I'm a firm believer in making a childhood magical and I will not rest until it has been carried out in full for my boys. This vacation gave Mr. Sonboul and I the opportunity to accomplish this task at hand.
Those bucket list items I spoke of yesterday... one of them was to take the boys to a drive-in-theater.
Where we live, drive-in-theaters are pretty much a "nonexistence". So while on the trip and for our summers bucket list... this was super important to me.

From the moment we arrived at my sister's in MO, we took off for a day pack with new adventures. The laughter and giggles in the air proved that there was success... even in the smallest of things like fishing and bowling. Plus let's not forget the bug chatting and foody trips. Yum!

Visiting Joplin was sad and yet hopeful. Even with a year's worth of hard work couldn't hide the twisted trees and leftover piles of homes. However, seeing how much time and energy that went into the clean up made me proud to be human. The stories my sister shared of those helping hands and endless giving, touched my heart and inspired me to give even more in my personal life. A deep desire for my boy to understand compassion is rooted in me even more.

With in just a few days I was able to document so many thrilling things. So today I will share the first 5 days of the trip there:






















I'll see you all tomorrow with part 3. I told you I had a lot of photos :)
Aren't cameras so wonderful!