What a beautiful day it is today!
I wanna jump right into yesterday where we left off in LeRoy. We played a while and towards the end the mayor himself took a photo of Matilda and introduced himself first as an old hippie, then later mentioned he’s the mayor of this beautiful town. The police had been checking us out for curiosity, I had no further interaction with them.
From there we drove to Bloomington where I first considered going to a playground, however the kids seemed very run out of energy, and especially as I kept having to renavigate thanks to low bridges and weird angles. We just went and sat in the Walmart parking lot. I figured we might stay the night there, and at any rate I needed a driving break and to do some relaxing.
I spoke to a couple people while there. I’m going to call this guy Paul because that’s what I think to remember him saying his names was, asked me a few questions and then was blown away when I said that my kids were in the bus. He hadn’t heard a peep from them. He pointed to his blue car and said he lived in that, too, then asked if we’d eat some chicken for dinner if he bought it for us. He said he had to go into the store anyway…. This guy came out with a cart full of stuff, grabbed a bag of bagels out of it, said the rest was for us, handed me a wad of cash and the receipt in case we needed to return something and left. I was like “Whoa, whoa!” and all he said was that that’s what you do is take care of each other. Paul is amazing.
So, I was gonna return the huge bag of dog food but the Walmart is so understaffed it didn’t have the service counter open. The workers are asking for fair compensation. yay! revolt in whatever way feasible!
Anywayz! We did drive on to Morton to stay the night there before going to the Luthy Botanical Gardens here in Peoria! Atreyu loved it, and so did Galixy but expecially Atreyu. He says he wants to have a Garden like that some day but with a vegetable garden too! Smart kiddo.
Now we are already at the park we’re planning on meeting Di and the kids at. It’s a beautiful sunny day! I brought out our picnic blanket to lay on while I write, freshly brewed coffee. Happy dogs and happy kids. Gizzi’s too happy cause he’s disappeared. He’ll be back with a butt full of ticks or I will receive a phone call “Are you missing a dog?” or the worst case scenario, He comes running towards us being followed by a hoard of displeased residents.
He just came back! And I just got a paypal ping. That’s indeed a happy sound especially accompanied with messages such as “Love what you’re doing. Keep it up!” Yay! Validation! y’all are awesome!
I could lounge in the sun here all day! This park has so much green space and such good climbing trees and such a lovely playground. I see why it comes recommended.
We are so excited for today it’s hard to plan contingency. We still left a couple things to check out here and have a probably good spot to over night.
Otherwise I’m mentally discussing whether or not we want to go through Missouri or Iowa, Nebraska or the Dakotas. In the big scheme it makes little difference. On the little, I’d like to take some form of new path, but I’ve also not taken Matilda through any of those states since the Bugus addition.
I guess I will see how things will go and so shall you.
Now I get to move on to more day! Yay.
At this point, I must say that we do run on donations and I greatly appreciate your contributions. Every little bit helps and gets us to explore just a little more of this exciting world. I accept donations via CashApp: $MatildaBugus and paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/matildabugus
If you’d like to peek at our Amazon wishlist follow the link below. We really appreciate those special wants/wishes/deferred needs finding their way to us possibly via your help! https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3LUAOP5L0M5FY?ref_=wl_share
Do stay grateful! Do share smiles. Please
We love you
Matilda the Bugus 