Coming from Michigan, the trip to Chicago seemed short! The kids spent much of the time making birthday cards for my Grandma, who was turning 92 on the 21st, and the remainder of the trip listening to Jonathan Park CDs. The time flew! When we arrived at our hotel, we all enjoyed jumping in the pool for a fun afternoon of swimming! We met the family (including DADDY who drove down from MN with Grandma and Grandpa K) at Portillos for dinner, and then settled in for the night. Our extended weekend included fun times eating, playing at a local park, celebrating my grandma's birthday, going bowling, swimming, going to a water park, taking family pictures, and having a family chapel. I loved getting time to chat with my cousins, and giving the kids time to play with my cousins' kids! I am so grateful for this family, the time we could spend together, for my Uncle Paul organizing the weekend, and for my mom taking and organizing the pictures I will share below. What a fun weekend!
The kids thought is was especially fun when the Baum kids joined us in our mini van to make 6 kids in our van!
At the family chapel, Alison's family shared about how God's boundaries are because he loves us, and even if we break those boundaries, he made a way for us to return to him. Then our kids shared the Romans Road (our summer scripture memory verses that describe salvation and includes Romans 1:20, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Romans 5:9, Romans 10:9, Romans 10:13, and Romans 12:1-2.). We have spent the last two months memorizing and discussion the meaning behind these important verses. Here is a video of them sharing these verses at our family chapel.
After chapel, Paul and I drove to Rochester, MN to drop me off for my mission trip with our church's middle school youth group and the kids went to lunch and then back to the cabin for Grandma Grandpa Camp!
The past two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. The kids and I left home for a 12 -day 3-stop trip which included:
1) Kalamazoo, MI to visit my Grandma (July 16-18)
2) Lincolnshire, IL for a family reunion (July 18-21)
3) Rochester, MN (for me, mission trip) and Shell Lake, WI (for the kids, Grandma/Grandpa Camp) (July 21-26)
After returning home, it took me while to get caught up on life, lol! But I finally have my pictures sorted and will proceed to do several blog posts to get caught up on July before heading into August!!
Here goes...
MICHIGAN TRIP
The kids and I left bright and early on Tuesday, July 16th, embarking on what would be my personal longest drive. While I was a bit nervous to drive so far by myself, the kids were FANTASTIC! Before we left, we stocked up on snacks at Walmart, books at the library, and brought along a new-found series of CD's called Jonathan Park (fantastic, if you're looking for Christian adventure CD's - we all loved them and they passed the time so quickly!).
Each kid got to pick two snacks to put into our snack bag for the car trip!
We made the entire drive with only one 15 minute bathroom break, and the kids were amazing travelers. I broke up the drive by letting them pick one snack from the snack bag each hour, on the hour (and they had to say their summer Bible memory verses each time before they chose their snack - they got really good at them!!). When we rolled into our destination, we played at a park to get some wiggles out before heading to my Aunt and Uncle's house to spend the night.
Our goal for the trip was to visit my Grandma, who is in the late stages of Altzheimers and recently was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and not given much time left. We wanted to share the Gospel, including the hope of salvation in Jesus, one final time before she passed. The kids made cards for her sharing the Gospel, and I was so grateful for the opportunity to clearly share the truth with her in moments where she understood what we were saying.
We also went to her exercise class with her, and that was pretty fun to see the kids participate!
See this video:
We took her out for her favorite lunch at Panera, where the kids enjoyed looking at a fun book with GiGi-ma.
Then we went shopping at a local thrift store. This was really fun, bringing back memories of when we used to shop together on black Friday, but was also hard as I thought about it being the last time we would do something together. We dropped my Grandma back off at her Memory Care Home, and then the kids and I cooled off and relaxed at a nearby lake. We met my Uncle and Aunt at a really fun dinner spot. The next morning we took my grandma to a local park for a while before we had to get on the road again, heading to our family reunion in IL.
