How About A Trip Across The Country?

 

In March the recession started in the United States.  On June 30, I completed my current contract with no real hope of getting another any time soon.  This was the first time in 6 years of contracting that I had ever come to a situation where I had ended a contract without another in the wings.  It just came to me one day and so I asked:  "Wendy, why don't we do some travelling - go see some people that we have not visited in a long time and some others that we've never met?"  So we did.

Our first stop was to see my cousin Dawn and her family: husband Tim and kids Preston, Phillip and Alexandra.  They live in Deadwood, SD.  We spent a week there, we enjoyed Dawn and Tim and were totally charmed by their kids.  What a great family.  We made the decision after this time together to make sure we are not strangers anymore.  After all they are only 10 hours from us by car.

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Alexandra immediately adopted our kids.  She is a wonderful little mother and it was so fun to have her helping us with the kids.  Here she is walking with Devin to do some sliding in the park in Lead.  (pronounced Leed)

Our kids enjoyed playing with Phillip though I think he was a bit overwhelmed by the twins a few times.  He is a great little kid.  He warmed up to us really quickly and we had a great time with him.  Here he is sliding with Devin.

If they can see enough of him I think our kids and Phillip will end up being great friends.

  

Alexandra playing with Cory.
Alexandra has a great smile.  She was so helpful playing with our kids.
Dawn is reading to Phillip.  She home schools her children - I am totally in awe of anyone who can home school children.  What a lot of work.

All the kids at Mount Rushmore. 

Preston is on the right.  Looking over my pictures I was disappointed that I didn't have more pictures of Preston.  One of the best parts of spending time with Dawn's family was getting to spend time with Preston.  He is a great kid - he is very intelligent and is very interesting to talk to.  He is also very competetive.  We played several games of chess - he is quite good.  I had to dig back to my memories of high school chess to beat him.