It is a common joke among all of our friends that the Zs are just not road-trip people. Call it over-dosing on road trips as kids (where it was common for a 13-15 hour road trip anytime we went anywhere), or just impatient as adults - but we've never gone anywhere further than 6 hours away (and that was only one solitary time, all other trips have been 3 hours or less!). Anyway, we gave it a whirl last weekend when Amy's cousin's daughter (got-that?) Jenna got married. Jenna was the flower girl in OUR wedding, so we felt like it was a circle of life moment to go and share in her big day - add to that the fact that all of Amy's living aunts and uncles (except one whose health is not good) were there (so a total of 7 present) - and we decided that we needed to 'suck it up' and get in the van and go to Chattanooga.
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| And we were off! |
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| A new way of wearing one's shirt.....to keep warm....If only we were still this flexible! :) |
Unluckily enough, we couldn't leave until 9:30 as Karis works the early shift at work and couldn't skip the first part of the day - so we ended up leaving in time to hit Atlanta rush hour traffic....on a Friday......kill us now and put us out of our misery! Amy almost jumped out of the van a few times! :) Addison had to go to the bathroom every few hours, so we stopped and stopped and stopped.....finding our way into some of the dirtiest bathrooms ever known to man. Good thing for soap! :) It took us 10 hours to get there, but we finally arrived safe and sound. The kids were all actually very good on the way up until late afternoon when the lack of a nap started to catch up with Addison and she got very whiny...thankfully about 4P she finally fell asleep for a while.
We stayed at our friends the Hicks, which we always enjoy seeing them and catching up with them and their children. There was little sleep to be had though over the weekend, as we all tried to catch up with one another. Their kids are older than ours, thus a later bedtime, so our kids ended up going to bed later as well - they loved it of course but we knew that the subsequent week would probably be rough with some poor behavior - but it was only one weekend and we deemed it worth it.
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| Addison took to Erick right away...of course...tall men! :) How did this little baby get to be 5 foot 10 already?? No way! |
On Sabbath, we headed over to the Southern campus where we joined the family for lunch after church - all sides of the wedding parties were there, so it was fun to a lot of people. That night, Amy's cousin Rick and Millie hosted a get-together at their house where we enjoyed some good one-on-one time with extended family.
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| feeling right at home in their Sabbath school! |
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| Zachary is so tired he is leaning/hugging on Uncle Kevin! :) |
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| It took Addison about 2 seconds to warm up to Uncle Melvin - who doesn't love Uncle Melvin!! |
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| Amy certainly loves him too! Love that shirt!!! |
On Sunday, the wedding wasn't until 7P so we had the day to play - and we did another 'first' when we went to the Urban Rocks climbing gym. It was interesting - Kaleb didn't want to go, but he ended up being a little climbing machine and had so much fun going up the walls. Zachary - our Mr. Safety Man, had a little harder time trusting the 'auto-belay' machines that they would actually support his weight and gently lower him down to the ground, so he would climb up.....and then climb down.....making himself exhausted of course. At the end, Amy made the mistake of clapping to and encouraging him to let go and just trust the rope to come down as it would be more fun but he ended up upset and started to cry. At that point, we couldn't get him down until we finally one of the workers free-climb up (it wasn't too far for a grown-up), and Zachary managed to talk to the very calm man and climb his way back down. Poor kid. Hopefully this won't scar him for life!
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| It was these green bumps that hit his back as he rode down the first time, making him afraid that it hurt... |
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| Climbing together |
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| Waaaaaay up there! |
The wedding was beautiful....although HOT as it was outside in Jenna's family home yard...hot and humid! It reminded us of our own beastly-hot wedding. At least Jenna's didn't start in the morning when the sun was beating down. Afterwards, there was a reception of course and we enjoyed the final opportunity to visit. At the end, we thought we lost Addison as we were leaving, so all four of us were running around looking for her...but we quickly discovered that she'd climbed up into an older gentleman's lap and was just sitting there 'holding court." We were highly surprised as she normally is very wary of people she doesn't know!
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| Dedeker family - Jake, Jason, James (groom obviously), Jenna, Judy (Amy's cousin), Jay (All Js!! :)) |
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| She warmed up to cousin Steve the later the evening went! |
Amy's mom had an unlucky episode on the way home where she accidentally turned into some train tracks and blew out two of her front tires. Thankfully all was fine with the car and with her, but Karis did end up having to change two tires in the crazy heat....the man is a saint!
A funny joke of the weekend - the Hicks love pets - having 2 dogs and 2 cats. Our kids are not used to pets of course, so when the dogs would charge out barking like crazy, it scared them. Zachary was quickly verbal in that he liked their cats but did NOT like their dogs as he was scared of them. Amy shared that if it was their dog, and if they had known the dog when it was smaller/younger, they wouldn't be afraid of them. This of course leads Zachary into thinking that WE are going to get a dog (not convinced of this yet!!). Anyway, the Hicks' have one dog that is perhaps not even THEIR favorite....and Kevin would start to make hints to Addison that maybe she'd want to take a dog home.....and she said "the little one" (much to his delight as that is the dog - Cookie - that he was hoping she'd say!). After that, there were hilarious jokes about Cookie coming home with us. Thankfully, Cookie did NOT end up in the van when we pulled out of the driveway! :)
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| Good-bye Cookie!! |
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| Kaley, Kaleb, Erick & Addison, Zachary, and Leah |
Thankfully the ride home was only 7 1/2 hours long - thanks to hitting Atlanta at the right time of day and for Addison holding it much longer on the way home - with only one pit stop the trip went MUCH faster!
Prior to the road trip, we actually had some fun days when Amy's Uncle Don, Aunt Linda and their grandson Camden came down. We went to La Nouba with them....first time for the kids (loved it!)...and then Grandma B took the boys the next two days to Legoland and Disney World....we kept Addison at home as she was still potty training (doing SO WELL!) and we wanted her to nap as we knew the weekend would be long...
Random pictures:
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| I see a little something extra in this suitcase.... |
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| Voila! |
And a new game has been borne in the Z household. The adults have always played cribbage when they get together with the Hicks, and now Zachary and Kaleb have figured out how to play, so the family has been playing since we got back. It is good for counting and math skills!
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Phrase of the week: Leah asked Kaleb if he wanted to race to the top of the rock climbing wall, and his sanguine reply? No, let's just climb side-by-side and do it together. So Kaleb, happy to play with kids and not be in a competition all the time!
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