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We left our house at 9:30am on Wednesday, heading for a quick visit with much of my extended family in Springfield, OH. We would be having dinner with my cousing at his Grandma’s house (along with some amount of the rest of his family) and then crashing that night at his place with his new bride. We were looking forward to it.

Now, if you know anything about us, we are pretty good at traveling usually. We are not usually sprinters, we are marathon runners. We know how to hunker down for the long haul. Dude, we have traveled over 1000 miles in one day with three kids. I’d say that qualifies as a marathon! Well, on this day, we were not going to do the marathon, since we had a schedule.

We stopped for lunch (almost an hour late!) at Skyline Chili in Cleveland, OH and met some friends who have lived in Ecuador for the past decade or so (but are now in the States for a little over a year). We had a pretty quick meal with them, catching up on the past four years or so. 🙂 (Not really, but sorta…) They have four kids as well, who are growing up! Was fun to spend a quick 45 minutes or so with them!

Then we were off! Headed now to Springfield for dinner. We stopped only to get gas, and let the pregnant lady walk for 10 minutes, and then we pressed on to our destination for the night.

At 7:00pm, we finally arrived at my cousin’s Grandma’s house, and when we came in, there were lots of people there! My cousin Jimmie, his sister Sarah, then their Grandma & Grandpa, and also my cousins cousins. 🙂 It was a nice full house! So we had a great Grandma-like meal (pot roast, home made noodles, home-made mashed potatoes, etc, etc, etc) while chatting with Jim’s side of the family. That was fun. Kirstie had a blast with a new Grandma and Grandpa to play with! 🙂

Later that evening my Aunt and Uncle came over to the house to visit. So we saw that whole side of the family there that night. 🙂 We were fairly exhausted by now, about 9:30 or so, and happily headed back to cousin Jim’s house.

When we got there, they had some presents for the boys, so they opened those while I helped get the baby bed ready and got her laying down. The boys played with their new toys (and Kirstie was trying to sleep with her new toy) 🙂 and we talked for another hour or so, before we started getting the boys ready for bed. After a little set up of the room, we got everyone in bed by 11pm. Whew! We were tired!

The next day, we saw the rest of the family! We had breakfast with Grandma Alta (my Mom’s mom), lunch with my other grandparents, and my aunt and uncle on the Campbell side, and Jimmie and Sarah joined us as well! After lunch we hit the Goodwill store next door to the restaurant, and then picked up a christmas present from Grandma and Grandpa at their house, before heading back to cousin Jim’s for a nap! Whoa!

So within less than a day we had visited with all of my extended family in Springfield, OH! On our way out of town, we stopped by Young’s Dairy in Yellow Springs, OH (a GREAT, FUN family tradition) and played with the goats and cows and pigs and then got some free ice cream cones c/o my Aunt Sara (from lunch earlier that day!)

We got to my parents house that night and had dinner with them and opened christmas presents, and then well….

We were tired.

🙂