Safe and Sound

We had a rather uneventful trip and made it to Minnesota safe and sound. The unspoken plan was to switch drivers every ank of gas and it worked well for the first two fill-ups. When we were in Kalispell, Montana (about 9 hours into the trip) Erik ordered a beer and the waitress kindly told him his license was expired. Woops.

So, I had the pleasure of driving the rest of the way to Minnesota. The weather was simply gorgeous! Beautiful puffy clouds and bright blue skies. What more could you want?We ended up driving 16 hours on day one and 14 hours on day two. I had just come off a night shift when we left Kelowna so I was t.i.r.e.d. Especially because I had only slept for 2 hours between my two night shifts. Not the safest scenario.

I had to pull over on the side of the road once and take a 15 minute cat nap because I was so tired. As I was turning the car on to proceed with our trip a cop came up behind me with his lights flashing. He just wanted to see what was going on and to make sure we were ok. What a nice guy.

We ended up rolling into Minneapolis at 11:30pm and spent about an hour and a half catching up with Erik's sister before getting some much needed sleep. In the morning we got to see these rug rats, our adorable nephews.

And this below is a very common scene. Erik loves playing with the boys especially because they think he is hilarious. And he is.

We decided to make the trip to Minneapolis because Erik's cousin was getting married. The wedding was yesterday and it was absolutely beautiful! I got to meet some of Erik's aunts, uncles and cousins for the first time too which was nice. I finally get to put some faces and personalities to some names. We are all having brunch in a few hours so I will get to spend a little bit more time getting to know them.

Erik only has five cousins on this side of the family. Actually, he only has five cousins on the other side of the family too. That's something I'm just not used to. Let's put it this way, I have more brothers than he has cousins (on one side). It's nice though because I feel as though I actually have a chance to talk to each one of them.

I also love being here because my father-in-law gets to share some of his history with me. He grew up here and all of his family is here so he has plenty of stories for me.

We are only in leaving Minneapolis sometime later today for Erik's sisters house in south-west Minnesota. We will be there for a few days and then we'll make the long trek home. I think we're going to take at least three days to make our way back -- especially since I'm the only one driving. I want o break it up a little bit more. We'll see. I may be pretty busy in the coming days so there may be an onslaught of posts when I get home, but I will try sneak away for a little bit each day to keep you updated.

Hope you are all having a wonderful long weekend!