The bene's of low expectations

We're back from our trip, and although we were only gone 4 nights, I'm having trouble catching up on things back at the ranch. It's amazing how life piles up when you leave it for awhile, and how difficult it is to catch up when you still have your usual responsibilities of taking care of the little ones.

But our trip went really, really well. It actually could not have gone better, which is what I mean when I say that it pays to have low expectations. Not that I wasn't expecting to have a good time, but I was stressing about sleeping arrangements and traveling, and it was fine. Completely fine. I was pleasantly surprised.

First we stopped in to see a couple of old friends. Mike and Nancy were dear friends of ours during the first few years that I lived in Columbus. Then around the time that we got married, they moved to Kentucky and have proceeded to have 2 children slightly older than ours. So we stopped in to visit them for the first night of our trip, and it was SO great. Our kids had a blast together and I thoroughly enjoyed our time there. Nancy is one of those friends with whom you can sit and chat and hours go by and you don't notice. Miss her. And just love her.

Then we headed on down the road to Brian's folks'. Within 5 minutes, Katy had spotted the swimming pool and had a one track mind about getting in it. I cannot describe to you Katy's fearlessness in the pool. Over the course of the weekend, she spent hours and hours and hours in the water, all too deep for her to touch, just treading water with her floaties. Her cousins taught her to jump from the side (forward and back), and it looks like she may take after them in her fish-like tendancies. It's also interesting to note that her fearlessness in the pool is directly correlated to my FEAR while she's in the pool. This is the worst part: if I lost a year of my life for every time she did this during the trip, I'd be a very old woman:

But overall the trip was fabulous. We had a great time with Katy's grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins, and family friends who visited as well. The car trip was fine, but we just had to stop SO OFTEN. On the return trip, which should take 4.5 hours, we stopped 3 times. How will we ever make the 12 hour drive to the beach in September? But the surprising part was the sleep. Both Katy and David slept in the room with us at various points of the trip, and as long as Katy had a visual barrier between her and us, she slept completely normally, even through David crying in the middle of the night (shocked me). She missed her nap 3 of the 5 days because she refuses to sleep in the car no matter what, but I won't complain since she sleeps so well the rest of the time. And David followed his normal sleep routine as well (or at least what he's been doing the past couple of weeks). I think he's at the age where he doesn't notice as much if he's in a different place, so that really helped.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves for the rest of the trip. It really was a nice time, and we hope to get everyone together there every summer.