Once Upon Allison Reunion

On July 4th, we drove 10 hours to the booming burg of Alpine, AZ for the Allison Family Reunion. In addition to seeing long lost mostly related relatives, we enjoyed good home cooking, hours of catching up conversation, four-wheeler tours, sight-seeing pit stops and a small-town Independence Day Spectacular (Allison Float in the town parade included).

I should note that no 20 hours on the road with three children isn't necessarily my idea of the ideal vacation, but ours travel well with the in-flight movie of their choice. (For those of you who believe I am bending to sorrowful, head-shaking lows by offering nearly 4 hours of screen time each way, I do not apologize. You may consider yourself to be the chauffeur for our next trip sans electronics. Please be prepared to wipe mashed banana off the ceiling, provide snacks at 20 second intervals, play the 'smelly feet' game, be nearly deaf after 2 hours of 21-month-old screeching, sing "wheels on the bus" a bazillion times--with motions--and say "black probe droid" five times fast.)

Here are some photographic highlights of the trip, in no particular order: