Our Year of Adventures on the Road!!!

I am SO sorry to all of you who have asked me to post sooner!! I know it has been MANY MONTHS since my last post, but I am just now finding the time to write a summary of our adventures being a full-time family on the road for a year! The past couple of months we have been busy settling into our new community and ministry. We have visited with lots of family & friends, celebrated birthdays (Alan turned the big 4-0!) and the boys are getting involved with our church, a local homeschool group, soccer, and library programs! One weird thing that happened - in February,  I ended up getting Bell's Palsy (temporary paralysis on the left side of my face). The symptoms lasted for about a month.  I am just relieved it was temporary and did not last longer than that!

Overall,  everything is going really well! The boys are making new friends as well as enjoying quality time with old ones.  Alan is loving his new ministry! We are so blessed to be serving at such an amazing church here in Texas. It is exciting to see God working through His people!

So- finally...here is the review I promised!!! Just to start, here are some fun facts and adventures by the numbers:

* We visited/traveled through 28 states and Ontario, Canada!

* We were on the road full-time in our RV for 13 months.

* We traveled a total of 12,270 miles in our RV and 22, 769 miles in our mini-van exploring the states we camped in. That's a total of 35,039 traveling miles!!!!

* We stayed in 57 different RV campgrounds/state parks.

* We visited an estimated 35-36 different churches.

* The boys participated in 13 different Junior Ranger Programs with the National Park Service.

* We ate ice cream in EVERY state and another country (Canada)!

* We visited with family, reconnected with old friends, and made lots of new ones!

* We enjoyed serving with the National Center for Biblical Parenting doing seminars all along the east coast.

* We saved all kinds of money during our travels when we joined 9+ grocery/convenience store clubs (that we can remember..ha!) and 5 camping memberships!

* The boys took turns buying a postcard from every museum/state capitol/national park we visited:

Our year on the road was full of amazing adventures, museums, parks, campfires, s'mores, miles, history, firsts, laughs, family time, nature, new friends, and memories of a lifetime.  We are forever grateful for this wonderful opportunity God gave us!  When I first started to narrow down the thousands of pictures from our adventures to post a slideshow on the blog, I still ended up with almost 500 photos!!!! I decided that was WAY too long! (I figure even our family would not want to sit around to watch a 35 minute slide show!)  I tried to get it down to around 300 or so, which was really hard for me to do. So...here is the 20 minute slide show :) ...for anyone who wants to see, click the link below to view our year of adventures:

****UPDATE**** We fixed the video so that everyone can see it now (It was password protected before, but now you can view it! Just click the link below:

Haigood Family RV Adventures!

Blessings to you and yours,

Jill and the boys:)

Charlotte, NC - Parenting Seminar, White Water Rapids, The Discovery Place & Billy Graham Library!

As I mentioned in my last post, I am about a month behind on our travels, so I am trying to catch up on the blog over the next week or two! After we left Raleigh, we drove to Charlotte, North Carolina. We had a great week exploring the area, doing school, and holding a seminar at Sharon Baptist Church. Again, we were so blessed to have the chance to spend the week on the church property in our RV! YAY!

One afternoon, the boys and I visited the U.S. National Whitewater Center, which is located in Charlotte. While we were there, we had the opportunity to watch the olympic kayaking team during their practice time! It was so cool!

On another day during the week, we visited The Discovery Place, a hands-on science museum full of fun activities and programs. This museum is a part of the Travel Passport Program, so with our  Evansville Museum membership, our admission to The Discovery Place was FREE!! We paid $50 for the Evansville Museum membership last year, and it has saved us hundreds of dollars as we have visited several of museums that participate in the program! What a blessing!

We also spent one afternoon visiting a very special place...The Billy Graham Library. We were SO impressed! It was very inspiring to experience and learn more about this man's journey as God led him from a young boy living on a dairy farm, to an internationally known preacher.  It was also encouraging to see how the focus of the library was to glorify and honor God for all He has done not just in Billy Graham's life, but in the lives of millions of people around the world.  It took us a couple of hours to tour all of the exhibits in the museum. It was well worth the visit! Oh, and by the way, admission to the library is FREE!

As you tour the exhibits, you travel through time and experience the dairy farm where Billy grew up, his marriage and family life, and how his ministry grew throughout the years.  I found one exhibit with this interesting story about Richard Nixon.  Apparently, Nixon was sitting with Billy Graham at a crusade event when he realized he did not have any cash for the offering plate. Obviously, it would be terribly embarrassing for him not to put any money in the plate, especially since he was sitting on stage in front of thousands of people! So- he leaned over and asked Billy Graham for a loan! Some time later, he sent Graham a check to pay him back (along with a commitment for future financial support of the ministry). TOO FUNNY!!! :)

Another exhibit described the events of the Berlin wall coming down, and how that opened so many doors for the people in East Germany to hear the Gospel.  There was a display with pieces from the wall when it came down in 1989...

We also toured the inside of the boyhood home of Billy Graham, which was moved here close by the library.  

