Incredible, Amazing Trip

All the sisters (and Toby) flew to St. Louis and then drove to Cape Girardeau to surprise our mom for her birthday. It was such a special trip that we will remember and cherish forever! This picture is when we all met at the airport.

I (Kelly) got in trouble for this picture. I wanted one of just the sisters, so I handed Toby to a total stranger. (You should have seen Jodi's face!!)Actually, she was a very nice grandma lady who was waiting for her own grandchild to arrive. She was holding Tobster and taking the picture at the same time. I felt okay about it since I figured I could outrun her if she tried to get away.

We had a fun 2 hour drive to Cape. I will spare you some of the sorted details. Suffice to say, there are great stories that included times of fun and laughter.

This is where I would have put a picture of mom opening the door totally surprised, but she would have a fit if I did that. She was ready for bed and very shocked that we were all there.

For mom to spend time with Toby was a great blessing. He was a perfect baby the entire time!

Saturday was designated "straight hair day", so we played beauty shop.

We surprised Granny by putting Toby up to her face. She has always loved to hold babies! This was a very emotional time for all of us. We all cried quite a bit when we were with Granny. She is not able to see any longer, but she enjoyed hearing our voices and for the most part remembered all of us. I gave her the most trouble when we were growing up, and she does remember those times :)

Almost all of Granny's smiles were when she was holding Toby.

We had good times of fellowhip and visiting around this table while we fed Granny her meals. More crying ensued when I suggested that we sing church songs to her. She did very little talking. She basically only answered our questions with one or two word phrases.........until we started singing. She remember and sang the words to several songs including "The Old Rugged Cross" and "Amazing Grace."

Julie found a song book and played some songs on the piano for us to sing along. It certainly helped the sound quality since none of us are considered great singers!

This is Cheri's Hollywood Look. She was certaily proud of the way she looked, (we heard about it all day) so I thought I had better put it on the blog.

We decided to take our picture around this one of all of us on our first birthdays. This is mom's most cherished picture of us.

Notice the ice floating in what we grew up calling the "Mighty Mississippi."




This was taken at mom's church.

The trip was so amazing for many relational reasons. We had so much fun together as sisters. We all had so much fun being with mom. It was different without the rest of the grandkids; we could spend time focusing more on mom and each other. We made great memories that we will laugh about for years to come.

However...............another major highlight was not relational at all. LION'S CHOICE!! We went there twice, and it would be too embarrassing to tell you how many sandwiches we consumed in total. Let's just say that Kelly ate 5 1/2 roast beef sandwiches in 48 hours. Julie, I must say, was not too far behind me! The other sisters ruined theirs by taking up room in their stomachs with fries. What a waste of space that should have been filled with the greatest fast food sandwich of all time!