We Made it!

June 29th

So well, today went pretty smoothly until about half way through but hey…..we didn’t miss a beat this time (note to self: always add in an extra 2 more hours than you think). A guy waved me off the freeway while Pat was snoozing peacefully jolting him into a rudely interrupted nap. The wires that make the lights work on the trailer were dragging on the freeway and pretty frayed by the time the guy waved us down. Lights weren’t working any more. Well, we had to get off the freeway anyway to go to Whole Foods to stock up on food for the next few days. It should only take about an hour….right? I learned a few things and thought I’d pass it along.

First, never go shopping with 5 kids especially when you are in another state where they consider you insane for even having one child. I knew we’d get looks and comment so I’ll make sure to right them down here. As Justin was singing loudly (really loudly) and Tanner and Brady were fighting, a guy said, “I think you parents are the strongest people I know. I think I’ll be happy just being an uncle (to one nephew).” Matthew and Savannah were nowhere to be seen. I think he may have had a heart attack if he’d have known about the other two. It’s really weird going into places and seeing hardly any kids.

Raw milk is illegal in Kentucky but don’t worry…. you can still get wine and beer. I sure hope my kefir lives through this abuse.

A screaming, protesting two year old is almost impossible to get into a car seat. Poor baby : (

Don’t buy Rotisserie chicken for lunch when you have to eat in the car without plates.

AC is a huge blessing. It takes living in a trailer with no AC and going to really humid states to realize this.

Food is much more expensive out of Utah so plan accordingly.

So 2 hours after we got off the freeway, we are still waiting for Patrick to fix the trailer lights and we just lost an hour when we passed the last state. So I guess our plan of getting to the camp site early is not going to happen today. May be we will have better luck tomorrow?

So I guess I’ll be posting more than I thought now that I have internet while we’re driving. You may get bored to death but at least I have something to do : )

My new motto is, “If it doesn’t kill us it’ll make us stronger!”

Have a great day and while you are sitting in your air conditioned house make sure you say thanks in your next prayer (and think about us sitting in a trailer at night sweating to death).

Note: written next day - We arrived at our campground at about 1:00am. We got lost and when we finally got to bed it was way too late.

June 30 –

We didn’t get driving until about 12:00. We were too tired from the night before and after a few breakdowns we decided to take some time to play. We got to Virgina at about 8:00. It’s really beautiful here, very green with lots of trees. We were so excited to see the ocean and to take about a week off from whole driving days. Today went pretty smoothly. The trailer did unhitch about 2 minutes after we took off but we were only going about 5 miles per hour. Justin also came down with a fever..poor baby : ( I was hoping to avoid that but I knew it was a possibility with using all these public restrooms (yuk) and not eating normally. He got a blessing tonight so I hope the fever breaks soon. He has still been very cheerful and sweet. “Become like a little child” is starting to have a deeper meaning to me. Good Night: )

On the Road

So apparently we have internet on the road in bigger cities SO I'll write what I can until I loose access. Today is a long drive to West Virgina. Justin has done well up until now. He finally figured out that we will be driving for a while so he's not too excited about it today. He's watched every show about 5 times each so even that's wearing off. I can't get a bunch of my pictures to download so they may need to come later.

Well we are on day 5 of our trip. So far it's been pretty hard. I'm sure it'll get better after we get to where we can go see things.

Day 1 -

My advice for this day would be to check the weather before you go on a big long trip. Apparently there are tornados out there. We we drove all day. Wyoming is mostly ranges of cattle and sage brush. We hardly saw any houses, just cows...moooo. It was getting late and we were about 3 hours from our destination when we noticed people pulling off to the side of the freeway. We kept driving until we saw so many cars that we thought something might be going on. I jokingly looked off into the distance and told Pat that it looked like a tornado. He said he didn't think it was the season for that. We finally pulled off to find out what was going on and low and behold it was a tornado watch about 15 up the freeway! The guy we pulled over by said we could go in the low valley (right off the freeway) if the tornado touched down. By the time we got back on the freeway we decided to go to the next city rather then drive right in to the storm. When we finally found a place to stay. It took a while to get the tent trailer up. It broke. The door would not open and is wouldn't stay up. Patrick finally shoved a screw driver in the gear to keep it up and that is what we have done this whole time. We also didn't thing about the time it take to clean up and put the trailer up each day. It took about 2 hours the first day.

Day 2 - My advice for this day is, If you go on a trip with 7 people for 3 weeks in a tent trailer, just know you will not have to room to walk in the trailer (just sleep) and no personal space. It kind of feels like we are on a trek. So today we drove through Nebraska. Nebraska is Mostly corn fields....everywhere, and a few potato and grain fields. We didn't see a lot of houses together. It was miles of fields and every once in a while you'd see a bunch of trees and upon closer investigation you'd see a house out in the middle of those trees. It was pretty much like this the whole time. Oh and we didn't' get to church. We planned on it but we got to bed so late that by the time we got up and packed it was too late. The kids watch church videos in the car. We didn't want to drive too much on Sunday either but we were too far behind and we need to be in the east by Thursday. When we finally got to our destination there was another storm brewing. When we checked in they told us that there was another tornado watch and it was going to come right over the top of us. He reassured us that if the tornado touched down there would be an alarm and they had a storm cellar we could go in. I wonder how they were planning on fitting all 200 people (in trailers) in a small storm cellar? That would've been fun. The storm did come right over the top of us. It was the worst storm I have ever been in and down right scary in the tent trailer. I haven't prayed so hard my whole life. Miraculously, Justin and Tanner slept through the whole thing. Savannah thought it was so cool until Matthew woke her up telling her the tent trailer might catch on fire. Somehow the trailer made it through with any damage. I'm sure our prayers were answered. WHEW! With no sleep and such crowed living arrangements lets just say we were all pretty grumpy. Oh, we finally got to see lighting bugs. They were everywhere and way cool, like little fire works. We caught some and tried to get a picture of them glowing but it didn't work. They were also in Missouri.

