road tripping it

for christmas and to welcome 2011 we took our first family road trip to michigan with several (and i emphasize several) stops along the way. this is just a small sampling of the pictures that i took but i wanted to get a few up before a month goes by. we brought along our portable dvd player which helped ALOT! when that didn't work, nice soothing music helped out and led to very nice nappers.

post nap

matt and i were amazed at the great attitudes from both micah and beatrix.
which led to a happy mommy and daddy and many more plans for more family adventures.

here we are stopped in the mountains sometime right before ashville north carolina. we had stayed over in atlanta the night before. it was cold in these mountains with several glimpses of snow. since the coats were packed in tight in the trunk we wrapped the kids up in blankets to take this picture at a road side scenic stop.

just a picture i really love...mainly because matt looks so happy and content.

the first time touching snow

we stopped for a late breakfast in hendersonville nc right outside of ashville to see matt's uncle and aunt. she made us a delicious breakfast and uncle dan had fun playing legos with the kids.

day two of driving was already wiping my man out!
he got a good power nap though and we left to drive the rest of the way threw the mountains to ohio where we got to stay with the parents of my roommate from college. we stayed there two nights so i would have plenty of time to catch up with my roommate amy who lives across the street from her parents with her family of 5 and then my other roommate from college melissa came to be with us on monday. it was a wonderful time of catching up! we even got to go out for lunch. i love those two girls so much...it was amazing seeing them again and i am so thankful that after all of this time we can still pick right back up again.

micah went sledding with amy's two older kids for the first time ever! this grin was frozen on his little face the whole time. he did say to me on more than one occasion that when he is older he is going to move to michigan.

the first couple of days in grand rapids we laid pretty low. micah didn't really want to leave his cousins. we did manage to talk him away one afternoon to go and do a bit of christmas shopping and to see santa claus. (side note-i was a little surprised that in the land of freezing cold they couldn't find a santa with a real beard...strange as it may seem every mall in west palm beach has a very real looking santa. this is sounding way more snobby then i am intending it. i am really just stating an observation. hahaha) anyway we went there and then that night we went to matt's parents for a grandchildren cookie party. matt's mom made cookies with all of the grand kids while the big kids watched movies and ate way too much pizza. i had pics of that night on here too but i somehow deleted them after i uploaded them. i will put them on a different slideshow...fyi for matt's mom :)