Ten Years Time

Zip, Zip, Zoom . . . that is my description of how fast the ten years have passed since high school graduation. Although--so much has happened in that time, and I feel like I have changed so much, maybe there are moments I think it has been even longer than just ten years.

Zip, Zip, Zoom . . . that is also my description of how quickly our family road-tripped to Illinois and back this past weekend to attend my high school reunion. After Forest came home from work on Friday afternoon, at 3:30 we hit the long road to our destination. It was the first time our little family tried driving through the night, and despite apprehensions that the girls would refuse to sleep, our experiment was surprisingly successful. The children slept about 9 hours of the trip, I slept about 2 then dozed another 2, and Forest at least pretended to sleep during my 3-hour driving shift. We all arrived safely in my parents' driveway around 6:30am, unloaded the girls, then Forest and I collected 3 more hours of shut-eye on the guest bed (thanks to Jii and Baachan entertaining our wide-eyed daughters).

Noon was lunch time--out at Avanti's for me and some high school besties, out at Noodles and Co. for Forest, Ramona, Mika, and Paca.

Our Avanti's crew (Denise, me, Aubrey, Britt, and Ashley) sat in that booth and caught up most of the afternoon. It was a lovely gathering that I think made us all feel "young" again.

Forest and Paca dropped by toward the end so Ramona and Mika could say hi and show how tall they'd grown.

 

The girls spent the remainder of that afternoon scattering toys and crayons all over Jii and Baachan's living room . . .

 . . . and eating pumpkin-shaped cookies baked by Baachan.

 

After I convinced Forest to secure another 2 hours of sleep at my parents' house, we headed over to downtown Bloomington for my NCHS Class of '03 reunion. Brittany was our senior class president back in the day, and had long been designated the principal party planner for this reunion.

She and the rest of the committee did a great job organizing the event. I of course wish I could have skipped some of the small talk that evening and traded it in for more "big talk" with Britt, but everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time chatting with old classmates.

Sunday was the car ride home to Colorado--this time during the day. Also, surprisingly successful. Ramona and Mika have become quite the seasoned travelers, drastically reducing their number of whining episodes in the car. Now if I could just figure out how to decrease their level of filthiness by the end of a trip . . .