The Mother Of All Road Trips, Day 1

You know how when other people go on vacation and you're so excited for them, like really and truly excited for them, but not excited enough to sit through their million pictures?  

Me too.  

But I say tough!  You can clickety-click away from here right now if you want but I'm sharing these pictures because it does my heart good to look through them again.  And since this little bloggy's purpose since birth has been to document all the crazies our family gets itself into, I sharing away.  The good news is that I'm breaking down the trip by destinations and I'll put all the pictures together in a sweet little collage instead of captioning you to death about some road stop in NoOneCares, California. 

It'll be painless.  I promise.  

 See?  

Our first stop brought us to Klamath Falls, OR and our kids lived it up in the pool.  I played with our new camera on the sidelines for a bit and took approximately 247 pictures of the kids jumping into the pool.  Apparently Austin missed the memo that when the parent with the camera yells "jump!" you jump as he missed every. single. shot.  

Good thing he's cute.   

Half-way through our first day I started to feel sick (boo! hiss!) and woke up the next morning with a terrible throat infection.  I'm happy to report that the good doctors of Klamath Falls saw me first thing and prescribed me some meds to get me back on my feet.  I didn't feel my best but just knowing that the trip we had been planning and saving for was finally underway gave me everything I needed to get going.

For those of you keeping track, that gorgeous mountain above is Mt. Shasta which is indeed AFTER Klamath Falls but we'd be here forever if I didn't combine a few days.  I always remember driving by it as a kid and knowing even then that it was majestic.  Happy to say it still is. 

We didn't know it yet, here in these pictures, but the four weeks to come would be some of the very best of our lives. I thought about what it would be like for months and months leading up to it and now that's it's over, I find myself reliving it again and again.  That's the very best kind of trip, I think, the ones that stay alive in your memory and pop in to remind you of all the good things this life has to offer.  I'm so incredibly grateful for those four weeks and can't wait to do it again.