Home Leave

Home leave is supposed to be more relaxing than ours was, I think. We got into Austin and left a few days later to go to a Farnham family reunion in Iowa. We drove up. We stopped in Fort Worth to have breakfast with some friends of ours who had recently moved there from Rome, then drove up to Wichita to spend the night. The next day, we drove from Wichita to Clear Lake, Iowa (where the family reunion was).

For those of you keeping track at home, that's 5 states in the first week.

The family reunion at Clear Lake was hosted by Mike and Linda Colby, at their lake houses. Clear Lake was the site of one of the most famous plane crashes in history, memorialized in a famous song: "American Pie". One of the lake houses (the one we stayed at) was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Hormel family in the (I think) 1920's. Thus ends the history lesson.

The Colbys have quite an assortment of fun water toys: a couple of ski boats (with skis and tubes), 3 wave runners, a kayak, a pontoon boat. The kids (and parents) had a blast playing in and on the lake with all of the relatives. There was a carnival across the lake, and the kids (ours and a couple of cousins who were running around) badgered Uncle Mike into taking them to it in the boat. We stayed at home, figuring that with all the adult supervision, the kids would be fine. We didn't count on the persuasiveness of our kids, though. Palmer talked someone into buying him a big frozen lemonade (or something similar), then went on a ride with his cousin - and promptly puked all over him. Ah, the memories.

We hung out with Farnhams for a few days, and reconnected with relatives we hadn't seen in a while. One day, we took a day trip up to the Mall of America in Minneapolis to meet with Becca's old boss from Rome (who had taken over the office there). While in Minneapolis, we got together for dinner with some old friends of ours, whom we hadn't seen in 10+ years.

We're up to 6 states now.

When we left the family reunion, we drove back down to Austin, again stopping on our way through Fort Worth to have a meal with the Marks family - this time at our favorite barbecue restaurant. We arrived back in Austin just in time for the July 4th celebration in our old neighborhood, and we got to hang out with all our old neighbors for the afternoon.

We flew up to Maine to spend some time with Becca's father and step-mother. Well, we flew into Boston and drove up there (Massachusetts -> New Hampshire -> Maine... add another 3 states, for a total of 9.)

We hung out with them for a few days, went to the beach a couple of times, toured a submarine that's been turned into a museum, went to a water park, and just relaxed. It was a wonderful respite after going, going, going for the first little while.

We left there and flew into the DC area to visit Becca's family and friends. (Don't forget the running tally - add Virginia and Maryland for a final total of 11 states!) We stayed in town and hung out with friends and family for a few days, then packed up the kids and took them down to Williamsburg for a few days. We figured that with all of the European history they've been learning in school over here, we'd force feed them some U.S. history as well.

We got to hear George Washington give a speech and take questions from the audience, heard Thomas Jefferson give a talk (and tease Cori a bit about her red hair), and put the kids in an apprentice program where they went to 3 different shops (the tailor, the gunsmith, and the printer) and learned a bit about how the different trades did their work in colonial times. Our tickets included Jamestown and Yorktown, so we toured each of those sites as well, but most of our time was spent in Williamsburg.

We left Williamsburg and drove back up to DC, and spent the last few days up there catching up with everyone one last time, before flying back down to Austin.

Our last couple of weeks in Austin passed entirely too quickly, but I don't think there's anything major that we missed. We got a chance to go to our favorite water park, Schlitterbahn, before we left, and also met the Marks family at a new water park up in Waco (halfway between Fort Worth and Austin). Our six week visit ended, with a final total of 11 states, and untold miles on 4 different cars - I thought it was supposed to be relaxing! We said our goodbyes, and jetted back to Rome... and that concludes this update. Check back tomorrow for what's happened since we got back.