My mother-in-law’s smiling face and her excitement seeing her daughter make these stays with us worth everything “the son-in-law” has to endure. This is her fourth trip to the United States, and she’ll be here only 25 days compared to her previous trip in the year 2000 of 29 days, but still much longer than her first visit back in 1996 when she was here for a mere 14 days. We have big plans for Jutta, with our most adventurous road trip yet mapped out. We leave in a couple of days.