Even though we were not in our own beds, we slept much later this morning than yesterday morning. When I finally rolled out of bed at 7:30 a.m., I slipped my shoes and jacket on and tiptoed downstairs to get a cup of coffee. I was amazed but grateful that everyone, including Judah, stayed asleep until after I got back with my coffee and had a few minutes to sip my hot drink in peace.

We finally got up and got our breakfast. Grammy brought Miguel, Amelia and Laura over to join us for breakfast, and we had a fun time.

We got over to Grammy’s house late morning. My main order of business was to get the four-generation photos taken before anyone broke a bone or knocked a tooth out. I had told everyone last night that we would be taking photos this morning, so Great-Grandma Jo was all ready for us when we arrived. She was wearing a sweet powder-blue outfit and she even had lipstick on! She really looked beautiful with her white hair and bright blue eyes. Amazingly the photo session went well. You can look at the results of it here.

Shortly after our photo shoot was over, Michael’s Aunt Barbara stopped by to say hi. It’s always fun to connect with extended family. She had a little goody bag for us to take on our trip tomorrow. It has two handfuls of candy canes that the kids are very eager to sample!

Judah got very fussy, so Michael took him into another room and encouraged him to fall asleep. After lunch we collected ourselves and prepared to head to the park again. I was determined to get to the park!

Laura asked if she could stay behind and skip the park today. We agreed, since it seems that Laura must have injured her arm yesterday as she was climbing and hanging around at the park. I knew she wouldn’t be any bother while the grandmothers were resting, so it was no big deal.

We got to the park, and it was really neat. Everyone had a good time. Kids enjoyed swinging, Judah surprised us by going down the slides all by himself, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed just being a family at the park. I smiled to think that we had traveled a thousand miles just to go to the park together. But we don’t go to the park very much at home, so it really was a treat for us to make it a priority today.

After the park, we stopped by K-Mart briefly where Michael bought me a supply of dark chocolate. Ahhhhh. The day was getting better and better. Then we went to our motel to work on organizing our things. We want to leave very early tomorrow morning, and I want to be as ready as possible today. While the kids watched some shows on PBSkids, I reorganized things. At 4:30 we loaded up and headed back to see the grandmothers. The children were loud and snippy to one another, so I offered that Michael could just drop us off and then run one last errand. That errand was to get five photos printed of our activities from yesterday and today. Those photos were needed for me to finish the last page in Grammy’s photo album that I had brought to her. For some reason Michael took his own sweet time getting those photos printed. But that was ok. I was glad he was getting some alone time. In our family, alone time is to be treasured!

While Michael was gone, I helped Mom get supper put together and get the table set. Finally we gathered around and had another nice meal together. The food was good and the company was good.

After supper I worked to get every last thing of ours out of the house. I really don’t want to leave things behind.

Finally, we are back in our motel room. We hope to be all packed and ready to go by 6 a.m. tomorrow. Then we’ll enjoy the motel breakfast one last time, and hopefully we’ll be on the road before 7 a.m. Do ya’ think we can do it?