Travels & Visitation

Our trip up to West Virginia and Virginia was grand. Along with the renewed time of fellowship with our family and friends, we also had the opportunity to see many things. For instance, we witnessed to pouring of the concrete foundation for the Conlogue's new addition to their house! All the kids and Stacey even put their handprints into the cement to be recorded there (under the house) forever!

We also started some travel bugs in our Geocaching Hobby. Jeff bought all the kids travel bugs to place in caches. Others will pick up these "bugs" and logg their adventures. The bugs are dog tags and can be attached to any small item that can be easily transported and placed in small containers. As of this posting (which is kind of late; it's June 16th), Austin's bug has travelled all the way to Washington State! It started off in a rest area cache along Interstate 81 in Virginia. Kathryn's has made it to Ohio. We still need to place Callie and A.J.'s bugs; we'll probably do that along I-10 when we travel to Texas. Along the way, we have been collecting other's bugs. One that we have wants to go to Hawaii! (Some of the bugs have notes attached that have a specific destination.) Read more about geocaching here.

During the traveling part of our travels, we also stopped at Thomas Jefferson's home near Richmond Virginia, Monticello. We toured the grounds learning about all sorts of pursuits made by this fascinating man. God surely granted Jefferson talent in many areas like Architecture, plant cultivation, Astrology and even hospitality. Touring the grounds made it easy for us to imagine what it might be like back in his time. Well, kind of easy. It was also very easy to get back in the van and drive to Chesapeake in only another 3 hours. A trip like that in the late 1700's would have taken days!!

At the other Smiths' house (Harry's brother and his family) we enjoyed hanging out on their "farm." Yes I said farm! They have chickens and geese and a garden and even bees! The little ones played school in their cousin's homemade "schoolroom." We all had a great time and had a hard time leaving.

The trip from Virginia to Pensacola was the hardest leg of the journey yet. We made a ton of stops at rest areas for bathroom breaks! We spent the night with some dear friends in Watkinsville, Georgia, enjoying their company one last evening. God blessed our trip immensely! We all have wonderful memories to take with us to our new home in Hawaii.