First thing in the morning, that is. Actually, "first thing" is yet to be seen (I know how we are!), but sometime tomorrow morning we will indeed head west. And, of course, it will be a bittersweet thing. It's never a fun thing to say goodbye to Mom and Dad and I'm sure we'll have some teary eyed kids (Joe was crying tonight just thinking about it!) and possibly grandparents, too. But on the other hand, we've been gone for three full weeks at this point and I am soooooooo ready to be home!!! It's the same as it always is. I love to go places. And then I love to get back home!

We've had a really great time here, but there's no denying that it's a really hard time to have a "family visit." We, as I mentioned, have already been gone a long, long time. We were already at the other Grandparents' house for a week, then the Assembly. As is true with all grandparents, the kids have a blast but any and all child training goes down the tubes. Then you have a long, tiring week of Assembly (no matter how fantastic it is, it's still exhausting!), so the kids are shot! And the rest of us, too! And then there's Dad and his responsibilities. It's still sooooo weird to me that Dad has to get up in the morning and "go to work." He's one of the most diligent, hard working people I've ever known and he's always busy doing something... but in all my life he never worked a regular "job" where he had to get up and "go to the office!" It's just really weird. He's been coming home a little early each day so he could have some time with the kids, so that's been nice. And he was actually able to take the whole day off today, so that was great! We loaded up and went to Mayfield Dairy to take the tour and see how they do everything that they do there. Neat stuff. Then we thought it only right to try some of their ice cream. Not bad! :-)

We drove around for a while and found a cornfield maze, but it wasn't open. Bummer! I have always wanted to do that and have never had the opportunity. Oh well. It was a beautiful drive and we saw lots of really, really neat houses. I love the houses out this direction and up toward Pennsylvania. There are so many really pretty and unique houses. We've got some out west too, but you see a whole lot more "cookie cutter" houses that are crammed in a tight neighborhood next to 50 other houses that are identical in layout and color. I hate those! Anyway, it was a nice drive today and we saw lots of pretty houses and scenery. We ate at some BBQ place and it was excellent. Headed home and got naps for everybody while I started collecting our family's belongings which have been scattered far and near throughout the house. Got lots done and a big head-start on packing, which was nice.

At 6:30 we walked over the the neighbors' house for dinner. They are the greatest people! Thomas & Stephanie are their names. They are the ones who Mom & Dad bought this house from and they've bent over backwards to help Mom & Dad with all kinds of stuff. Of course, Mom takes homemade goodies over to them frequently and they all seem to do lots of little favors for one another. You know, like neighbors would do back in Leave it to Beaver days! :-) It's great! Anyway, these people are sooooooooo nice and thoughtful and generous. (They actually embroidered all of those "Overseer" cloths that were used on the pews at the Assembly. And they had a huge basket of candy and fun wash cloths and crackers and crazy animan pens and cute little notepads and all sorts of other great stuff for "The Smith Grandchildren" when we first arrived here! I meant to send a bunch of it home with Jon for the larger portion of grandchildren to enjoy!!!) We had a nice time and the kids enjoyed romping around outside.

Tonight we let the kids stay up late to have some extra time with Grandma & Granddad before we leave. I have spent most of my evening scouring the house for Katie's missing sandal. She was wearing them today (even wore them to the neighbors house tonight), but we can only find one of them. Oooooooh, that makes me mad. I finally went out to the van and dug through the big suitcase (that I had already packed and loaded) and got her tennis shoes out, just in case we still can't find the sandal in the morning. I really ought to be in bed right now. But I've got a load of clothes in the dryer that I'm waiting on. I'll fold them and pack them, then hit the hay.

Yesterday. I'd tell you what we did yesterday if I could remember. I think we just stayed around the house until church time. It was Mom's WMB service and James preached for her. I missed a large portion of the service due to some... hhhmmmm... How shall I say??? Katie needed some serious attitude adjustments!!! It's been a long, long trip and it's definitely showing. I think we got it all worked out though and things have been much better today.

Found another frog tonight. I want to let the boys hold 'em, but I'm so scared they're going to just squeeze the guts right out of the litte guys! So I snatch the poor things back after just a second or two and take them to a safe place to reclaim their freedom. Oh, Mom & I did a 1,000 piece puzzle yesterday. It was great! Uummm... Dad and Joe and I shot the .22 for a while tonight. That was fun. Sam plays with the bb-gun and pretends to shoot, but the .22 is just too loud for him so he won't actually follow through. Mom & Katie had a fancy tea party tonight, but I got distracted outside with the guns and forgot to come back in to take pictures of them! Ha! Guns are a lot of fun. I'd forgotten how much, until this trip!

Hhmmm. Guess that's about it. I think my clothes are probably about dry now anyway. I should go check. We'll be leaving tomorrow and heading home. We're hoping to make it to someplace in Mississippi tomorrow, maybe even Louisiana. I'm guessing it will be Mississippi though! We're tired and we have to run by HQ in the morning before we leave, so that will set us back a little bit, too. Anyway, we plan to be home Saturday night and will have our dog returned to us on Sunday. I talked to Stacey today and told her she could just leave Hershey at our house now if she wanted to because we'd be home in two days. Nope. "You'll have to wait until Sunday!," she said. I'm sooooooooo glad she's actually enjoyed that crazy dog! What a blessing! To us AND to Hershey! :-) I'm anxious to get home to my local church, my house, my dog--just everything. Even my own chores! Well... some of them! ;-) It's been great to be on this trip. And it will be great to be at my very own home again!!!

~The Weary Traveler~