south and west, and then back again

In the midst of holiday celebration, we were given some sad news. My grandmother passed away on December 10th, and Papa's grandmother passed away on December 11th. We headed down to New York on the morning of the 12th for my grandmother's funeral; and, from there, we headed west to Dodge City, Kansas, to attend the funeral for Papa's grandmother. We were rushing to make time on the road, so the time spent on the road was not so enjoyable; but, ultimately, we are glad we made the trip. It was a good opportunity to see and spend a little time with family members (I have found that funerals are very good for providing reunions).While we are saddened by the loss of these great women from our lives, we have great memories of our time with them. I think their lives were celebrated in lovely ways at their funeral services; and their memory will live on in the people who loved them.
Papa remarked that the trip out to Dodge will likely be our last trip there, so we wanted to see the house that his father grew up in as well as his grandmother's house.

Papa's mom had some pretty great stories to share about her memories of Dodge City as well.

On the way back home, we made more stops for our sanity and to prevent a mutiny from the seal pups.
They did a great job, considering they were strapped in with little, to no. prepartion for the 50+ hours on the road that they were subjected to.On the return trip home we stopped at the Indianapolis Children's Museum for two short hours to allow the kids a chance to move around a little, it was a good stop.

The Indianapolis Children's Museum is, quite possibly, one of the best Children's Museums we have gone to, and we have gone to quite a few.
As much as we love a good roadtrip, we have established a new benchmark: if it's more than a 15 hour drive to get there, we are flying. I am putting it here, because it's like it's in stone now, and that makes it a real rule...one we will follow, and everything.

There are a goodly amount of photographs from our trip west to the midwest in flickr.

Tomorrow, I will talk about Christmas, because Seal Pup 1.0 wants me to tell you about it, because, "you know, it's four days away."