There is a lovely garden next to the library where Billy's late wife, Ruth, was laid to rest.  Ruth was born in China where both of her parents were missionaries.  On her gravestone is the Chinese character for "Righteousness".  Many years ago, before she passed away, Ruth was riding down the highway when she noticed a sign by the road that said, "End of Construction - Thank you for your patience." Ruth stated (with a smile) that those were the words she wanted to be carved on her gravestone.  What an amazing lady...

It was a very special day at the library and a great week overall visiting Charlotte. Our next stop was to Winston-Salem, North Carolina for 4 days and then we crossed over the border into Virginia!

Blessings to you and yours,

Jill and the boys:)

Raleigh, NC - Parenting Seminar, Capitol Visit, Catching Up With Friends & Making New Ones!

I have to apologize for confusing anyone as to where we are currently since I am about a month behind on posting our travels:( !!! Sorry about that! Since the end of April we have been in Raleigh, Charlotte and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Then, we traveled to Virginia, West Virginia, and back to Virginia again. Just last weekend we stored the RV and took our mini-van on a road trip to Nashville, TN for the Show Hope 10th Anniversary Celebration weekend.  We came back to Virginia and soon we will be heading to Delaware. After writing that out, it makes me realize why I am so exhausted this week! It has been wonderful to see friends and all kinds of historic and fun places, but we realized after this month, that we need to find a travel route with more down time.  That is a big reason why we are on the road full-time in our RV. We love doing ministry on the road together, seeing and exploring America, but we also want to have time to just relax, go fishing, hiking, build a campfire or play a board game together. Hopefully we will have more time for that this month!

So- back to the end of April...we stayed in Raleigh, North Carolina where we held a parenting seminar at Emmanuel Baptist Church.  Below are some pictures from the seminar.  During the seminars, I actually do participate with Alan through a few skits. (I get to play the role of the teenage daughter in two scenes.)

Here I am being all dramatic...(OK- I know my family will recognize this. Yes- I may have thrown a few fits as a teenager...ha ha!)

The church also had a great program for the children during the seminar that Saturday. The boys made some new friends and had a blast! The leaders taught Bible story lessons, helped the kids make crafts & Mother's Day gifts, and played games outside together.  If you live in Raleigh or you will be moving there and you are looking for a church home, we highly recommend visiting this church!

We had the blessing of staying the whole week on the parking lot next to church in our RV.  It was a very convenient location, and we had the chance to get to know many of the people at church. We had such a wonderful time during our stay here! The staff was incredibly generous to us, inviting us over for dinner and taking us to lunch after church on Sunday.  Everyone was SO friendly and kind. Our boys LOVED the children's program on Wednesday night so much that they went back to attend AWANA on Sunday night as well.  Thank you again to the people of EBC, for welcoming us with open arms!

During our time in Raleigh, we toured the capitol building that was built in 1840 and learned some history about the state of North Carolina.  In the front of the building is this statue which shows three U.S. presidents that came from North Carolina - James Polk, Andrew Jackson, and Andrew Johnson.

Every capitol building that we have toured so far has had the famous dome inside...

This capitol building housed all of the North Carolina state government until the 1880s. The building is still occupied by the governor, lieutenant governor, and their immediate staff.  In the past 10-20 years, the Capitol was restored to its 1840-1865 appearance. The stonework, ornamental plaster, ironwork, legislative desks and many of the marble mantels are originals!

It was a great visit, but after all that walking around, the boys got just a little tired:)

This is a statue of George Washington inside the capitol. We have never seen one of him like this before!  It was designed by the Italian artist Antonio Canova in 1820.  Canova had never met George Washington and so he based his sculpture from a marble bust of Washington done by another Italian artist. Interesting!

The boys got there second wind and had some fun while we were taking pictures of the outside of the building...

While we were in Raleigh, we also had the chance to meet up with some friends from St. Louis!!!  They were in town visiting family and they drove out over an hour to meet up with us for dinner! Tom and Sally are dear friends who have blessed our family so much! They are great mentors, friends and they have taken care of our boys many times.  We have all missed them very much, so it was so wonderful to see them! (Thanks Tom and Sally - and your sisters too- for driving to see us while you were in North Carolina!!!!)

We had to get a silly picture too of course!!!

During our week stay here, I was thrilled to find this really cool playground not too far from the church for the boys one afternoon!

The boys had a great time making new friends here. They had a blast playing tag, having contests jumping off the swings, and playing hide and seek.

During the week, we also had the chance to catch up with some other friends from St. Louis who had moved to Raleigh! It was so neat to see TWO families we know from St. Louis in the same week!!! Thank you Melissa for a lovely dinner at your house! We had a great time catching up with you!

And then it was time for another silly picture...

Sam impressed the boys with his juggling skills!!!

We really enjoyed our stay in Raleigh, North Carolina! It was a great week of ministry, visits with friends, making new friends, and exploring the area.  We hope to come back again to visit someday!

Blessings to you and yours,

Jill and the boys:)