Homecoming

After 8 days on the road, we arrived back home safely yesterday afternoon, welcomed by the heat of Texas. All in all, it was a great vacation, but it's always hard (for me, anyway) to come back home and get back into the "normal" routine.

A quick summary of the vacation:

1. Fly into Buffalo, New York via New Orleans and Baltimore.
   
   
2. Drive to Lake Placid area and stay in cabins for three nights. Highlights: horseback riding, kayaking, 25-foot cliff jumping into a river (Ethan is a maniac!), and lazy times together.
   
   
3. Drive to Owen Sound, Ontario for the Van Sligtenhorst family reunion. Highlights: Stay with Josh's cousin and family (thanks for the hospitality!), get tours of vast Van Sligtenhorst-owned farms complete with amazing barns and homes, and celebrate with 9 of the 10 original siblings (and a good number of the descendants) who immigrated to Canada 60 years ago. It was wonderful to connect with relatives, some of whom Josh hadn't seen in ~20 years and some we'd never met or only seen on Facebook.
   
   The crew:



4. Drive back to Buffalo area and spend a day touring the Niagara Falls area. Highlights: Ride a "jet boat" to get soaked and spin 360s in the rapids of the Niagara river, view the falls from above and below and from the U.S. side and the Canadian side, and learn some history.
   
   
5. Fly back home, again via Baltimore and New Orleans.

The vacation was not without both physical and emotional impacts. Physically, Josh struggled with some hip pain during the beginning of the trip and his back was tight after sleeping on different beds not quite like his one at home. He tried to eat as healthily as possible, but it's difficult to always be good given the selection of foods available in restaurants. On the emotional side, two experiences stand out.

First, our kids are old enough now to have real opinions on what we do and where we eat. Unlike previous vacations, I didn't take the time to plan out (with opinions gathered from the others) the vacation in its entirety so we had moments of downtime that were too boring for some. And we had moments of too much activity when the kids just wanted to swim at the hotel. That makes for a bit of a struggle in the moment with the reality of four opinions, each pulling a different way.

Second, on Sunday morning at the reunion, we participated in a family-only church service that a few of the relatives organized. For the offering, we were surprised to learn that Josh's cousin suggested the collection go to Josh and our family to do something "we want to do, not what we need to do." Tears and hugs galore.

And now on to our "normal" routine. We're getting the kids ready for school (starts on Monday). Josh heads down tomorrow to MD Anderson for a biopsy on the spot in his neck. We won't know anything until at least mid next week after his doctor and associates are able to analyze and determine next steps.