summer of dreams: new york to idaho

we left ithaca three weeks ago, leaving behind our friends and lots of tears shed all over town. i cried at church, i cried at parker's school, i cried at macy's school, i cried hugging the kids' friends goodbye, i cried hugging my friends goodbye.

anyway, after days of packing and adjusting to the fact that grad school really is over, we took off on our cross-country adventure. we wanted to go far our first day but we made it five hours and called it quits. (josh is definitely not the road warrior he may tell you he is.) in fact, for the next few days we drove about five hours a day. who would want to hurry this?

that's right. we travel in style.

we went to kirtland and walked around for about two minutes because the kids were awesome.

while in ohio, we also visited the monsons, our good friends from our first year at cornell.

we saw chicago. and by saying we saw chicago i mean we saw the inside of a children's museum. i was really hoping to see some architecture, but that just wasn't everybody else's ideas of a good time. so to make up for it, i ignored josh and the kids for about an hour driving out of chicago reading about frank lloyd wright on josh's iphone. oh, and it's true what they say about chicago being the windy city. take it from me, don't wear a lightweight skirt in chicago.

we took a little detour and went to nauvoo. it was a perfect day and we saw everything we wanted to see in about two hours. we were a little perplexed when a sweet sister missionary told us that it would take a week to see everything there is to see in nauvoo. i mean, we saw everything and the kids learned how to make candles and rope!

the next day (my birthday) we got serious about getting serious and drove ten hours to rapid city, south dakota. i will take some time here to share a little about my birthday. . .

the end.

we stayed with our friend heather in rapid city and i was so happy to finally see mount rushmore. i have always wanted to see it and it didn't disappoint. it was amazing. heather also took us to reptile gardens. it was like a little sneak peak of what our life is going to be like down there in south florida abutting the everglades.

after our time in south dakota, we drove straight through to rexburg for josh's reunion. it was great to see the mountains again and smell that mountain air. (it really is different. you can feel it.)

we had a great time with josh's family. life is good at the ladle homestead. kids run freely outside from the trampoline to the playhouse, from the pool table to the swings. josh's family is awesome and i even made $10 on a bet because i knew all of jon's kids' birthdays.

while in rexburg i was able to spend time with lisa-marie, my very first shanty roommate. lisa-marie is the greatest, and i can't believe that between us we now have seven kids. we used to just be silly girls who would finger paint with pudding and go to the store with underwear on our heads. now we're like responsible for children's lives and stuff...

we also got to walk around byu-idaho campus and see all the changes and feel completely out of place. those kids don't even know how cool josh and i were back in our day. josh was man of the year and i played in guitars unplugged four times. so there.

from there i went to utah for the race. epic post to follow . . .