How many miles did we drive in November and December?

When we are exploring new places, we usually blog almost daily as we find new adventures. But during November and December, we were making circles between three main locations that are important to us--the panhandle of Oklahoma where our Mothers live, Oklahoma City where one son and Denisa's sisters live, and Kansas City where our other son's family lives. How many miles do you think we drove in November and December? Think of your estimate now. Or if you prefer to make your estimate in more physical terms, if we started at the most southeasterly point in the continental United States, how far would those miles take us if we headed northwest? Okay, let's talk about some of the highlights of those miles.

On November 1 we were in the panhandle of Oklahoma near Beaver where both of our Mothers live. Then Denisa drove to Oklahoma City to take her Mother to doctors' appointments (216 miles) while Mark drove to Kansas City (399 miles) to see our son, daughter-in-law, and a couple of really cute grandchildren. He just happened to take a few pictures.

Then Denisa drove from Oklahoma City to Beaver (216 miles) and Mark drove with the grandchildren to Beaver (399 miles). We had planned a family vacation since our son had taken some time off from his medical practice. But they thought it was important for their children to spend some time on the ranch visiting some relatives instead.

They got to play with a cousin . . .

got to know the ranch horses . . .

and spent time with great grandmothers and grandparents.

We even got out Gram's barbie dolls and their crocheted clothes (that didn't burn in the fire last year). Denisa crocheted these years ago when the boys were playing sports. Focusing some on making barbie clothes kept her from yelling at the referees during the close games.

After that nice visit, we made the trip to Oklahoma City (220 miles) for some of our doctors' appointments--and spent time with our son and Denisa's sisters. We don't take as many pictures when there are no grandchildren, but the grand opening of this new place in the Paseo District had a very photographic display.

We drove on to Kansas City (319 miles), because it was time to celebrate Thanksgiving and make all kinds of autumn crafts. 

Just to prove that we don't take pictures of just grandchildren, we took a picture of our adult children too.

Our son, Luke, was on call this holiday, but he still was able to cook up a beautifully delicious turkey for Thanksgiving.

Okay, so we did take more pictures of those cute grandbaby smiles.

The day after Thanksgiving we drove back to the Oklahoma panhandle (399 miles) where Mark's brothers and sisters and many of our nieces and nephews celebrated Thanksgiving together. The sun was setting as we got close to Oklahoma. We never could wrangle everyone together for a picture, but we had 43 for Thanksgiving dinner back at the ranch.

We made another drive to Oklahoma City (216 miles) to spend time with Denisa's sisters. This Santa and elf kept up the family tradition of baking peppernuts using our Grandmother's recipe.

Mark was recruited as a stirrer and peppernut cutter in this big project. It takes hours to bake these nut-sized cookies.

We really made this trip to Oklahoma City to take Denisa's other sister to her first cataract surgery and follow-up appointment. Following a good report from the optometrist, we drove back to the Oklahoma panhandle (220 miles). After just one night of rest, Denisa started the drive to take her Mother to the southern tip of Texas (836 miles). This is where Betty has spent the last 38 winters. It's a two-day drive, so we stopped in Junction, Texas, to spend one night. After the day in the car, it's nice to walk along the river to stretch legs.

This little town is situated at the junction of several big highways, so it has several hotels. But we're pretty sure it has more deer roaming the town than residents.

Denisa flew back to Oklahoma City, so that meant that Mark had to drive from the Oklahoma panhandle to pick her up, and then back (440 miles). 

We were here for a few days, so Denisa finally had time to do some Christmas sewing. She kidnapped our granddaughter's baby doll so she could whip up a new wardrobe for this doll that has been named "naked baby" due to her lack of clothes. 

Denisa sewed for most of three days, until she had nine new outfits completed. Looking back on it, she should have bought some patterns instead of winging it. But we think this baby likes her new clothes. We hope that Carter thinks so too!

We made the drive to our old hometown of Weatherford (168 miles) for appointments with our optometrist and dentist. Then it was on to Oklahoma City (94 miles) to take Denisa's sister for her second cataract surgery and check-up appointment. Then it was on to Kansas City (319 miles) again. We got there just in time for swim lessons, where Carter passed her swim test to move up to the next level!

We love spending time with these little cuties! 

The real reason for this trip was to attend Carter's first-ever Christmas program. She was the cutest donkey in the program at pre-school.

We also hosted princess tea parties, where a certain prince also showed up when he discovered food was involved.

We let the grandchildren open their Christmas presents early, and we can report that the baby doll clothes were a great success.

Instead of baby dolls, Eli much prefers cars and trucks.

Carter and Gram like to dress alike, so we took this picture while we were making dipped pretzels together.

We were going to celebrate Christmas in Mustang, Oklahoma, (359 miles) so we offered to drive the grandchildren there early. That allowed their parents to drive it by themselves after they got off work in the evening.

We drove back to Oklahoma City (25 miles) to spend a couple days with our other son before Christmas. Just in case you would think that we only visit playgrounds with our little ones, this picture proves that we enjoy a good slide with our big kids too. 

We watched the Christmas sun rise over the state capitol from Blake's balcony. 

We had a great time spending Christmas day with our family. Then we drove back to the Oklahoma panhandle (220 miles), then back to Weatherford for an appointment (168 miles) and on to visit friends in Altus, Oklahoma (83 miles) for New Year's Eve. Whew! That's a lot of driving!

If you add up all those miles in parenthesis throughout this blog, you can get the answer to the question that we posed at the beginning, "How many miles did we drive in November and December?" Do you remember the estimate you made at the beginning of this blog? 

Not counting all the miles we drove once we arrived at all those places, we drove 5,316 miles in November and December. To put that into distance perspective, if we started from the most south easterly tip of Florida (Key West) we could have driven all the way to Fairbanks, Alaska--with 300 miles to spare.  Wow! It's a good thing that fuel is so cheap right now while we drove in circles during November and December! But we sure enjoyed spending these two months with some of our favorite people!