This time last week...

...I was less than a week into my 37th year. (Late 30's! Yikes!)

...I had embarked on a family history trip to Kansas and Missouri with my mom.

...I had visited the courthouse where my grandparents were married.

...I had seen the houses where my grandpa grew up in Sedalia, Missouri, and the houses he had lived in with my grandma as newlyweds and young parents.

...I had traveled many unpaved back roads in the middle of nowhere.

...I had met this guy trying to cross the road.  Twice.

...I had seen many windy Kansas wheat fields (only the most die-hard John Denver fans will get that reference).

...I had gotten a text that Leah had been hit by a car that was backing out of the driveway while she was riding her bike to band practice.  A frantic phone call home reassured me both that she was all right and that the guilty party had been appropriately freaked out by what she had done.

...I had been reassured by my mother that the lady who gave us directions to get back on the freeway we had detoured off of had crossed this bridge many times and found it to be perfectly safe.

...I had spend a long time watching the threatening Missouri skies waiting to get a picture of lightning.

...I had just found out that I would come home to a husband with a broken foot.

...I had tromped through countless cemeteries looking for headstones with familiar names in the scorching heat and humidity.

...I had learned that Brooke had been cast for multiple parts in a play she auditioned for.

...I had eaten the same delicious Midwest BBQ that Guy Fieri had eaten.

...I had spent a lovely Sunday with my mom's aunts and uncles, touring the town they all grew up in, listening to their memories, and trying to make up for the last time I saw them at the age of 16 and probably didn't speak more than a couple of sentences to them.

...I was about to learn more about our church's history at the Independence Visitor's Center.

...I was about to see a beautiful temple under construction.

...I would navigate and be navigated, would drive and be driven, would set out with no map, and would stop in a McDonald's parking lot to figure out where we were, would traverse back and forth across the greater Kansas City area.

...I stood with my mom as she fought with rental car companies and Priceline, as she stood on the site where her grandmother was murdered in 1923, as she decided that we needed a Brownie Batter Blizzard from Dairy Queen, as we searched through endless records looking for those who are wanting to be found, as we listened to her uncle explain to me the difference between English and black walnuts, as we learned more about what happened in Liberty Jail, as she fought back tears while saying goodbye to the few family members she has left.

This time last week, as always, when the past and present were so very close, I was so grateful to know that families can be together forever.