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July 24, 2015 By Erica Deuel 1 Comment

A few weeks ago my family packed up our van and headed out on a road trip. We drove from Indiana down to little Port St. Joe in Florida for a week at the beach, back up through Atlanta to see some family, and then off to Virginia to see some dear friends, before returning home. We soaked in some amazing views as we rolled through 2,800 miles of the country.

Do you like to road trip?

We love it. The long drives force us to sit and do nothing but talk with those that we love and take in the stunning creation out the windows.

On this last drive, we saw a vast array of land. I loved seeing the corn-growing in Indiana, the mountains in Tennessee, and the ocean with leaping dolphins in Florida was pretty spectacular. The landscape changed from flat grounds to the most gorgeous mountains and hills. My mind kept thinking how it looks like God had textured and layered his painting so perfectly. One scene that got me was my parent’s back yard. pine_treesThose Pine Trees…I have all the heart eyes in the world for them. It’s a funny thing growing up in Georgia. Pine trees are common. They may even be annoying or a nuisance cause they are just everywhere and the pollen they spew in the spring can be ridiculous. After moving to the mid-west, it suddenly hit me one day that my flower beds have rocks covering the ground rather than pine needles because there are no pine trees. My heart ached a little. Pine Trees are home to me.

Even as I type this out and think of that picture, I feel myself fighting a lump in my throat and watering eyeballs. It’s amazing what a picture can do, isn’t?! A single picture can bring back a flood of emotions. It can cause you to recall lots of memories even to the point you smell and taste them. Hence the phrase: a picture is worth a thousand words. It’s so true.

It reminds me of my childhood postcard collection. As we camped, hiked, and traveled as a kid I would buy a postcard wherever we went. It was my little snippet of that trip. That single image sparked a family trip, a camp out gone bad, a birthday hike, or even just a long day in the car fighting over seat space. The memories, the images, the postcards are snippets of what was my reality, My life. These are my moments that I never want to forget.

I can be guilty of sharing TOO many images these days. Social media has made it so easy to upload a picture that sometimes we miss the moments. We are focusing on the actual image and capturing the perfect shot rather than living the moment. The order is reversed in how these memories should go.

I want to recapture the sacred picture. The picture that floods my brain. The one that I go back and look at 20 times that week and smile, laugh or cry aloud at the moment it captured. These pictures might not be the most edited. They might not be the prettiest, but they are real.

It’s these thoughts that make me want to try a new regular series on on the blog called Eddy’s Postcards. Eddy, is also a memory from my younger days. It’s a nickname I picked up while mentoring some pretty awesome girls. They took my initials and had fun with it. Now I really feel old with all these “remembrances of younger Erica days”. Oh well. 

I will post a picture every week and give a little blurb about why that picture is my favorite picture from that week. I hope this idea will help me think less of the posing of pictures and more of the pictures that are the real moments I never want to forget.

1- July 4, 2015 postcardFor example, this picture from our trip is one I have smiled at so many times since we have been home. I love how I can hear the boys squealing with delight, how Matt is literally in the middle of the action capturing it all, and Matt’s sweet dad is standing off to the side all by himself looking reallllllllly worried about all the fireworks going off around his family. It’s awesome.

1- July 4, 2015 postcard back

I hope you will follow along with this series, and it can encourage you to remember the moments that matter and let some of the others go. We are in this journey of life together, and I hope we can (in some small way) spur each other on to be stretched, focused on what matters, and give life all we can.

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Living on the Road by the Numbers

September 6, 2012 By Erica Deuel 14 Comments

I know you might want to have some more details about our trip across the United States.  We love to talk about it, so there might be quite a few posts about it!  While we were driving and on the road, my husband had the idea for this post.  We kept some tally marks on interesting things that we did or happened to us.  One of my favorite facts is how many times our boys peed in a bottle in the van.  🙂

I hope you enjoy this post with tid-bits of our trip as much as I do!

