Home Sweet Home

We returned yesterday from our vacation. Well, it's as much of a vacation as we're going to get this summer. We drove out to Joplin to visit Caleb's family for Independence Day. (I used "Independence Day" instead of the "4th of July" because someone in Town Talk, the anonymous complaint section of the newspaper, said he/she doesn't like it when people use the "4th" as opposed to "Independence Day". In deference to that anonymous person who will never read this blog, I chose to use "Independence Day".) We had a great visit.

Connor and Riley saw their very first movie in the theater: Wall-E. They both seemed to enjoy it. They spent the rest of the weekend saying Wall-E and Ev-a, just like the robots in the movie. It's pretty cute, I gotta say. The movie was pretty cute, too.

We also spent some time shopping. For some reason, we just can't stay out of the mall and the many other stores when we go to Joplin. We bought some new running shoes for Caleb and myself. (Maybe now I won't have so many problems with my feet!) We also managed to find the 2 buildings from the Cars set that Connor did not have yet. Mind you, the only place I knew to find these toys was Ebay, and it would have cost about $90 per toy there. However, we found them at good old Toys R Us for a much more reasonable $20 a pop. Now Connor has the whole town of Radiator Springs and he can recreate "the neon part" (as he calls it) whenever he wants.

Friday evening we had a wonderful time watching the fireworks display at the park. Some of the fireworks were so big that it felt like we could just reach out and touch them. It was awesome! Not quite as good as the ones at the Arch, but it's going to be a loooong time before I'm brave enough to take my children to see those.

We came home yesterday. After 10 years of making the drive to Joplin (and even longer for my husband) we found a way to shave off about 15-20 minutes from the drive time. We are very excited about that!!! Maybe in 10 more years, we'll find a way to teleport, and then we won't have to make the drive at all.

We had a great time at "Cram-ma" and "Cram-pa's" house. Connor didn't want to leave, and last night Riley woke up at 2 a.m. asking for "Cram-pa". They are both just heart-broken that we have to live in our boring old house, with our boring old stuff, but they're starting to get over it. I guess we'll just have to find some adventures close to home for this week.

I myself am glad to be home. It's nice to go away, but it's always nice to come back to your own little space.