Home in the rain

This is the final leg of our trip. We finally caught up to the rain. This is us driving the last 3 miles of the trip and finally backing into the driveway. We had a good trip and it was good to see everyone that we had not seen in quite a while.

Emory, Tami, Samantha & Ethan

Two days of driving

Sunday morning we got up and had some breakfast downstairs at the Cleveland Holiday Inn Express. We looked for Ethan's suitcase some more. We hadn't seen it since we checked into the hotel the night before and we searched all through the car and the hotel room to no avail. So we were assuming that we left it at Grammy Sarah's house somehow and would go back there on our way home to pick it up and stay the night on our way home. We had a pretty uneventful trip back to Jay. Emory set his camera up again in the front windshield and take a picture every 5 seconds, so we got this timelapse of our trip through some nice country roads. Not a whole lot of traffic out there :-).
We stopped in a little town, Flomaton, AL at the Pizza Hut for dinner last night before we got into my parents house which is just about 8 miles down from there -- that is how close they are to the Alabama border. We got to my parents house and found out Ethan's bag wasn't there either. I called the hotel and asked if they had found a black bag and sure enough they said they found it in the room. Where exactly it was hiding, I can't imagine! Luckily my parents are heading back up there in a couple weeks and can pick it up for us.
Today we are on the last leg of the drive back home - 5 or 6 hours on I-10. We heard from our nieghbor Sharon, who has been watching the pupppy for us and apparently he did really well. They've already put him back at our house in his crate so he will be waiting for us when we get home. We are all looking forward to seeing him again. I hope he remembers us!

Reunion

Fu Jin was kind enough to call me this morning at 8 am to wake me up. :) She was so excited about seeing Samantha and Ethan and wanted them to come downstairs for breakfast. So we had a nice long breakfast with my mom and Fujin downstairs and got to sit and visit for a while. Around lunchtime we headed over to Mary Helens house. I got to see all my aunts and uncles again (on my dad's side) and several of my first cousins, and their families, some of whom I hadn't seen in over 20 years. There werent alot of younger kids there, but FuJin and Samantha and Ethan had no problem entertaining each other for the afternoon. Jan got there later in the afternoon and stayed for a while. Then we went to dinner with my mom and Jan and FuJin at a good mexican restaraunt, before she had to head back home. Here are some pictures from the day. All in all I am so glad we made the trip and we dont plan to wait so long again before coming back for a visit.

Mississippi

Back Row: Bill, Jim, Boots. Front Row, Jernnie, Mary Helen.

We made it into Cleveland, Mississippi Friday evening around 5pm after about 8 hours on the road. We checked into our hotel and then headed over to my Aunt Mary Helens house for dinner. This is the 'brothers and sisters' dinner the night before the reunion. All my dad's brothers and sisters and their spouses were there. I havent seen any of them for well over 10 years, so it was great to get to spend some time with them again. My sister's little girl FuJin was there with my parents, so she and my kids had a great time catching up and playing 'school' up in Aunt Mary Helens' attic. Lot's of pictures were taken by lots of cameras and the food was delicious. Back to the hotel to rest up for the reunion tomorrow..

Driving to the reunion

This is a time lapse movie I made. It is about 500 pictures we took from the dashboard of the car. My camera has an automatic mode that can be programed into it. I took all these pictures and  strung them together into a movie. This covers the trip from our driveway to about Tallahassee. 

End of Day 1

We made it to my mom and dad's house around 4:00 pm central time. It was so much nicer to come in and relax there rather than the hassel of checking into a hotel. It was a beautiful evening. I drove up to town and picked up take-out chinese for dinner. After dinner we went outside for a while and played around taking pictures with Emory's camera and his light reflectors. Then Samantha and I took a walk. There is a long line of Honeysuckle bushes growing along their drive and I showed Samantha and Ethan how to get the nectar out of the flowers. It struck me as odd that they hadn't experienced that til now.
We had a nice quiet evening AND I got to watch the new Greys Anatomy episode. Emory worked on his computer putting together these timelapse videos of the drive and the sunset. Tomorrow we are getting up early and heading toward Mississippi.

On our way

We are on our way to my Family Reunion in Cleveland, Mississippi. We are taking two days to get there. Tonight we are staying at my Mom & Dad's house notrh of Pensacola. Tomorrow we expect to drive for 7 or 8 hours to get to our destination. This morning Emory and the kids took our puppy Miles to our neighbors house, as they are being kind enough to watch him for us while we are out of town. The kids did much better with the parting this morning than I thought they would. It was pretty sad last night as the kids were shedding tears over the thought of being away from their beloved new puppy for five days.