April 25

Goodbye to Daddy.....sad day here

I stayed up late with Tim while he packed up all of his things and tried to get it all in to the small carryon bag that he brought with him.....trouble is he bought 2 new sweatshirts while in NYC.   It was challenging but he got the bag zipped.  A short time later, around 2:30 am, Gracie came in to our room crying.  She woke up and realized that Tim is leaving today and she was upset about it.  She was so upset that I started to cry with her.  We snuggled with her and she finally went to sleep but she tossed and turned for the rest of the night.  When the alarm went off somewhere in the 7’s my eyes hurt so bad!  I am tired and I don’t want Tim to leave.  Neither do the kids.....Christian came in and was sad, too. 

Chad had been up early to go pick up the chicks that he had ordered.  Isn’t that amazing, that he could just go to www.mypetchicks.com and order 10 baby chickens to be delivered to him from another state??  They sure are cute...the Rodgers kids decided to name them after the illustrious travelers so now in New Jersey there are chickens named after us.  My kids were thrilled!  They were so excited to hold them and didn’t even care when the chick pooped on their hands.  OK, Madison did but the other kids laughed.  Christian and Gracie had a lot of fun this week collecting eggs and feeding animals every day.  Today was no different, they helped Annalise and Ava find the eggs and visited all of the animals to feed them.  Kim made “fresh from the chicken” eggs and toast and healthy smoothies that looked very “green” but tasted very fruity!  Tim and Chad left for the airport around 9 and we began the arduous task of packing back into the RV all the things that we had taken out and the new stuff that we have purchased.  I decided to mail home 2 boxes of purchases.  I should have sent home a bunch of clothes, too.  It makes the souvenirs a little more expensive, oh well.....While at the post office, we picked up burgers from Rambos....the local market.  They grind the meat right there and, boy, were the burgers good.  YUMMY!!

  The kids kept disappearing out to the church playground or into the basement to the chicks and the legos...We did end up leaving a lot later than we planned but it was nice to spend the day with Chad and Kim even if we were trying to pack up.  Thanks to the Rodgers family for being great hosts...not only did they loan us their van for 5 days but they let us invade them....do laundry at will, ignored the mess, teased us about our late hours, made us great food and refreshed us on this long journey....It was great to be embraced by family when we are missing all of ours at home so much! 

So we will drive straight to the Walmart in Rhode Island go to bed and get up and go to the Breakers in the am.  We headed for a TRader Joes that is on our way.  We replenished the cupboards a little and noticed that there was an LL Bean outlet in the parking lot....oooohhhh, we just had to go in.  So a little while later, we had some new things (awesome LL Bean canvas bags, a rain/wind breaker and new swimsuit for Gracie and a KLEAN KANTEEN water bottle for me all for killer prices).  On our way again, Christian and Gracie passed out.  We finally made it to Walmart, made beds and went to sleep.