We started out the day by enjoying a very nice continental breakfast at the Quality Inn. We met a really nice young couple one their way home to Michigan. Jacob had charmed the lady attendant of the breakfast bar. Unfortunately, she was a cheek pincher and he was starting to get aggravated at being treated like a baby. He did finally told her don't. I explained quietly to her when I got more coffee, that the kids were older than they looked. So she left him alone after that.
The kids did great helping straighten up their areas in the van, while I loaded the van. We got on the road by 9:45am.
We drove past some beautiful horse farms in Kentucky, then things started flattening out, as we got to Indiana and Illinois. I grew up in Peoria and Washington Illinois and while I have fond memories of being in the cornfields and all the family reunions where we ate huge quantities of fresh corn on the cob, I definitely feel more at home in the BlueRidge Mountains of Virgina. The breeze caused the corn to ripple like green waves, it brought back alot of memories.
For lunch, I caved in and we grabbed Mcdonalds. Although the kids had cheesburgers with apple slices and milk. We have a cooler for rest stop picnics, but we had two different OI meet-ups planned and didn't want to miss one.
Around 1:30 we got to St. Louis and met Dottie George and Nick at Oberwies's where she very kindly treated us to ice cream at this local favorite. We all had a great time getting to know them. Since we didn't get to do Flat Stanley at home, I taped 4 pieces of paper together, drew a Flat Stanley, and the kids and I colored it. We got photos of all of the kids together..
We then hightailed it to Kansas City and checked into a very beautiful Holiday Inn and got cleaned up just in time to meet with Stephanie Guin and the wonderful Binning family. Sami truly has the OI social butterfly personality and my kids quickly fell in love with both Sami and her big brother Carter. Jacob and Carter got along like old buddies. We enjoyed a long vist of hot chocolate and coffee. We got Flat Stanley photos again, and let Sami try out one of the Ti-lite wheelchairs we had with us. We can't wait to spend time with all of them at the conference...
We missed supper and the kids weren't hungry until later, so we had ham,cheese and crackers and capri-suns for a quick bite and watch Cake Boss on TLC... All three kids are sound asleep.
I arranged for a late check-out for tomorrow so that we can take a quick swim before heading out again....
Tomorrow it is off to Denver and more adventures with my three amazing kids....Night all.....
Great job setting the site up! Looks fantastic! Glad you are having a wonderful time out there on the road meeting up with everyone! I had to laugh when I saw the logging truck! We have a good bit of them up here in PA too! Between those and cement tube truckers there's always a good chance of bad traffic! :)
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