there before, we had been by it as we drove to his parents' house before but we never stopped. It was pretty cool. Not what I expected at all. I didn't realize that it was made out of metal and shiney...for some reasin I thought it was made of stone or something. There were some neat sights around it as well. It had a bit of New Orleans flavor along the river with the music playing and the river boats along the shore. There were horse drawn coaches and bikes set up for four people with steering wheels and pedals for all.
After the Arch we took his Aunt and Uncle to the airport and headed for the St Louis Zoo. We got to see quite a few of the animals and then it started to pour! We hid out under some trees for a while and then when it let up a bit we ran to the gift shop. I had to buy a few souvenirs for some back here at home, Mom and Dad kept the dogs so we bought a little Thank You for them and a little something for a few of my kiddos. We went out to Fazoli's for supper and Uncle V, Aunt S, K and I headed to a local Wal Mart to get some pictures made up at one of those instant photo machines, but they had closed it down at like 6pm! Craziness! So no pictures for us, but I did find a really cute top to go with my new pair of khaki capris so all was not lost. We stayed up talking that night after we got home for a while and just hung out.
Monday Uncle V and Aunt S headed out early for the airport and we all slept in since they were driving themselves back with their rent a car. We got up in the morning and K and his Dad went to check out S's car and drove it home. It ended up being the brakes, which were supposed to have been fixed the week before. Ugh! The rest of us didn't do a whole lot, just got dressed and hung around. The area where his parents live had a picnic that afternoon so we all went out for that and then the residents had a meeting while we all went back to the house. K and S's boyfriend went out fishing in the afternoon and S, K's middle brother and his wife and his youngest brother and I went into the next town to do some shopping. I found a purse I had been wanting for cheaper than I had seen it before so I grabbed that as well as a cheap pair of sun glasses, a movie, and some snacks for the ride home.
We ordered pizza for supper that night and then S, J, K's middle brother and his wife, his youngest brother and a few friends went out to the drive in movie theater. We were planning on leaving early the next day so we stuck around his parents' house and went for a walk, checked out S's new laptop, and went to bed early.
We were off and running at about qarter to five Tuesday morning and managed to hit the bypass for St Louis around the time everyone was heading in to work. We would go 80-85 and then stop and go 80-85 and stop. I was SO carsick after that! And after an uneventful nine hour drive North we made it back home again! We were so thankful to sleep in our own bed and be back to our own schedule again!
Wow, I think I will wait for the rest of my update for later....this has gotten really long! Thanks to those who have made it all the way through!