Facts from our road trip:

  • Travelers: 5

  • Days on the road: 25
  • Miles driven: 5,904
This is the path of our travels!
My job, as the passenger, can be heavily described as “toy retriever” to keep the kiddos happy.
He is so cute!!
  • Hours in van: 95 (**this is not including time at each destination driving to different activities, etc.)
Overall our lil 19 month old babe did FANTASTIC!
  • Galloons of gas: 289.80
  • Quarts of oil: 10
The driving time was so gorgeous! It was one of my favorite parts of the trip! I loved seeing the different landscapes.
  • States: 13
  • Hotels: 9
We got two double beds at our hotel stops. The boys LOVED sharing one, and Reagan was in her pack and play.
There were quite a few meals where we got food to go & took it back to the hotel.
  • Number of bags packed: 19
This is just a small sampling of our luggage pile.
  • Number of bags to still UNPACK: 4
  • Pictures taken: 793
  • Family members/friends seen: 34
Poor Grammy Pammy can’t have a cute picture with her grandkids while everyone is looking at the camera at the same time. 🙂
Our “family -best friends” in California have some of the cutest kids. Our kids alternate ages, so they are really close in age and were raised together most of their lives! So special to spend time with them in their new home!
  • Superheroes seen: 27
In Hollywood, people dress up as Superheros and you can give them a “tip” to have your picture taken with them!
One of our favorite “guys”!!
  • National landmarks: 3
I had never been to the Grand Canyon! I was giddy and soooo excited to be here!
  • Oceans: 2
Having my daughter and sweet niece experiencing the ocean for the first time together was such a gift!
Caleb has no fear of the ocean! He LOVES the waves and even did a jet ski ride!
Reagan and her BFF, Kendall, are two of the prettiest girls I know!
  • Crabs caught: 37
We had a cooler filled with these guys after our beach night walks. Yes, I screamed every time one ran across in front of me. After the fun of rounding them up the boys would walk back down to the beach and let them all go.
  • Starbucks stops: 13
  • Times the boys’ LeapPad’ batteries needed changed: 10
These little “i-pads” were worth every dollar spent for our trip. They were AMAZING in the van!
  • Stomach viruses: 1
Caleb woke up throwing up one day in California. Praise the Lord no one else got sick. I think he drank too much salt water the day before. He is a beast at “body surfing”, but it did change our plans with our dear friends on our last day there. 🙁
One plus to having a car seat that needed cleaning was discovering an awesome laundromat to explore and spend a lil time in. For someone who might actually like laundry (crazy I know!), this place was gorgeous!  Did you notice Caleb’s throw up bucket!?  Nothing like a multipurpose pink sand bucket!
  • Stops without a sweet tea to be found that was not fountain or canned: 14
  • Tweets breaking my social media silence: 11
  • Ways to get Reagan asleep in the van: 1
Reagan would only fall asleep in the van if music was playing and playing loudly!
  • Pools swam in: 9
  • Broken bumpers: 1
  • Zip ties required to hold a broken bumper together: 3
Turns out Waco, TX has some pretty steep curbs and driveways. Oops!
  • Horse rides: 5
My sis, Olivia, and her husband have horses in Arkansas. We got to stay with them for almost a week. It was a BLAST! The boys loooovvvveeeddd the barn and land!
She could barely wait for her turn to get a horse ride!!
My boys would move to the country in a heart beat!!
  • Immigration checks: 3 (Odd, right!? Even though we never crossed the border, driving close to Mexico had checkpoints.)
  • Van vacuumed:  1
In the top picture that might be a spilt/dried chocolate milkshake from an In-N-Out in California. It is getting cleaned tomorrow! Yes!!!
  • Target runs: 6
These girls are the cutest Target shoppers!
  • Drives in the rain: 4
  • My longest drive stretch at one time: 3 hours
  • Pees in a cup or bottle in van: 19
  • Times I went for a run: 2
  • Theme parks: 2
We went to a water park with friends in TX, and it was so fun!
We went to Disneyland’s California Adventure in Anaheim, California. It was awesome! Where else do you see live Lightening Mcqueen and Mater driving around!?!
This rocket ride was one of our favorites! Reagan even got to go on it!
  • Blog posts written: 0
My only “to do” was to enjoy my family, and I did!! Isn’t it crazy that we are home all together and I miss them?? I’m still with them all day/everyday but so distracted by life and house up keep.
  • Memories and laughs together: millions

Thank you so much for reading this post!!  I have some more posts coming with the “how to’s” of traveling with kids and how we made this insane trip possible.  This is not our first BIG trip on the road, so we have learned a few tricks along the way.  Please feel free to ask any questions about our trip or how we did something.  I will respond!

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