Fist Part of Summer Vacation

Okay, So I said I was going to post more and I just haven't done it. My heart is always in the right place I promise, my fingers just aren't. Yes, that's an excuse and I do apologize. This year has been hard health wise for me. I have not been one that has been sick a lot but this year I have been sick for about six or seven months out of a year and that's a lot, I do believe I am finally on the upswing and we are all rejoicing and the vacation Part 1 has been a tremendous help.

I wish I could just post all of the wonderful pictures and I will post a few from each segment and tell you just a bit about our journey and as you can see this was just Part One. We left home on June 12th for Texas to visit family and returned on June 26th. My family and John's family had never met Joel and Hope and it was an adventure for both the children and family and we left many heartbreaks in the trail and there are many photos I wasn't able to caputre.

Our little Hope has turned out to be the best photographer of all of us and I do hope to post some of her photos for you, but it maybe when we return from Vacation Part 2. Please enjoy Vacation Part 1's Journey. God Bless.

We had planned on pulling out of our driveway at 5am, but for the three nights prior to leaving, I had jut not been able to sleep, so as usual I woke up at 2am after only going to bed at midnight. I knew I wasn't going to be able to fall back to sleep, so I got up got dressed and woke up John and said why don't you go ahead and sleep in the car and I will drive the first 4 or 5 hours and then we can stop for breakfast. So, we loaded the kids up in their pj's and out we started by 3am. I sipped coffee and enjoyed such quiet and peace in the driving and communing with the Lord, it was a beautiful start to the vacation. We had breakfast somewhere around Gainesville, FL and then drove on into MS and it was hard to find roadside parks for us to have lunch. We packed a picnic lunch for that day and all the parks were closed due to Hurricane Katrina devistation. We were on beautiful back roads, we finally found a small campsite and asked them if we could just come in and eat our lunch, they had a beautiful pavillon down by the river and it was so cool. Here's some of the photos from lunch.