Visiting 2

oh no!  rachel beat me to blogging about our trip!  while i was uploading pictures of the trip to facebook, SHE was writing about it!!  oh well...i'll go ahead and post my take on things anyway, hence the title "visiting 2".  you must go and read her blog before you read mind.  (rachellukelijlydindieanawa.blogspot.com)

yes...so as you already know, kaycee and i took all the kids to illinois for a vacation to uncle luke and auntie rachel's house!  while rachel was getting questions like, "how are you going to fit ALL those people into your house?", I was being asked, "are you seriously taking ALL those kids in the van for a TEN hour drive?????"  all i figured was that if i could take four kids 16 hours to minnesota (three years ago), surely i can take six on just a ten hour trip, right??   believe it or not, it was pretty smooth sailin'.  we stopped for two hours near dayton so i could meet up with some of my imaginary internet friends (who turned out to be very real and very cool!).   then we stopped again at a park somewhere near danville, illinois.  we let the kids watch punky brewster in the van and finally made it to rockford with time to play before bedtime!  no problems whatsoever!!  i think kaycee and i are going to make a tradition out of a summer trip with van full of kids. 

i find it interesting that rachel wrote about our "schedule" because i felt so incredibly UNscheduled.  and really, i was ok with that.  it was vacation!!!  so, while i am anal about my morning routine and still woke up at 6:30 for my one egg and cup of coffee, i did not stick to any sort of schedule or routine necessarily when it came to feeding/caring for the children.  so if rachel thought she was watching my routine, what she was really seeing was me just trying to keep up with everyone.  all in all i thought our days ran incredibily smooth for having 10 kids 10 and under...with someone needing something at nearly every waking moment! 

trip highlights:
*meeting four internet friends:  jamie, helen, & briana in ohio and then amy in rockford
*tame squirrel & pizza in danville
*learning bookworm.  just what i needed--a new addiction
*spicy lasagna
*"rupert...i mean reuben"
*discovery center
*cousins of all ages
*having kaycee and rachel to talk to all day long
*hidden gem of a recreational park
*personality discussions
*once
*out to eat with everyone
*our shared life for a week
*rachel singing


trip lowlights:
*earwigs
*vomit
*earwigs
*vomit
*chicago traffic
*trains that stop traffic for an ungodly amount of time

i woke up on saturday morning feeling just a bit lonely and weepy.  why do families have to live so far apart?  sigh...

but then last night i looked  and there was an earwig crawling across my kitchen floor.  although hundreds of miles separate our families, a little piece of the illinois dillamans was right here in my own home.  i watched him for awhile, thought of heart connections, of the joy of being together, and couldn't bear to kill the wretched thing.