HeadIng West For Thanksgiving: First Stop Effingham, IL

Marlena, Tom, Mary, Nick

We are both up by 5:30 because we want to be on the road by 7:00 at the latest.  We have a 9 hour drive to Effingham, six hours the next day to our son Tom's home in Lee's Summit, MO.

Yesterday went quickly even though we did not do much other than send the day packing and organizing, getting everything ready for our trip.  I had a good paddle, on the water for over an hour it was such a nice morning.  In fact, it was sunny most of the day and we were bummed we spent most of the time in the house getting things together.  I took the trash to the Transfer Station, then stopped to get gas and get the car washed before a quick run through Wegmans to pick up snacks for our trip.

When I returned home, I swept out the car, then went in for lunch, and Evie had  BLT's waiting for me.  I then spent a good part of the afternoon watching Ohio State pull out a close one against Penn State.  It took most of the afternoon although I also did some reading and took a brief nap, not worrying about the game because I had it taped.

A Quiet Lake At 3:00 PM

We had the car packed by wine time so we could enjoy our evening and get an easy, quick start in the morning.  Evie has a couple of her lists on the fridge, reminding us of things to bring, things to do before leaving the house like turn off the hot water, lock the doors, things like that.  We were able to enjoy a glass of wine, and talk about how excited we were to visit our kids and grandchildren over the next few weeks. 

Evie had planned an easy dinner and had pulled a pork and sauerkraut dinner out of the freeze early morning.  All she had to do was heat it up, make a salad, baked a few potatoes and we had a good dinner.  We watched the last two episodes of The Queen, not wanting to leave without having finished the series.  We also watched a Colbert but that was it as we went to bed early because of our early rising Sunday morning.