Vacation - Part I

Hello to everyone from Coralville, Iowa! We have arrived at the Marriott Hotel where we will be staying through Saturday, when the conference ends. It is a beautiful hotel and we spent about 30 minutes driving around this evening looking for a place to eat. We found many restaurants, hotels, and other businesses that were obviously closed due to the flooding last month. Wow, the devastation is amazing. The river is right at the back of our hotel so we were very surprised that no damage was done here. Here's a quick run-down of our trip so far . . .
Sunday --- Visited and stayed with Cousin Bernice Woodward near Helena, MO - it was too short but we had a wonderful time together.
Monday --- Drove to Mascoutah, IL - why you may ask, since it is NOT a direct route to Coralville, IA? The NFED Headquarters - we just had to see where all the people we love from the NFED go to work each day. We had a great visit with a few of them and look forward to spending more time with them later this week once the conference begins on Thursday! Spent the night in Galesburg, IL (yes, we were in a car for about 9 hours today) DVD players are great and Andrew even took a 2 hour nap. The boys did very well.
Tuesday --- Drove to Moline, IL - "The Home of John Deere" The boys had a great time looking at new and old John Deere's and climbing in the cabs to "drive" them. The number of times Andrew said "bine", "actor", or "down" was too many to count. He would climb up the ladders, sit on the seat, drive a little, climb down just to turn around and do it all over again. The boys each received a souvenir from their visit and will remember it for quite a while I'm sure.

The NFED Family Conference will actually begin on Thursday so tomorrow we will just do a lot of relaxing (although DeAnn has meetings from 1-4 in the afternoon). In the evening we hope to have dinner with our friends, the Kelso's, and begin our time catching up. We'll try to update again later this week.