I've been a tad bit absent on ye olde blog lately.  A 9-day road trip to the Midwest with the fam will do that to a person!  For October Break, we drove from our home in the Phoenix area out to lovely Nauvoo, Illinois, a city founded by early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons).  It wasn't a straight-through drive—we made lots of stops—but still, wow!  We spent a lot of time in the van (you should have seen the layers of bugs I had scrubbed off it at the car wash yesterday).  A good time was definitely had by all, though, as we visited relatives, toured Mormon history sites, explored the Leavenworth/Kansas City area, and enjoyed lots of family bonding time (which mostly sounded like this:  "He's touching me!  Mom, make him stop!" and "Are we there yet?" and "I know we just passed a Rest Area and I was totally going to go, but I didn't and now I really, really need to go to the bathroom.  Can we go back?").  Yep.  Seriously, though, it was a good, enriching little vacay.

I haven't uploaded any of my pictures yet, so I'll show you my favorite from those my husband snapped with his phone: