6 days on the road...

And I'm gonna make it home tonight! Yesterday was rough, we got a decent start but spent 2 hours after getting on the road fixing the cigarette lighter so we could run the dvd player and charge our electronics!

That being said we did not make it as far as we would have liked, and didn't get to stop at the places we had in mind, but we did enjoy a nice sit down meal at crackle barrel, we didn't do much sitting, we ended up waiting for our meal to arrive at our table outside so micah and hallie could run. We enjoyed a great double rocking chair which we totally want for our deck now and an Ohio rain storm while, man does it come down!

We are all thankful this is our last day on the road and have made great time so far today. Left columbus, oh before 9am, that's the earliest we've been on the road since we left washington! We are currently almost ready to leave Pennsylvania into West Virginia, then on over to Maryland!

That leaves us just over 250 miles out of our 2,818! Now all we have to do is unload the truck and unpack the goods!

Goodbye Nebraska!

We made it through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and finally Nebraska! We are currently cutting through the corner of Iowa to make our way to my aunts house outside of St. Louis.

We had a great time visiting Tue night with Lis and Bobby and Laurie and meeting Mike. Wednesday we got a late start after having breakfast with Laurie and Pat and lunch with Crandall... our time was way too short there and we didn't get to see all of the people we wanted to, but as it was we didn't get into to cheyenne until 11ish. We were thrilled to visit with aunt Mary and Abby Thursday morning, they drove down from Gillette to see us. After their visit we braved the rest of Wyoming and Nebraska making our way to Lincoln once again arriving around 11ish. The late nights were rough on us all but totally worth it to see everyone we did!

We've seen all kinds of great things along the way mobile homes with 40k pickup trucks outside in Wyoming, empty corn fields in Nebraska you know all kinds of exciting things! On a more serious note we did get to stop at the one and only original cabellas in Nebraska which was fun. Back on a more random note we saw our underwater allie the lochness monster in a pond in Nebraska off hwy 2 and a tree growing out of an old brick silo or well not sure what it was besides random!

The temperature has been pretty comfortable until today... its warm and humid! We are definitely starting to lose it... Aaron was Just jumping up and down on the side of the road whining about driving across the country- wish I had a video because it was ultra entertaining! But since I don't do your best to imagine a grown man throwing a tantrum on the side of the road! To be fair we've all had our moments! But we are thankfully over half way and have only 2 days of driving left. We haven't planned our route past St. Louis, so we'll see where the road takes us! I'll add pictures and some trip lifesavers when we get to a destination early enough to do so, or when we get back...

Bottomline- life is still good, we're all still alive and no one has been left on the side of the road, I'd say things are going pretty well!

More trip babbling

Did I mention there's no ac in either vehicle?! Yup that's right with the holiday weekend they couldn't fix the ac on our new (old) car before we left.

So I may be roasting right now, a but at least I'm not roasting and driving!
(Thank you Tyson's brother Aaron! and his wife Kristen for letting us borrow your hubby for a week!)

Point of the story- enjoy the modern convenience or air conditioning... I know I will! (when I get some!)

Procrastination at its finest

Hi, my name is Stacey. I am a HUGE procrastinator.

10:21pm... what??? I still need to pack the cooler, food, diaper bag, toys, and finally the car. Hubby's got a list he's working on too... cramming whatever else he can find in the truck, weighing the truck, and running to food old Walmart. Only to wake up WAY too early (5am at the latest!) and leave our dear friends and family, for a long first leg of our way too long drive! We had a great time here, it of course went way too fast and we are so sad to go, but are a little excited about our cross country adventure. We'll see if we're still excited when we hit day 2 and 3 through Wyoming and Nebraska! Wish us luck!!

Cross Country

Yes we are officially CRAZY! 1 uhaul, 1 car, 2 Toddlers, 1 husband/driver, 1 wife/driver, 1 older brother/driver and 1 younger brother, 2,818 miles, 40+ hours ... anyone else wanna join in on the fun!? Wish us luck and we may see some of you along the way!


