Our Vacation

Wow! It's taken a whole week to catch up from being gone a week. Makes you wonder if it's worth it....not really, we definitely needed the time away as a family. Except we weren't complete because Beth couldn't go with us. She stayed here and went to school, work, and watched our dogs so we wouldn't have to board them.

Rather than going to the Texas Hill Country and Schlitterbahn (#1 ranked water park in the US) that Tony originally suggested, we all decided we'd like to head north for an amusement park vacation. Our plan the first day was to drive to Southern Indiana to meet Tony's parents and go to a park in Santa Claus, IN called Holiday World. We had originally proposed going to Indianapolis and hanging out with them on our way to Ohio (more about that later), but Nancy countered with this plan, so that's what we did.

On our way, we experienced a first! I (Melody) drove from Springfield, MO to this side of St. Louis, and we decided to pull off and eat. I exited and was heading to the Steak and Shake when I ran over something. I was just heading out from a red light, so I wasn't traveling very fast, but we heard a hissing noise that made us know we had a flat. When we got into the S&S parking lot and got out, we discovered that we had TWO flats! Whatever it was I had run over had gashed both our front and rear right tires. What to do! The kids and I went on in to S&S and ate, and Tony worked in the blistering heat changing one of the tires with our spare. Then he came in and got on the phone. We ended up getting in touch with the manager of a Wal-Mart Tire Center nearby, and she came and got us and took us to Wal-Mart. The tire was ruined, so we had to buy a new one. We loaded it in her trunk and all of us in her car and headed back to the S&S. Tony got that tire on, and we headed on our way after a 2 hour delay. I thought we all handled it pretty well! Tony's the one that did all the work, but we all kept good attitudes, and laughed, and bought ourselves souvenirs at the Wal-Mart! We decided that the vacation could only go up from there, and it did!

Tuesday morning we got up and spent the day at Holiday World. It was a very clean park and has the #2 ranked Water Park there. We spent the morning and early afternoon riding amazing wooden roller coasters and then headed into the Water Park around 3. Water Parks are not my favorite thing, but we had a good time. There's something about a mob of people almost naked, sweaty, wet and sunburned that just doesn't thrill me. But we got in the wave pool and rode a couple of water rides. After about 2 hours we'd had enough, so we left, met up again with Gene and Nancy and ate at St. Nick's restaurant for supper. Spent the night again, had breakfast the next morning, said our goodbye's to Grandma and Grandpa and headed to Sandusky, OH

Cedar Point is an amusement park in Sandusky, and it has the #1, and the #2 ranked steel roller coasters in the world! I don't know if you've seen the special on the Discovery channel about roller coasters, but these are on that show. Cody had seen the show, so when Tony mentioned maybe going there, he was fired up. The #2 ranked one was simply amazing! Frankly, I don't know why it's behind the #1. It goes from 0 to 120 in 4 seconds! (Tony added this video link if you want to see more views of it and "ride" it: http://www.cedarpoint.com/_includes/flash/media_player_popup.cfm?videoID=9290&videoWidth=320 ).
Because of a threat of rain on Thursday (the day we had planned for Cedar Point), we decided to get starlight tickets and go Wednesday evening after a day of driving, and then see if that was enough, or if we wanted to go back on Thursday. We rode the #2 ranked one (Top Thrill Dragster) first thing, and then later it closed down, so we were thrilled that we did that one first. We rode all the coasters we wanted to, stayed until 10:00, and decided we were done! We went back to the hotel, swam a little, watched a movie and slept! It was a great park. It sits right on Lake Erie, and you could see the lake from the top of the rides. It was just fun to be somewhere we'd never been before.

Thursday morning, we decided to drive to Chicago. The kids had never been there, so we just did it. That was really fun to me...be on vacation and change plans...just drive somewhere because we wanted to! We haven't done that very much, and I loved it. Plus, I love Chicago, so I was excited. We drove down Lakeshore Drive along Lake Michigan, past Loyola and Northwestern Universities, then drove out to Schaumburg, IL. I'm familiar with that area because that's where we stay when we go to the conferences at Willow Creek. We walked around a mall, and then ate at one of our favorite restaurants there, Maggianos. Friday was our day to drive home, but before we did, Tony wanted to take the kids by Willow Creek. We've been there so much, and we wanted them to see it. We went in, sat at Dr. B's Cafe with some great coffee drinks by the fireplace, then walked around a little bit. I just have to say that I LOVE that church! We saw a painting hanging that Tony and I had seen the artist paint during a conference there. As I was telling the kids about it, I teared up. God has done a lot of things inside me when I have gone there, so I guess just that sense of gratitude for how God has used that church in my life overflowed! We ended up in the bookstore, and we bought a set of Rob Bell CD's. They had made a set of CD's from all the times he had spoken there. We listened to them for 12 hours home, and they were amazing! We ended up shopping a little bit more, and then headed home around noon. Construction in 2 places caused traffic to be stop-and-go for 30 minutes each, and that was frustrating, but we eventually got home around midnight.

It was a vacation of driving! We traveled 2000 miles over a 5 day period, and had a blast! We played car games, Cody and Nat watched movies, and as I mentioned we listened to a LOT of Rob Bell. We actually had listened to him read his book, "Velvet Elvis" on CD on the way to Indiana the first day, so we definitely are "Rob Belled" to the max!

Just wanted to share about the trip. School starts Wednesday, so we're gearing up for that. Another summer; another year! Time is flying by faster and faster. I'm trying to enjoy every minute of it!