A Trip to the Kids

The last week of June, Hubby and I took a week's vacation and few to the Midwest to see our kids. Living halfway across the country now involves planes to visit loved ones. Airports and planes are not my favorite, but I do what I gotta do to see those babies of mine.

As we were boarding the plane for Kansas City, we saw online that our son and daughter-in-law had no power at their house due to a storm that had gone through the night before. As we waited for our luggage and Kansas City, I got on my phone to find a hotel room for that night, because, hello, no electricity means no air conditioning and air conditioning is my friend. I was very thankful for having a smart phone!

We had a wonderful time with our son and daughter-in-law despite no electricity for over fifty hours. One evening we went to a jazz club in Kansas City for dinner and a fantastic ensemble of a clarinet, soprano saxophone, piano and drums. Hubby is an accomplished clarinet player, so he especially enjoyed the music.

Sunday we were thrilled to be able to worship at our son and daughter-in-law's church. We always enjoy the music and the Biblical preaching is spot-on. At the end of each service, communion is served. I cannot even express the emotions I have when my own son and his wife serve me communion.

I have experienced this several times and I am a HOT MESS (I'm picking up some Southern lingo!) Every Single Time. The tears flow. I feel so grateful that God pursued my son and that my son lives his life for Christ.

Electricity was restored to their house and we were able to spend the last two nights with our son and daughter-in-law. I very much enjoyed some conversations with my daughter-in-law. We talked about all sorts of things including sharing decorating ideas that we had seen on Pinterest. :)

After four days in Kansas City we took off in our rental car and headed to Iowa to see this beauty who has discovered her toes:

And learned to roll over from her back to her tummy while we were there:

 We took a couple of short day trips to visit our parents. Here's a Four Generation picture of my father-in-law, Daughter, Granddaughter and Hubby. 

On the 4th of July we hung out in the yard and someone went "swimming". She loved it.

I learned about the chickens...

  ...and the ducks.
 

Swedish Blue Duck

We played with this sweet angel as much as possible.

And we enjoyed our daughter's wonderful cooking and had a yummy pasta dish, balsamic glazed salmon, lots of garden produce, brats on the grill, S'mores and this very tasty, patriotic dessert:

All too soon the time came to fly back to the Southwest. For some unknown reason, I agreed to a 7am flight out of Des Moines. I survived, but barely. ha. We waited couple of hours for the last leg of our trip, just to have that flight canceled. Instead of waiting in that airport for another four or five hours, we opted to cancel that leg of the trip and rented a car and drove the last hour and forty-five minutes back to Greenville. We won't talk about how ridiculous it cost to rent a car for not even three hours, but at least once the airline refunds us for the canceled flight, we'll still come out ahead. Flying. Blech.