After spending a couple days in Kentucky, our road trip continued up through the Midwest to visit James’ side of the family. First stop- Cincinnati to visit James’ sister and her family! Behold- Henry and Etta’s cousins:This kid was in heaven having cousins to play with and all their cool toys to explore. (Of course, for little kids playing together, having fun doesn’t look that much different from not having fun, as any excess of emotion leads to tears.) If Henry was in heaven, I was even more so getting to spend time with my SIL Laura. This girl is an amazing mother, and the older my kids get, the more I find myself reaching out to her for wisdom and support. We tried to survive the endless driving of this trip by maximizing sleep driving. Thus, we drove from Kentucky to Cincinnati early morning (Etta slept) and then left to drive on to Indiana after dinner and baths so that both kids would sleep and we could drive without stopping and enjoy adult road trip joys. Podcasts! Conversation! Music that isn’t the Moana soundtrack! (Not that I’m tired of those tunes- nope.) It worked most of the time. There was one catastrophically awful nap where Henry screamed most of the time, but on the whole, it gave us lots of driving in peace and helped us only have to resort to Daniel Tiger on a tablet for about 2 hours out of the 30 total that we spent in the car. But I digress. Following Cincinnati, we headed to James’ parents’ house in northern Indiana. And again, I went back to sleeping in while other people woke up with my children and let them wander outside in stages of undress.My in-laws have an epic garden that puts my aspirations of someday keeping a single basil plant alive to shame. Remember last summer when Henry spent the whole visit eating green beans? This summer was the Visit Of The Cherry Tomatoes. He loved helping pick produce, and managed to not eat everything. We took a giant bag of fresh stuff home from the garden, and Henry spent the next week excitedly announcing that “I pick it wif grandma!!!” every time I made dinner. What’s this? An Etta cameo! We celebrated my brother-in-law’s birthday while there, and Laura and her family came up from Cincinnati for it. More cousin time!Happy birthday uncle Thomas! Almost the whole family- just missing uncle Philip. Love this tribe that I married into!We went to Charlottesville this past weekend to see my brother and his wife (back from Sweden!) which means that in a one month span, we got to spend time with every single family member scattered across the country. What a gift. You will be spared endless photos of that trip because I completely forgot to take any, but I’m sure you can imagine what they would be: Henry, pawned off on family members and loving it.

This summer didn’t have any trips beyond those solely devoted to time with family, and you know what? That’s just fine with me. These are my very favorite people.