Road Trip... Sort Of

My family has always done things differently than the average family. As homeschoolers, doing things as a family has been a high priority. I did things "one my own" at a much older age than most of my friends. We just did things all together. I'm not going to make you roll your eyes at me by giving details, but suffice it to say, I've hit some "milestones" in the past two years that most kids do in their teens.

Yesterday, I drove out to Grand Rapids.

By myself.

I made the trip last December with a friend, when we went to see her grandparents (who are like grandparents to me too), but I've never done that long of a drive by myself before.

I have a friend going to school out there, but she's going to graduate school in the fall and her family lives in another state now, so if I wanted to see her, it was now or never. I actually haven't seen her in person in three years, but we've written letters and texted in that time. Plus, we've just known each other for years and things are just easy to pick back up between friends with that much history.

We were trying to figure out when exactly we met, and I was probably somewhere between one and a half and two years old. She's about six months older than me. That's a long time. We've never been the best and closest of friends, but again, time breeds a lot of connections and there's just something that bonds you when you've been in touch and in and out of each other's lives for basically your whole lives.

It was a really nice day. The weather was perfect. We walked around near her house in the morning. The houses around where she lives are old and gorgeous. As I was driving there, I was desperately wishing I wasn't driving so I could gawk at the homes! I love old houses with character.

We went to a few bookstores and chatted while we walked. She showed me her favorite coffee shop and places she goes a lot. There's a really neat place called Downtown Market that has a ton of different kinds of food. That's where we went for lunch. At this point in the day, I realized that my shoes were giving me blisters, so we went back to her house and I borrowed a pair of shoes from her. Then we just spent the afternoon walking around Grand Rapids.

I'm not a city girl, but I'm learning to appreciate the unique beauty of cities. There are beautify buildings that are old and they just don't make things like that anymore. I'm totally jealous of the Grand Rapids library! I would just about live there. I thought my library was big.

Another "new thing" done and I had a great time catching up with an old friend. What have you been doing this summer? Are you connecting with friends who are back home? Taking trips to see people?

Blessings until next time,
Sarah