The second day of our journey went very smoothly. After a 10 hour trip from Long Island to Michigan, the 6 hour trip from Michigan to Wisconsin seemed like a breeze!!! We arrived at Julie’s house and saw eight little heads peeking out of the various locations to survey their new house guests.
This trip was really a leap of faith for all involved. Julie and I “met” about a year ago on a Yahoo group called “Magnum Opus” for large Catholic families. We have enjoyed sharing our lives through that group, our blogs and email. However, meeting in real life (and spending four days in the same house with someone) is quite another matter. As an aside, Julie had someone tell her that I was probably coming to rob her and I had someone suggest that we were going to be their Halloween dinner!!! LOL But things couldn’t have gone better!!!
Julie and I were already friends but it didn’t take long for the children to become friends. They spent hours playing in the beautiful autumn weather with my children soaking in the rural surroundings of corn fields, hay bales, and chicken coops.
Chess was big hit with the older children. Lenny, the chess king in our family, enjoyed taking on opponent after opponent:
On Tuesday, we went to a corn maze with a tire playground, a great slide, and a corn bin:
On Wednesday we made our spoon saints:
And then had our All Saints Day costume party because we needed to leave at midday on Thursday (Lenny had a soccer game on Saturday morning at 9:30 – Praise God it didn’t get rained out. They played in the rain, winning 5-1 – Lenny scored two goals!!!).
These are Julie’s delicious cookies which are featured in Cay Gibson’s Christmas Mosaic:
Each night after saying the rosary (it touched my heart seeing the children praying together) and putting the children to bed, Julie and I enjoyed our time of uninterrupted conversation. What a joy this was – sharing our stories, our faith, our challenges, etc. God is indeed good and He demonstrated His goodness to us every day in so many ways!!!
More to come…
Heather, how great it was that you two were able to meet! I have wonderful Catholic online friends, stretching from Esther in Hawaii to Jackie in England, and would love to do this sometime. Don’t get nervous, ladies, it will be quite a while, since I can’t drive to your homes like Heather could!
How wonderful to see these photos of two such beautiful families!!!
I am beside myself to see that you made spoon saints while you were there. How fun!
Gorgeous pictures and wonderful costumes.
P.S. Leticia, you can always come here!!!
In fact, I’ll see you Tuesday–LOL!