Day 3 -

Another crazy driving day! We did get to see Liberty Jail and Independence Missouri. It was pretty neat. I really have a new found respect for the pioneers after what we have been through. The camp ground we went to was beautiful! It was like the mountains except there were no mountains. They had a lake with frogs, lightning bugs, swimming pool, big playground, etc. We didn't get to spend much time at the camp ground like I wish we could've though. The younger boys loved it! We finally got a good night's sleep! YAY! I think we are getting use to this: )

Day 4 - We didn't have to pack up and go to another campground. It was so nice. We went to 6 flags all day. It was so hot! I think the kids had fun but ...really.... these places are for teenagers. For some reason I thought this would be a break from driving but it just wore us out more. Oh well. Matthew, Savannah, and Brady went for a swim when we got back to the campground. I did laundry and made dinner and Pat got gas and we both started packing so we could get out early the next day. We were getting a little insane at night. I think this has gotten to our brain. We decided to slow down a bit so we can enjoy the trip and not kill us over.

Day 5 - That's today! We got up early and actually went by 8:30. Our goal was 7:00 but at least we made it before 11:00. Tanner, Justin, and I went frog hunting while Matthew and Patrick put down the trailer.

More updates later : ) I'm going to take a nap.

Ready or Not.......

Only four more days and we will be off!

Patrick and I have always wanted to go on a Church/American history tour with the kids. We always thought that we'd wait until all the kids got a bit older. Things didn't quite turn out the way we thought. The kids grew up too fast and we weren't planning on having a toddler and an 18 year old at the same time. Oh well.......life is an adventure!.......Right? So this is the last year together before Matthew leaves on his mission and life just changes.

I'm not sure that America is ready for us but here we go.

Our plan is to drive to New York and back and see everything in-between (okay not everything). So some of the things on our agenda are:

* Go do baptisms at as many temples as we can

* Broadway musical "Wicked" if possible

* Buy something in New York City (Savannah's wish)

* Sacred Grove.

* Statue of liberty

* Fire works on the Mall at Washington DC

* Nauvoo

* Liberty Jail

* Hill Cumorah Pageant

* Mount Vernon

* 6 Flags (For Matthew's birthday)

* Virginia Beach

*James Town and York Town state parks

So I bought some notebooks for each person in the family and had them decorate it.

I put a map in each notebook so the kids can put stars on each state that we visit and write about what we saw. I'm also going to get temple stickers that they can put on when we visit each temple.

Then there is plenty of paper for journal writing and drawing pictures.

You can tell what Savannah is excited about.

Brady really liked decorating his book.

Tanner had fun too!

Patrick and Matthew didn't want to decorate so I made Patricks.

And Savannah made Matthews.

We have a lot of snacks and food for about 3 days. We can't fit more then that. Then we will need to go shopping. We will bring 1 weeks worth of raw milk and bring our little Kefir grains (Hey they are part of the family too). We have found several raw milk dairies when we run out.

We have a whole BUNCH of DVDs to get us through the driving time. We don't watch much TV or movies so this will be interesting. We will all turn into bums. Patrick has converted all of our tapes to DVDs. We will also bring books. We only have very little space so we can't take much.

Justin loves to run off and explore. He's not worried about just leaving when in a crowd so I made this little thing that hooks an older person to a younger person (I don't call it a leash). I don't want to loose him in DC or New york. He doesn't like the stroller or being carried so I had to come up with something. So the part showing in the picture goes on Justin and then it hooks to a bigger belt. I made it so he can't take it off himself (the adjustment is in the back).

This will be our home sweet home for three weeks. I'm not sure how excited I am about that. I hope we don't kill each other. One nice thing will be that I won't have to clean up a big house all the time and we'll be eating off of paper so not too many dishes (just looking at the bright side). I will really miss the air conditioner especially when we are in the humid states that don't cool down at night.....but what's better then lots of fresh air?

And this is the vehicle we will be driving. It'll be pretty much like sardines so we'll see how that goes "We are a Happy Family" : )

Well we will try to update our trip as much as possible. At least on Sundays.

We love you all and will miss you!

BTW - This is for anyone wanting to rob our house while we are gone. We don't have anything of worldly value. I don't buy jewelry, we only have 2 old TVs and one is broken and the other weighs about a million lbs (so go ahead and take it), our furniture is falling apart, we don't have drugs anywhere in our house (we do have vitamins so help yourself), and we are taking the only car that is worth more then $1000. We also have vicious neighbor dogs who just might bite your leg off if you step one foot on our property.