Our trip to Kansas City

Our trip went well. Things did not go as planned, but God was watching over us. Here's sort of an overview of the trip

Wednesday: My mom and dad left Fort Wayne with the two girls. They were supposed to leave around 4:30 but mom had to work late and did not get left until 6. Then I took the boys to Burger King and we waited for dh to get off work. He was supposed to get off at at 6 but actually did not until 7:00. So we arrived at our first stop around 10 PM Central time. Our first stop was at my brother's place in Champaign, IL. We had a nice visit with him While the boys slept (mostly). Then my parents arrived with the girls about an hour later (yes they left earlier).

Thursday: Isaac (age 3) awoke early. My mom awoke to hear his crying. I asked her what time it was. When she told me it was 6:30 I decided to start getting up and around since we were leaving Champaign at 8:00. Half an hour later, now that we were all up and around I realized that it was actually 6:00 because of the time change. So after the kids were all dressed, my parents took them for a walk and dh and I visited with my brother some more. Then around 7:30 CT we left Champaign (with all 4 dc) and drove to Springfield to visit my dh's grandma. She lives in retirement home in a little one bedroom apartment. The visit went very well for about an hour and a half. But it is really hard to keep 4 children age 5 and under happy in a tiny room full of breakable objects. Isaac: "Are these no-nos ?" Me: "Yes". Isaac: "Is this a no-no?" Abby (age 5): "Everything is no-nos." Around noon we left the retirement home and picked up dh's uncle (who is disabled) and took him out to lunch with us at McDonald's. My parents who had stayed longer in Champaign met us at McDonalds.

Then during lunch, we got a call from Paul's cousin Lisa whom we were planning to visit in Mountain Grove, MO. Her 4 year old daughter was exceptionally ill with influenza. So we obviously weren't going to proceed with the visit. We decided to head that direction anyway and see the Ozarks but we didn't really have a plan yet. So when we headed out of Springfiel we didn't have a plan.

My parents again took the girls and we took the boys. As we were heading out of St. Louis we began to see signs for Meramac Caverns. I remember having gone there as a child, and thought it would be a neat place to go. So we watched the billboards (there were approximately 492 of them) and went to the exit. It was about 4:30 PM by then so we were concerned about it being to late in the day. It turns out that we were in luck and there was one more cave tour of the day...

Stay tuned for the next post in which I will detail our experience in the cave.