Home

So we made it back to our house at about 11:30 last night. The drive wasn't as bad as I thought that it would be, and we actually made really good time after we got out of St. Louis.

3276.8 miles total. I'm going to come up with some other interesting (to me, at least) stats on the trip and post them in the next few days as well. All in all, it was a great trip - there were a few meltdowns along the way, but for the most part the kids did fairly well.

But since we're now home, I thought that I'd post some pictures of HOME - where I actually grew up....

This is the road leading up to our house. It's a lot wider and a lot more paved than when I was growing up. We lived a little less than half a mile up this road, but it was only uphill on the way home after school. ;)

My house. We lived here from 1977 until 1990 - I was in first grade when we moved in, and had just graduated from high school when we moved out.

The "big" sledding hill. It's hard to see it, but this trail went up from a parking lot up the road from us. It was actually a sort of access road for the State Game Commission to use - this was all Game Commission land and was used for hunting. But for sledding, this hill was the best! It was long and steep, but if you didn't stay right in the center of it on the way down, you'd go into the ditch on the side and end up wrapped around a tree. It might have happened to me once or twice.

Our bus stop. This church was built in 1854 and is still used to this day for services. All of the kids from the neighborhood used this stop, and some years there were probably 15 of us waiting there.

"The Barn". My friend Vanessa and her family owned this barn. It used to be painted a beautiful dark green and was an incredible place to be. They raised and boarded horses, and I practically lived there. I cleaned stalls and climbed the rafters in this barn for the entire time that we lived there. After her family sold the place, it was not maintained at all and was starting to look really bad - but it appears that someone might finally be fixing it up.

So anyway, there you have it. Just a few shots of the old neighborhood. In some ways it looks exactly the same, but in some ways it has changed drastically. I love going back and seeing how things look, but at the same time it always ends up making me just a little more homesick. :(

Today the older 3 kids went with their father and stepmother for a day or two, so I've just had Alex and Daniel for most of the day. I haven't gotten a whole lot done, but I've been slowly trying to get things unpacked and put away. We did run to the quilt shop to get some fabric for a quilt block swap that I'm in, so I *might* start that tonight - but probably not. I might just sit on my butt and do nothing.

Only time will tell....