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.