Connecticut

Here's just a few pics of our time in Connecticut. Most of the time was spent with family, so there's not a lot ot share unless you know all the relatives. :)


Chris' parents having lunch with us at a Friendly's.

Chris at Friendly's.

Chris driving. We did this a lot.

Most of the group after the funeral at the luncheon.

Drive to Connecticut

As some of you know, Chris' aunt Gail (his mom's sister) passed away last week. She lived in Connecticut. Chris and I planned on going to the funeral, so we packed up my dad's car (better for traveling than the cars we own), drove to the farm to get Chris' dad (his mom has been in CT with her sister for the past 3 weeks) and headed out early Sunday morning.

Chris and I planned to leave the farm at 6am. At 6:15am...we had been ready for 15 minutes... Our third passenger was still in bed... Oh well. We hit the road at 7am.

I tend to get motion sickness, so I prepared for the trip by taking Bonine. It's a "less-drowsy" formula than Dramamine. I am one who tends to fall asleep in cars. Growing up we would drive to Pennsylvania to visit my relatives and my natural defense against car sickness was sleeping during the trip. Now that I'm an adult, it's still a natural habit that I can't seem to break - I just get drowsy in cars. That paired with my body's inability to cope with drugs (normal Tylenol knocks me out for crying out loud), I was VERY groggy the whole trip. I took a turn to drive and couldn't figure out why I was so tired. As we neared the end of our 17 hour drive it dawned on me that the Bonine was a "LESS" drowsy formula, not a "NON" drowsy formula. So...I won't be able to take that on the return trip, because I'll need to be able to help Chris with the driving, since it will be just the two of us on the way back (Chris' mom and dad will take his mom's car home).

Luckily I have several other methods to avoid car sickness. We'll see how well they work. It involves those old pressure-point wristband things and ginger snaps. Ginger is good for nausea, so I'll see if the ginger snaps help me out in this.

Anyway, we made it safe and sound to Old Saybrook, CT late Sunday night. About 12:30am. That's better than I expected, given one traffic jam, a late start and plenty of food/bathroom stops. Definitely doable in one day. But I may just feel that way since I slept through most of the trip.

Yesterday we slept a lot due to the exhaustion of the trip (and I still had the less-drowsy Bonine in my system). We had lunch in a little pub downtown and then spent the rest of the evening with family. Gail had a husband Peter (from England), a daughter Sharon (a little older than Chris and I) and a son Kevin (a little younger than Chris and I). Kevin is recently engaged to Liz.

So we hung out with them. This was my first time meeting Kevin and Liz. I think I meet Peter at our wedding 3 years ago. Sharon I've met a couple of times in Michigan and in Florida (where she used to work).

Today's plan is to go to the town of Avon. Apparently it's quite a cute town with cute stores and such. Chris and I have been ready to go and awake for the past few hours. We have yet to see his parents. It may be a quick drive there (er...1 hr drive), eat lunch and then head back, because we'll need time to get ready for visitation tonight.

So that is my update so far. Hopefully everyone back home is holding down the fort okay with the responsibilities we left behind for the week!

Prodigal: An Animation

iPod Blogging

I'm at my parents' house, doing laundry. Didn't stop home to grab the laptop... So I've been bored between loads, so I've been checking facebook on my iPod, downloading apps and all around wearing down my battery. Last few moments are being spent making this post and then I'll have to go and find some other form of entertainment...

Weekend Away

Chris and I finally had a chance to get away for a couple of days.

We both took Friday off from work. Well, that was the plan.

Chris ended up finishing a drawing so that he wouldn't be thinking about it all weekend. That took the morning.

And since he got to do work on his day off, I decided we could also clean the house so that it was nice when we got home.

So by the time all of our "work" was done, we left around 4pm. But then we had to stop at Bekins in Grand Haven so Chris could drop off the previously mentioned drawing so that the audio/video guys would know where outdoor speakers would go. Usually "drop-off" should mean no more than 5 minutes. I think we were there about an hour. I had fun watching Kung Fu Panda on one of their big screens and looking at kitchen gadgets.

Once we hit the road we headed up to Big Star Lake near Baldwin.

Chris grilled steaks for dinner. We forgot to grab a bottle of wine and there was none at the cottage! So... steaks and beers it was!

Saturday was a glorious day to sleep in. Then we finally rolled out of bed for breakfast. And then I slept some more on the sofa while Chris read a book.

The afternoon we spent out on the boat, tooling around the lake. Then we anchored near an empty portion of beach and swam around. The water was really warm. It was a great day to be on the lake.

Sunday we packed up and headed over to Major Farm to hang out with Chris' dad and grandma. His mom is currently in Connecticut with her sister, Gail. Gail is very quickly losing her battle against cancer. Please pray for her and her family, as well as Chris' mom.

While Chris' mom is gone, it's just his dad at home, taking care of Grandma, so we made him lunch and cleaned up the dishes so that he at least had one meal he didn't have to deal with.

Then Sunday night we headed to my parents and dropped off some cottage stuff to them and went over plans for the next two weeks. They'll be leaving for a motorcycle trip to the Badlands and we'll be dog-sitting.

Eventually we made it home to our nice, clean house!

And now I'm back at work... using my lunch hour to blog.