Josh Renaud's weblog detailing the exploits of his family in Ferguson, MO, USA. Starring Yoli, Jadzia, Ludi, Josie, and Joseph Renaud.
As I mentioned in the previous entry, from the beginning of our Second Great Road Trip, I had been suffering a bit in my sinuses and chest. I chalked it up to allergies.
But the evening we got back to my Nan’s after visiting the ranch, I developed a high fever.
Last year my aunt Joyce invited us to visit the ranch she shares with her husband Ted and my cousin Dion. I have never really visited a ranch in Texas, so I thought this would be a cool opportunity, especially for the girls.
We made the pretty drive into the hill country to a little town called Kendalia. Uncle Ted and aunt Joyce met us there on their motorcycle and guided us the rest of the way to the ranch.
Driving to San Antonio from St. Louis is a 16-17 hour affair. Our strategy for this trip was much the same as when we traveled out to Washington. We would visit various friends/places along the way to break up the trip and make it easier. As mentioned in our previous blog post, the first day of traveling took us to Texarkana. On the second day, we drove south through Tyler to visit Bullard, my old hometown.
After Bullard, we kept going south to Houston, where we stayed with one of Yoli’s American friends from Bolivia (yes, you read that sentence right), Sonja. Sonja and her husband Jody have three kids, close in age with our kids.
(Keep reading for photos and video)
On Tuesday, The Renaud Empire visited our fellow Renaud realm in Rolla, to see our new niece/cousin London Olivia. What a cute girl! Justin was out when we first arrived and Becca was dealing with London, so Hayden and Keaton showed us their bedroom and their playroom in the basement.
Justin’s house is pretty nice. They bought it, gutted it, and built the inside anew. They have a great basement, and we spent some time playing Wii games. We also played outside, and I got to enjoy his portable disc golf basket. Justin also took me to their church (where he works) and took me on a tour of the new sanctuary and other stuff they are nearly finished building.
All in all, it was a fun day. Here are some photos to enjoy:
Clearwater Lake is a place we don’t visit often enough. But we did get a chance to go down for a day and a half over Tuesday and Wednesday. We swam in the Black River, caught a catfish on a trot line, and got caught in a thunderstorm.
Continue reading “Caught a catfish, got caught by a thunderstorm”
We now has passports in hand for Josie and Joseph. I was surprised how fast they processed the applications. In fact, they did it so quickly, we may have enough time to apply for Bolivia visas for them.
So now my attention turns to other things, like how the heck we are going to survive travel in a plane with four children, two of whom will be on our laps.
Yeah, we are taking them as lap kids. I mean, there’s really no way around it. The tickets are going to run about $1,100-1,200 apiece, and I am willing to endure 8 hours of insanity on a plane to save a couple grand.
Plus, there is a decent chance they will put us at the back of the plane with some empty seats, at least on the flight to Bolivia. If that happens, BONUS.
I came across a cool blog entry today about a clip toy a mom made for her toddler. This looks like something that’s right up Josie’s alley:
I think I’ll try to make one myself.
Here’s a collage of photos we took of Joseph, trying to find one we could submit with his passport application. These photos are taken from two different sessions, as you can tell by his clothes and the backgrounds.
Later this year we are planning to visit Bolivia. It has been two years — and two babies! — since our last trip there.
In the past we have always shot our own photos for passports. Heck, I did my own passport this way even before I met Yoli, sending in a (pretty bad) snapshot taken against a wall that I happened to have two of.
Taking photos of babies and toddlers can be pretty tricky. And each round of photos we took had some problem that made me decide to redo them. So we ended up with almost 100 photos of Joseph and Josie before all was said and done.
For the heck of it, I decided to grab six photos of each child and make a little collage. Josie’s is maybe a little more interesting since she was making all sorts of faces.
We took two unplanned trips to Hermann, Mo. this week in search of Springerle cookie molds. Hermann is a wonderful old city on the banks of the Missouri River founded by German immigrants.
The last part of our trip was an overnight in Nashville. I had booked a motel room in Hermitage, since it was close to the highway and along our route from Bristol. At the time I booked, I had no idea the significance of the name “Hermitage.” In fact, it refers to the estate of President Andrew Jackson.
On the first day of our vacation, as we drove from St. Louis to Bristol, we had kept our eyes open for the Hermitage exit we would be taking 9 days later. As we neared it, I spotted a huge dam with four big spillways. It was right before our exit. I made a mental note to check it out when we came back through.