Midwest adventure - Day 2

Our trips to the WI/MN clans always come with one major downside; seeing everyone requires lots 'o driving since they live quite a distance away from each other. Case in point was Day 2 of our Midwest Adventure 2010.

The day started in Oshkosh at the Meyer residence with a superb scones-breakfast home-made by our friends. Amazing. We needed to be on the road at about 10:30am since we were expected to be at a family gathering up in the Northwoods (Hayward, WI) at 3pm. To give you an example of the lots o' driving: Oshkosh to Hayward is 350 miles and almost 5hrs... We made sure we had plenty of food, drinks and gas since we had to make it a straight shot.

So, at exactly 3pm we pulled into the driveway and were greeted my Jen's mom, her brother, gramma, aunts, uncles and nephews. One of Jen's aunts got married last Friday so we had a nice dinner topped with some awesome wedding cake. Daniel (DJ) was having a great time with his cousins AJ and CJ (...) exploring the 20 acres, the chickens, the pool, the piano, the toys found by the grammas when they went garage-saling and mooching off our dinner. He was - strangely enough - a little afraid of the dogs. Not sure why, but not a big deal when there is 20 acres to roam.

Cousins DJ & CJ

LOVE this picture of Daniel and Gramma Ann playing PattyCake

Mom and her Grandsons

Four Generations

My brother and our boys

Siblings, not Rivals

Uncle Chris and the boys

Gramma Ann with 3 of her great-grandkids: AJ, DJ and CJ

The Newlyweds, Lori & Tony, with DJ and CJ

Daniel LOVED this keyboard!

We left Hayward at 7pm to head for our final destination that day: South St. Paul, MN. Short 2hr trip, only 130 miles. Easy peezy... ;-) We were met by Jen's sisters, her brother in-law and the new niece. Jen ended-up holding her for quite some time. The picture of her holding her new niece was exactly the same image I saw last year when Jen's sister was holding Daniel on that same couch...

After showering Jen's sister with a number of Daniel's old toys and other baby-related material we talked for a little bit before everyone went down to sleep. Tired of the total of 900+ miles over the last day we actually made it in bed before 11pm. I guess that is a first for me/Jen for the last 5 days or so. Such are the blessings of the driving on our Midwest Adventures.