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Home Sweet Home

I am so excited to be home... I was overjoyed for such a beautiful day flying over Washington. I miss this state!

Photo Storage and Birthday Giveaway Winner

Amy!! You're the winner of some yummy Amish treats!

If you're anything like me, you have a ton of pictures on your computer...

Well our poor little computer couldn't handle the 1000's of pictures we had on it, so I needed to get them off but wasn't quite sure how to store them. So I thought and thought and thought some more, which took me back to my Rec Therapy days at Tamarack. The school teacher there used this method for storing pictures of the kids. It's simple, but brilliant and cheap...

1st step: Weed through your pictures, deleting any you don't want or need

2nd step: Burn a cd of the photos, sometimes I did 1 month per cd, sometimes more

3rd step: Using your photo program of choice open the cd. I used both Google Picaso (free program... thanks Alisa!) and Adobe Photoshop (not so free, but a great Christmas present... thanks mom!) Photoshop was the best, the thumbnails were smaller and used less paper, Picaso thumbnails were much bigger, needing more paper. Most programs have a choice when printing to print thumbnails or a 'contact sheet.' Select this option and print away!

4th step: Grab a 3 ring binder and some page protectors, slide your contact sheets into the page protectors, along with your cd and you've got a terrific simple, but brilliant storage method for your photos!

Micah says, "Help me please!"

"Can someone help me please, my sister Hallie, is so mean to me! She bites me hard, sometimes she even draws blood. And she bites me A LOT. My mommy and daddy have tried everything they can think of, and they watch her pretty closely, but still when they're not looking (and sometimes when they are!) she attacks me! I have so many ouchies and I cry a bunch, and I even started hitting back, but I just want her to stop biting me... it hurts! What should I tell my mommy and daddy to do?"

Our day with the President and Weekend with Shawn

This will tell you just how far behind I am! Back in February Shawn, his mom Nancy, and his grandma Shirley came to visit us for a long weekend. We saw the highlights of DC, had a great time visiting with all of them, and remembered how much we miss living with Shawn... he is a such a blast to be around!

Shawn next to one of the million random statues in DC, can't remember what it was!
The aquarium at the Natural History Museum is always a crowd pleaser with these two

He was super excited about the animals

And Last but definitely not least, Our Day with the President...

Here's how it went, we swung by his house in the AM (ie... we went on a White House tour)

He followed us around throughout the day (ie... we were stopped from crossing streets multiple times to let the motorcade go by)

And that night we went to the Wizards Vs. Bulls game with him (ie... Nancy was kind enough to treat us all with some tickets for the game, and President Obama was there too!)

These are the only pictures I took at the game (slacker!) Micah and Hallie did SO good, they sat mesmerized for most of the game despite being out WAY past bedtime, in fact the game started AT bedtime! Good to know there's hope for our little hoopsters :)

Photo Fun

Remember way back in the day when I talked about my attempt at photo editing... yea probably not, but in case you use your reader like me and rarely visit an actual blog itself you might not have seen my fancy little "email" button.

If you have well then just enjoy it some more :) This is one of my favorite pics because it depicts my life as a mom and there are very few pictures of me with the kids. Tyson has the "husband hates the camera syndrome," so I am usually behind the camera.

Before

After

I am a total amateur when it comes to photo editing. I admire the work of so many great photo editors, (you know who you are!) and some day when I'm all out of crafting projects or need a break I may actually take a class and learn a little more! But until then I'll edit a photo using my amateur experimental techniques hoping I figure out how to make the photo look just right or just give up on adobe and open up picaso for a quick fix!

A Happy Day Indeed!

Thank you everyone for the Birthday and Mother's Day wishes! I had a wonderful day/weekend and the best part is... it ain't over yet!!!

But before I tell you all about it, I thought I would celebrate my day and all of your days with a little giveaway! We'll make this one nice and simple cause that's what this week needs- leave a comment on this post and I'll pick one winner at random Thursday morning when I wake up. You'll receive a delightful Amish treat of some kind! And really who knew a giveaway could be so self-serving, you see I don't have that delightful Amish treat yet, so this is my PERFECT excuse to go back and get myself some more delightful Amish treats!

