The Healing Powers of Spontaneity ** With updated map!

I was feeling a tad bit sorry for myself last week. You know that jealous/homesick feeling when your family members are off doing something fabulously fun and taking part in a once-in-a-lifetime celebration...... and you aren't there?

Yeah, it pretty much royally stinks.

A few weeks before you make the decision not to take part in the festivities, you are relatively comfortable with your choice. Your reasons seem totally valid {i couldn't possibly go to there without Husband! that wouldn't be fair to him!} and you've pretty well talked yourself out of it {after this move back to Chicago, i won't have the energy to go anywhere!}. Your reasons are totally justified {i'm going to be seeing them 2 weeks later when I fly back for my race. i need to be frugally minded here!}

The closer it comes the more you just try and push it out of your mind. A day or two before, you may even get lucky and forget about it for 20 minutes. You look around at all the laundry, cleaning and other mundane housework you are getting done and say to yourself, "Now if I were on that trip, I certainly wouldn't be accomplishing all these very important tasks."

The day of you are looking around and realizing your current day isn't packed doing anything particularly special. You think about your kids. Their day isn't being spent doing anything really out of the ordinary either. So then you try extra hard to make sure you are doing something super fun, feeling a little guilty that they have no idea what they missed out on. And you do. And it was your decision.

The day after is a little melancholy. You speak with your family, and they tell you how great it was, (and they are probably holding back most of the details not to make you feel bad) and you so wish you had been there.

Your reasons for not going all seem pretty ridiculous. Like some hyper-paranoid mother on worry pills.

Two days later you happen to see pictures of the fun they had and you really get mopey and are full of regret and realize if you had gone, no one at the homestead would have missed you. You were not doing anything that warranted a clone of you.

Hindsight is forever 20-20, but dang I wish I had gone....

Party numero uno we missed out on:



Party numero dos:



Yup, I missed out on a trip to Disneyworld with my older sister and didn't make it to the college graduation of my younger sister and her husband.

Boo.

Fortunately all was not lost and fate had a little surprise up it's sleeve. I phoned my friend Carrie to ask her a quick question, and she surprised me with, "Oh I am so glad you called! Want to take a day trip with me and my kids up to Holland to see some tulips?!"

Thanks to the Swine Flu, most of her kids were out of school, and Carrie discovered this was also the very week that the tulips were at its peak in Holland, Michigan.

Perfect. A little get-away. Long enough to feel like I got away but short enough to not throw off the week. And just the right timing to get me to stop feeling sorry for myself about missing out on some great memories. Spontaneity has a way of healing. Pardon the odd statement, but thank you, Swine Flu. After all, aren't we always to find the silver lining in the clouds?

So my awesome spontaneous self went up to Holland, Michigan for the day and it was fabulous. Carrie has 6 darling children between the ages of 7 and 16. They are all great kids and my kids love them. I know, kind of a wide age difference, but it works out well.

We piled in her 15-seater van and drove for 3 hours. The kids were hilarious, fighting over whose turn it was to sit next to Savannah. She ate up the attention. After only one emergency potty stop for Cade, (record low) we arrived. I have to admit, both Carrie and I were a little disappointed in the false advertising. A Web site indicated there were 5 million tulips at one particular tulip farm, but it was really somewhere around 300,000. Carrie had visions of fields and fields of tulips, but we saw a farm with rows and rows. Kind of a let-down, but it was still fabulous to get away, snap some cute shots of the kids, and spend the day with good friends.

I accidentally left my stroller in our storage unit in Utah, but thanks to two strapping 16 year-olds, I didn't have to carry Savannah:

It is a $100 fine per tulip damaged, so I wasn't about to let her roam the gardens. She happily rode on Connor and Spencer's shoulders the entire afternoon.

I am mortified I let her get this close:

I was positive she was going to deplete my entire summer vacation savings in one fell swoop. Instead, she went for a piece of straw on the ground and wanted to use it to feed the buffalo. Silly girl.

These were my favorite:

Some attempts of a little family photo shoot:

"attempt" is the key word:

This is who Cade really wanted his photo with. His beloved "ryansmootz"

Now I can check Michigan off the list!
visited 32 states (64%)

**thanks to Allie for letting me snag her holland photos off facebook :)
**thanks to dad for the graduation photo
**thanks to mel for the disneyworld photo