I took a couple days off around this weekend go to Illinois to visit my cousin and her family.<\/p>\n
The trip started on Friday morning as I headed towards the turnpike and about 15 millions hours in the car. \u00a0Or something. \u00a0I underestimated the amount of tolls I would need to pay and reached a point in Indiana where I didn\u2019t have enough cash to legally exit the turnpike.<\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately, there was a travel plaza with an ATM before the final exit and I cashed up – though I later realized a debit card would have worked in a pinch.<\/span><\/p>\n I got to Illinois a little ahead of schedule and my cousin\u2019s kids were crazy excited to see me – Iike, literally jumping up and down excited. \u00a0Which was pretty cool. We played some games for a bit, then went out to eat and to a birthday\/pool party for one of their friends. \u00a0It was a blast – lots of swimming and water slides – and we were all pretty tired when we headed back to their place.<\/p>\n Saturday morning was pretty low key, but we went out on the lake on their boat about 1:00. \u00a0\u00a0We didn\u2019t get off the lake until 8 that night and I spent almost all that time in the water. \u00a0The kids all had life jackets and the adults used pool noodles to float, but a noodle would have just slowed me down. \u00a0So, I treaded water and swam – and took very infrequent breaks to have a quick snack or get a drink of water before I was back in<\/em> the water. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A couple times I corralled a kid who drifted out too far or got freaked out – but I mostly stayed near the boats and let kids climb on me. \u00a0There were a lot of them. \u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n The best game was when I would dive underwater and the kids would try to guess where I would surface. \u00a0They were always amazed when I slipped past the and surfaced behind them. \u00a0\u00a0I managed to surprise them every time.<\/span><\/p>\n And not only did I “prune up”, I reached a point where I was starting to lose skin from my hands. \u00a0Crazy.<\/p>\n I think I impressed the adults that were on the flotilla of boats that gathered that day, but I was very tired by the time we were done.<\/p>\n I ended staying up late, though, because my cousin and her husband are such great conversationalists. \u00a0I sorry to end the night, but pretty much asleep on my feet.<\/p>\n Sunday was a lazy day of video games – much to the delight of the kids since I\u2019m fluent in minecraft. \u00a0We went to my aunt and uncle\u2019s for a early dinner and the kids and I had more adventures playing in the backyard.<\/span><\/p>\n There was a lot of good food, fun conversations, and origami over the weekend, but there were also some tears this morning when I left. \u00a0My cousin\u2019s kids kinda melted down when they had to say goodbye. \u00a0It was sad, but really sweet too. \u00a0I got some sad text messages while in route and tried to be reassuring when I replied when I stopped for lunch.<\/span><\/p>\n I got slowed by traffic when I hit Ohio – of freaking course – but made it home safe. \u00a0I spent some quality time with the cat and then Jim took me out from dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n It was a good trip, but such a long drive solo. \u00a0It took me a little time to get my land-legs when I got home and I think I\u2019ll sleep well tonight.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I took a couple days off around this weekend go to Illinois to visit my cousin and her family. The trip started on Friday morning as I headed towards the turnpike and about 15 millions hours in the car. \u00a0Or something. \u00a0I underestimated the amount of tolls I would need to pay and reached a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2233,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232\/revisions\/2233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}