Trip to Nebraska, Part 1

Well, finally, here are the pictures from our trip to Nebraska!  We really had such a fun time together; it was a nice stress-reliever for my Dad :-), and it was a lot of fun getting to see familiar places.  We used to live in Nebraska, so trips back there are always memorable.

 So we drove all day Friday and made it to Colorado Springs, Colorado the first night. 

 Love's, our favorite truck stop!  Their motto, Clean places, friendly faces! usually rings true and we always hit them on the road when we can for bathroom/fuel uses!  That mottos may sound dumb, but when you've been driving straight all day long at it's nearly midnight.....their clean places and friendly faces are seriously appreciated. :-) We like them so well that we have "L's" marked all over our road atlas from previous trips so we know where they are for future trips. 

 We were intending to drive straight to Nebraska........but just as we were heading out of Colorado Springs  we decided to spend a day at Focus On the Family Headquarters.  We had been there twice before, but it is always such a fun place to stop!  Adventures In Odyssey has been a huge hit at our house since I was about five, so visiting "Whit's End" is just great fun.

 Ah yes, the infamous Eugene Melsner.  Many of the jokes that make us kids laugh are lines that come straight from Adventures In Odyssey, particularly from Eugene.  (Anyone else out there that have hundreds  dozens of AIO lines memorized?  And use them frequently in conversations to get a laugh out of one of your siblings?  Or is that just me?) 

 I'm way older than Connie Kendall by now.  Okay, I'm bragging.  She's sixteen, and I'm 18.  Almost 19.

 And does anyone else have little brothers who prefer letting their hygiene go on road trips?  Hmmm.  You can see that David thought it was hilarious.

 This was the Soda Shoppe at Whit's End.  Dad graciously ordered us hot dogs and Wod-fam-choc-sods!  (That's world famous chocolate sodas, for those of you who aren't familiar with Odyssey.)

 David always loves the B-17 Bomber display from The Last Chance Detectives. 

 We got to "enter" the wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia.....

 I've grown up hearing Focus on the Family's Radio Theatre's production of Narnia.  They are such great stories, and I love how all the books parallel Christianity so clearly.  Dad read the books to us kids on the weekends when we were little, and always told us that Narnia was in our attic.  At the age of eight, I really believed him!!  :-)

 We visited the Focus on the Family bookstore while we were there.  Dad bought several new AIO CD packs - thank you, Dad!  We listened to many of them on the way home from the trip, a week later.  They are classic radio dramas that our family loves.  We also got some books there, one of which I am in the middle of reading, Don't Waste Your Life, by John Piper.  Can I say that I am captivated by it?  It's an incredible book and I would highly recommend it.

 Our old church that I went to for the first eleven years of my life.  I have so many memories here - it was neat to get to go back and have a look.  Mom says that she and Dad thought that we kids would all get married at that church - interesting how things change. 

I peered through the windows to have a look - nothing much had changed!  Same orange carpet :-).  So many years of Awana, Sunday School, potlucks, birthday parties, VBS days...etc.  That's where I was baptized as a 7 year old.  I have a lot of fond memories there.

More pictures to come!