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It wasn't until just days before that the family decided we would have CoTE.  In fact, it took Glo texting her brothers herself and convincing them that we needed to do it.  However, I had been traveling for nearly three weeks, and we wouldn't pull in to Northville until late Thursday night (with CoTE beginning on Friday).  Hannah took the reins and went decoration shopping--I have to laugh because when I told her that I was paying, she bought $500 in decorations! Yeah, I took $300 of them back to Party City the next day, and the cashier asked me why I would ever buy so many only to return them.  I completely  blamed Hannah ;-) I had already gone Easter candy shopping (the day before Easter) because I knew there would be no candy left a week later.  And we had plastic eggs.  We bought some straws at Target and five dozen real eggs at CostCo.  We decorated the house, filled the eggs, and waited for everyone to arrive. What a fun weekend!  I me...

Surely I have used the title of this blog post before.  I have brought Glo home so many times (and taken her back to school as well), and as I always say, I love the journey.  I was thinking about it before this last drive, and we've seen some things along the way.  One time heading west, we went north and saw Mt. Rushmore for the first time.  And another time, in conjunction with book club, we took the southern route and spent a morning at the WWI museum and an evening going up Gateway Arch.  I used to just pound out these road trips, but they've become little vacations themselves.  This time, I decided we would make it a temple tour, hitting up four different temples, three of which are new.  Our plans got a bit crushed with a last minute decision to host Celebration of the Egg, so we only ended up hitting two temples, but it was still fun. Glo is a master packer.  I'm not sure which came first--her ability to pack, or us needing to pack up our ...

Beth and I share February birthdays.  Because Chris has never bought her a gift for her birthday, for Christmas, for their anniversary, for Valentines Day, or for Mother's Day, I came up with the idea of giving her a trip to Poland for her birthday to go pottery shopping.  He was on board  as soon as I texted him.  So I found one of my Polish pottery bowls, wrapped it up beautifully, found a card that said "Bon Voyage" and brought it to dinner.  I passed it under the table to him so he could give it completely as HIS gift.  Beth was overcome when she opened it, not believing that he even wrapped it, and in tears when the reality of it all hit her.  I was happy to stand back and let Chris take all the credit, which he did. I planned the whole trip.  I asked Beth if there was anything specific she wanted to do, but she told me no. She was happy to let me plan it.  With long COVID, it wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do, but come our April tr...