Which all leads perfectly into my Birthday weekend!
Fri- Ty surprised me by coming home early Friday afternoon which gave us plenty of time to enjoy the sunshine and explore the beach, we followed this by a trip up to the Dutch Village Farmer's Market for the birthday goodies. I really should dedicate a whole post to this place, but I'll just make this one longer... an Amish Market that will have any food lover leaping for joy- FRESH pastries, meats, cheeses, breads, candies, milks, jams and spreads, fruits, and veggies! I limited myself to a single chocolate chip cookie bar, 1/2 a triple chocolate cake, a loaf of apple bread drizzled with frosting, and 1/2 loaf of banana nut bread. And NO I didn't eat it all there, all though I very well could have! Not exactly what I pictured for an Amish Market, I had a produce stand picture in my mind, canvas tent, outdoors, dirt floors, etc. but this Market is conveniently located in a strip mall with all the modern conveniences. On top of all of the goodies, there are brilliantly handcrafted furnishings, candles, crafts, and small toys... enough to make me want to stay for hours!
If the Amish Market was all we had done for the weekend I would have been totally content... it was great!

Sat- We decided it would be best to hang near the house with our upcoming trip, so Saturday was spent cleaning, unpacking (and packing!), and pest-controlling the house. We eventually did venture out in the late afternoon for a trip to the outlet mall to find shoes for me (we came out empty handed- if anyone knows of shoes that have GREAT arch support- I'm looking I have tremendously high arches and the doc thinks this is part of my hamstring issue!) and dinner at Chevy's.

Sun- Hallie woke up at 5:30am and was ready for a nap before we even started getting ready for church! So Ty stayed home with her and they slept and I took Micah to church. Having 1 child is SO different then 2, he was so calm and content- it was amazing! After Micah and I took a nap, we headed back down to the beach, and finished the night off by sitting on the porch watching the lightening bugs and searching craigslist for a car... it was nothing but Good Times!

Like Father Like Son

nuf said?? thought so!

How do you know you've lived in the city for too long?

You hear birds chirping and wind blowing through the trees, and can't figure out which electronic device its coming through so you assume it must be the nature switch on your noise machine... only to find out that its actually just the noises coming from outside your window!

Love it!!!!

We're back!

Our Internet is finally up at our new place, I'm even farther behind on our blog now with not much hope for catching up anytime soon with our trip home next week and constantly sick and/or teething children! (really I would like to know what happened to my healthy happy children it seems like we get over one to move onto the other!) But don't worry I'm not behind on your blogs, I've been reading and enjoying them from my trusty little phone... don't you just love modern technology! But there's no way to catch up on commenting on your blogs... so you'll have to live with no comments from me sorry :)

So here's a run down...

• We love our new place, we're living it up with 2 camp chairs, 2 high chairs, 2 pack and plays, a cooler, an air mattress, and a bunch of totes... (I made mother's day cards on the floor surrounded by my crafting totes last night... it was great!)
• Absolutely IN LOVE with our BOB!

• We are enjoying the first rain free day (so far!) in a week, talk about a wet humid place!
• I'm spoiling myself here and there for my birthday and trying to decide where we will go explore on Saturday (My birthday weekend, my choice- even though it's usually my choice anyway!) 3 days and counting!
• We leave next Friday for good 'ol Washington! That means... lots of packing and preparing, searching craigslist for all kinds of furniture and a car, 2 anxious adults who can't wait to see everyone, and 2 kids who have no idea what's going to hit them! Following our visit at home, we are packing up the moving truck and driving us and our belongings out here so we'll have something more comfortable then a $14 camp chair to sit on!
• We are loving exploring the area, there's some great treasures we didn't realize were here... a beach with another great boardwalk 2 miles down the road which goes into town, a large resort/park on the beach, so many curvy beautiful roads- we feel like we are in the foothills of Mt. Rainier minus the pine trees :)