We're home!

Today we arrived home from an epic road trip to visit family out west.  3,000 miles.  13 days.  7 states.  Whoa.

I'm going to try to get pictures and stories posted over the next few days, but it may take some time considering that tomorrow (June 27) is Anna's birthday, we have loads and loads of laundry to do, and the garden practically exploded while we were gone due to the record amounts of rainfall.

What follows are a few noteworthy experiences from the trip as a whole.

* Our kids are AWESOME travelers right now.  Shortly into the first day, we realized the DVD player we brought along was broken.  No big deal.  We had very few meltdowns in the car.

* Sleeping in 5 different locations wasn't actually too big of a deal.  Our best night of sleep (collectively) was the first night in our third hotel, towards the end of the trip.  We had zero exterior windows so the darkness and time change from Mountain to Central allowed us to sleep in until 8:00 a.m.!

* We are not planning on doing a trip like this again any time soon.  It was a lot of work, took a lot of time, and required a lot of planning.  But it was worth it to be able to see just about all of our immediate families.

* We thoroughly enjoy being able to share space with family for a few days at a time.  Sliding into family routines, sharing meals, and living in close proximity with them allowed us to build deeper relationships with everyone.

* We did NOT bring along Anna's wheelchair (due to space constraints in the van mainly) and Anna did just fine.  In fact, she did NOT need any hydrocortisone this entire trip ... another one of those milestones that isn't too meaningful to anyone outside of our family, but means a lot to us parents.

* Anna is learning how to occupy herself even when those around her (especially cousins) are doing things she can't do.  She did a decent job of "filling in the spaces" and only complained of being bored a couple of times.

* Our hearts still hurt that the previous two statements are part of Anna's life.

* Our life is different because we are different, but we try to make the best of it.  I don't think we even noticed many of "the stares" this time around :)