Busy times ahead!

Well folks while it has been a quiet couple months of no traveling the Richards family is headin on the road again. First up a trip back to Alton for a much needed visit for the grandma's! The following weekend a trip up to Michigan to visit the Richards clan, then a much needed week off back in Cinci. Phew I am getting exhausted already, but oh wait then the weekend after that is the big trip to Atlanta. I will have more about that later in my write up. Then a week after that will be another trip back to Alton to celebrate me and my mama's birthday. June is going to be one big blur and I can only hope and pray that my children will be on their best behavior as they will be pretty much living out of their car seats.

I probably shouldn't be subjecting the kids to the car ride to Atlanta but hear me out on this. Once a year Thomas has a mandatory Actuarial seminar that he has to attend in order to get the credits he must acquire per calendar year to maintain his A.S.A. Wow that was a lot of words!! Anywho, when we found out that was going to be an annual occurrence I told Thomas that if it was in driving distance that we would try and make a trip out of it. Obviously if this conference was in California he's be leaving on a jet plane, but since this is Atalnta and when I mapquested it said it would only be a 7 1/2 hour drive I had to make a decision. Should we stay or should we go. Last year the trip was in Indianapolis, being that it was so close to home and Lainey was only a few months old I decided to see if my mom would be willing to come out and help me with the kids. That worked out wonderfully and while I was half tempted to see if I could have her or Cheryl come back out this time I chose not to in the end. I really love having my family unit and the thought of not having Thomas/Daddy around for a few days made me sad, of course this is my heart talking. My head on the other hand was saying, " ARE YOU NUTS!" Why would you want to put the kids through another car ride, and ultimately have to babysit them in tiny hotel room all by your lonesome for a good three days! I went back and forth on this for as long as I possibly could and asked Thomas repeatedly what he thought we should do. Of course he kept telling me over and over that he was good with whatever I decided. Thanks hon for all your help ; ) Finally it got to the point where Thomas had to let his work no either way whether he was going to be flying or not. So I said to Thomas, "Should I go with my head or my heart?" He replied "Heart." So we all know what that means, ATLANTA HERE WE COME! Yes, it is going to be pretty miserable while Thomas is at his conference during the day but I have a mall and Target within walking distance of the hotel. That can always keep me occupied. We will also be going to the Aquarium on Monday as a family, so we will have a little bit of family time through it all. I am going to make the best of it and make sure to give my kids a good experience through it all.

On another note tomorrow is Madden's last day of school for the year. It makes me sad to think that one year is already done, but I can't express enough how unbelievably important it has been in his development. He is talking more than ever and we are actually getting requests for things. I will admit that it has been a bit of a struggle with Madden for the simple fact that you want to be able to understand him, ecspecially as parents. For the longest time I kept wondering if it was something I was doing wrong, but in all actuality he did need help and the school district agreed with me. So here we are today with a much more communicative child and I couldn't be happier.

Here are a few of my favorite mobile photo's. Couldn't write a post without putting up a few pics!