A Brand New Year

Well I'm doing it finally! Yes I'm finally making a post for 2013. lol Many things have happened since I last wrote. In August we helped our daughter Holly move to Chicago! What a drive that was! We got her things moved in and she and the pups settled in. That evening we met at our hotel and headed out for Chicago Pizza. We then went back to the hotel,Hilton,and slept like babies. The next morning Holly road the train back down to meet us. From there we went to Navy pier took the river tour then we went into downtown and shopped at American Girl Doll Co., Gap, Disney Store and then we met up with travel mates for Evans adoption. We ate at the Grand Lux with Nancy, Dave, and Sarah. It was so fun seeing how much Sara had grown! After our goodbyes we split off from Holly and continued to on our LONG walk back to the hotel. The next day we met travel mates for a day of fun at the Museum of History. Wendy and Jade haven't seen each other since we left China! That had been almost 8 years! They sure have grown! It took just a little bit for the kids to warm up to each other. Jades brother,Trace, and Evan came to our families later. The two boys even though they are 3 years apart,were so happy to have a guy to hang around. The four of them had a fantastic time and were begging for more time. After our goodbyes we met up with another travel family from Evans trip for dinner. We ate at a Thai restaurant down the way from the hotel. Easy to walk to. Lots of walking in the city. The food was good and the company was even better! It was good to meet Manny and Virginia's older boys, and my how Adelynn had grown. We visited and then had ice cream at the hotel. FUN! The only one missing was Manny... Wish you could have been there too. Saying our goodbyes to Holly,Gertie and Asta was the hardest part of all! You see this was the first time for her to move out of state and Sooo far away fro the family. Our baby bird had left the nest! I had my tears believe me! We made the most out of our return home? Iowa was so dang beautiful! I had never been there nor had Mike our the littles. We stopped in a tiny town off the interstate that had an Antique Church that they were selling antiques from. Right up my alley! We found a covered bridge that Wendy wondered if it was the one the headless horseman crossed. Funny, as we were stepping from the car guess what was on the ground... Pumpkin residue! On down the country road we went to visit John Wayne's birthplace. Let me just say if you are in Iowa go visit Winterset! We were in love with it all. We bought some beautiful tomatoes from a guy selling in his front yard. Made us yearn for this lifestyle. Evan turned 6 along with starting Kindergarten this year! He loves school! He had his birthday party at Chuck E Cheese this time. We got rained out of the pumpkin patch which would have been awesome! It seems like Fall is hard to judge for outdoor parties. Wendy turned 9 and is in 3rd grade. She says school is boring. Her math level is high; so we have to do challenging things for her. She had he friend party at home and the theme was Monster High. We had a fun time. The funny thing is both of our big girls usually help me with planning and corralling everyone. Instead it was just me Nd Mike doing it all. Luckily we borrowed one of her friends older sisters. whew😁 We had her party right before Halloween because we actually went to Disney World the day before her birthday. Not only did we celebrate her birthday there we also met Holly there the day we all first got there. We stayed at the Art of Animation Lion King Suites. What a wonderful place to stay! They finally got a place for families of 6!!! We usually meet up with two long time friends that traveled to China when we did for Wendy. Unfortunately we were unable to do that this time. We missed seeing you guys! This year we met up with the Milliken family. Once again Jade and Trace got to join up with Wendy and Evan. What a fun day we had!!!! Hopefully we can do this again! What a happy birthday Wendy had. We ended up staying longer this year and boy was that ever nice. We got to do everything we wanted to at a less rushed pace. Ate at different restaurants and got to have an enjoyable time all around! Thanksgiving was nice but Holly stayed in Chicago and shared it with her roommates. Once we finished with our meal we got busy getting ready for Christmas. I had not bought much at that time for Christmas so Lacy and I took advantage of some of the stores Black Thursday shopping the rest I bought via Internet. Mike flew up to get Holly and then they loaded up the car and drove back down. She hadn't driven on her own from Chicago to home so this was a good thing Mike did. She was able to bring the pups along and then on the return she drove it on her own. It was good seeing her again. I guess that is all for now. I may have to download photos later since my computer is dead and my phone has most of the photos of our Disney trip on it.