And, the fact that we went through Kansas.
We borrowed a GPS that was programmed to avoid toll roads. So, David puts in the destination and the next thing we know we are headed to Kansas.
Well, we had never been to Kansas so we just decided to go with it.
I can't believe that I agreed to even drive at night because I had sworn that I would never drive at night again after we went to Illinois about six years ago.
David and his brother had put in some fog lights on our van, because it can get quite foggy through the mountains in Tennessee (this is when we lived in South Carolina). They must have gotten confused with the wiring, because as we were careening down the interstate at night, the lights kept spontaneously going off and on. And then staying off.
Yes, that really happened. I said then and there we would NEVER drive at night again.
But, this time other than an unfortunate bunny hit and run, and some motion sickness, everything went fine.
Anyway, David grew up in the Chicago suburbs. It had been a long time since we'd seen his extended family and an even longer time since we'd been into the city. We were all really excited about getting to take this trip.
We passed quite a few windmill farms. I had never actually seen one up close. It is amazing how the windmills even turn, but I guess the engineers know what they're doing.
We discovered that Travis really does not like car trips. So, thankfully, since we travelled at night he mostly was doing this.
One of his rare happy moments.
After we pulled into town, we stopped at El Famous Burrito. I think it really should have been called "In-famous" Burrito, because it was totally huge.
This is only half of the burrito. Tyler couldn't eat all of his so he gave some to Thomas. He is holding only a third of it. But, it was delicious.
Next, we stopped in to see David's grandparents. This is David's Aunt Anita and Uncle Jess, David's Dad's siblings.
David and his Grandma.
David, me, the kids and Grandpa and Grandma.
Aunt Anita got pizza for us that night. We went back to the room and were pretty much ready for bed by that point. It was a beautiful sunny day.
The next day, Saturday, we drove up to Rockford to visit David's parents' graves. That was the first time I had been there in sixteen years. David's mom died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1995-the day after Christmas. Our wedding day back in February of that year was the last time either of us saw her alive, because they had come down to Alabama for the wedding (David was already stationed in Hawaii) and we left for the Smoky Mountains for our honeymoon. They drove back to Illinois that next day.
David's dad passed away from cancer on New Year's Day in 2007. Yes, our family apparently likes to make the holidays memorable. (My grandfather who I was very close to died three days before David's mom). I wasn't able to go to his Dad's funeral because David was in the airport in Charlotte for a business trip when he got the call that his dad had died. He switched flights to head up north, but the kids and I had to stay behind.
We also went to see Joann, who David's dad had remarried. Then, headed back toward Chicago to visit David's aunt and cousins.
It was a really cold and rainy day on Saturday, but we had a really good visit with family that we hadn't seen in a long while.
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