There and back again

If a picture's worth a thousand words, I'll give the photos and get off easy!

Last weekend, as you might know from Mommy's blog (on which I'm developing an alarming dependency), Jason and Kendra and I went out to Indiana to visit friends - Uncle Rene, Aunt Vici, and Rachel, Isaac, and Hannah, who are roughly the ages of us three travelers. We kids have been friends since before we were born, before we were even imagined, since our dads "bached" it together. In the good old Hoosier days of Warsaw, our families lived five minutes apart and got together for Christmases, Thanksgivings, and lots of times in between.

So I figured that as long as I was going out to see Rachel, I might as well take Jason and Kendra along to keep me awake on the drive... then maybe they could have some fun too.

The driving was great fun. Jason drove through most of Iowa both times and I took the rest, including that exciting traffic on I-80 south of Chicago. Only they were doing construction near Chicago and our already finicky car decided to overheat. We took an exit and a little detour that let us stay above 40 mph, then got back on just in time to miss the rest of the stop-and-start.

We had heaps of fun learning card games like "Crazy Eights" and "Schwimm" and "Skip-bo", went swimming and bowling, ate good grilled food and lots of ice cream, made weird chocolate fructose cookies, dragged Jason along to Act II of Swan Lake (Isaac didn't get back till late that night so Jason was stuck with the girls, but he was a good sport), watched National Treasure (I'd always thought it was just another horse movie, till we saw it, shows how much I'm up on things)... etc. etc. etc.

Here are the six of us without flash and with flash - me, Jason, Rachel, Isaac, Kendra, and Hannah on the footrest.

Then Sunday afternoon and evening we headed up to Goshen to visit Uncle Doug and Aunt Cindy - real blood relatives this time - and some of their kids, and Grandma came over. More swimming and grilled food and laughing and ice cream. Some of the laughing was due to our traditional Dutch Blitz mini-tournament.

I got Jason to take some pictures for me (Can you tell he's standing on a chair?). Here's a game with Uncle Doug and Kendra and me - four photos in succession to let you experience the speed!

#1 - Calm start
#2 - Blur
#3 - Second lull
#4 - Uncle Doug and Kendra get ready to whap down and blitz out

(I don't remember who won that round.)

Then I snapped the others. These two of Kendra, Jason, Aunt Cindy, and Uncle Doug were just before I started a great video that got some glares from Jason when he found out about it... afterward. Sorry, that's personal family property for us to laugh at. Jason should be thankful to have such a kind sister.

So that's a synopsis of the trip. On the first gas stop en route to home Monday morning, I discovered I'd left the gas cap in Morris, Illinois. In Morris I went through the lost-and-found at the same station and picked out the closest I could find, which probably isn't ours but works great.

Jason had the bright idea to stop in at Ardith's while passing through Cedar Rapids, so after two calls to Mommy and some hunting around, we found it. Worked out great because Ardith had only just got home, so we tried the doorbell that didn't work and then went in and surprised her.

Here's Ardith's new couch.

Here's Ardith's new couch with her on it. Yep, that's her making faces.

And on that sweet note I bid you good-night.