Oh, the places you'll go!!

   How invigorating! We just got back from swimming and sliding and I think that is how every day should end. At the top of a water slide with lightning bugs all around and the moon hanging low. Ahhh.....
  We are having so much fun and so that I don't forget here is a quick rundown of what we have done so far. It might be boring for you to read, but it sure is fun for us to live!!
  Our drive out went absolutely great!! I never dreamt that the kids could be so good for so long. I am contemplating living in our car from now on, as they are so much better behaved. Of course, Justin burnt dvds with our movies and each disc had like 4-6 movies on it. So they did watch a very large amount of movies.
  There were only two downsides to our drive. One, a 20 hour drive from Idaho to Missouri took us 29 hours total. But we did only spend $12 on food the whole way!
 They other bad thing was that Tristan and Alaina both threw up. (Tristan did 4 times!) Which was partly why we only spent $12 on food! And also a large reason why the drive took so long. We had to make a side trip for cleaning materials in Nebraska because I was tired of cleaning up with just baby wipes.     

                              This was at the Wal-Mart in Nebraska.  I was cleaning and Alex strapped Emme in and played with her. Doesn't she look worried?

 

   You know you have really sunk low when you walk into Wal-Mart and think, "What magical paradise is this, with air conditioning and everything you could ever need? Who would ever leave a place like this?" When I saw myself in the bathroom mirrors there it was kind of shocking. I looked like I was living out of my car. Oh, wait. I was.  Then we got parts for our oil pump (we're traveling on used vegetable oil) at Home Depot and thankfully everyone was fine by the time we got to Daddy's, many, many hours later.
  We had so much fun with Daddy and it was so fun for the kids to see him and him to see the kids!! They liked him right away because he was a Grandpa so that was an automatic "in" and then he was nice to them and let them sit on his lap and have his quarters that they found around his house. We spent time at his house and went to Bonkers, a huge playland that is basically a hamster cage for humans. So fun!! Tristan used all his quarters from Grandpa Cripe on the candy machine and Emme smothered Grandpa in slobbery kisses. We ate after that and by the time we got back to Mexico Grandpa was pretty well worn out. We dropped him at his house and then took the kids swimming at the hotel pool.

This picture is blurry, but I just thought it was so cute!

 They finally went to bed at like 11 pm. They were all super good at sleeping in the same room. We found that the secret is to get them so tired that they just konk out, rather than trying to put them to bed at any decent hour.
   Next morning, visited with Daddy and ate lunch with him and then started for Meggies at about 1:30 in the afternoon. Made the mistake of mentally thinking it would be a shorter drive, so that it felt like forever. Turned a ten hour drive into a 12 hour drive. At one point I was looking for the GPS charger under Lainey's seat and sat the GPS in Emme's car seat. I couldn't find the charger, so we pulled off but not on an exit, onto another highway instead. Finally got back on the road but the GPS was giving us such strange directions and we felt like we were driving everywhere. Finally after about 20 minutes of thinking we were going crazy, I thought to check the GPS again, and while it was in Emme's car seat for like 20 seconds her little toes had reset our whole trip route and we were driving who knows where! So, we got that fixed and laughed about it. But we were getting a little annoyed before that. (I thought I was going to scream if he said, "Recalculating," one more time.)

  We had fog and curvy roads and a deer run in front of us on our way to Megan's. Just West Virginia's way of saying hello. (Did you know that a couple of years ago it was on all the national news because a boy here got hit by a deer, on his BIKE?! The boy was on the bike, not the deer.)
   So, we got to Meg's all safe and sound at about 2 am and stayed up until 4 am talking. Naturally. Because we think it's fun when we're together to see what we can do on as little sleep as possible.
  The next day Tristan went with Megan and her kids to their library reading program activity, while we unpacked things here and basically took over Aiden's room. Then we went to Sam's Club and Wal-Mart, just to prove that it doesn't matter where you go in the world, you will still have to go to Wal-Mart. And they will still be out of at least one thing that you need.

  That night was their ward's swim party, so after dinner we went to that and had so much fun! The weather here is perfect for evening swimming and the pool was never over 5 feet and is really big. So fun! 

Gosh, it doesn't look like Alex is very happy, does it? 

 

 Isn't this such an Emme expression?

 Then that night Meggie and I  went to stores and looked around while Danny, Brooks and Aiden played a game at home. Then we stayed up until 2 am looking at clips of Wicked online and wishing we could go see it together in Columbus. Good times.
  Yesterday we slept in pretty late, can't figure out why, and then took the kids to the cutest little town here, Marietta. Unfortunately, it was the hottest part of the day and we left all the water in the car and we thought we were all going to die of heat stroke. The funnest part was after we all got back in the car, blasted the air conditioning and drove up and down the streets looking at some of the cutest houses you have ever seen!! It all looked just like in Meet Me In St. Louis and Meggie and I were dying! But not of heat stroke this time.

Aren't they cute together? They were supposed to be sleeping, but instead they were playing with the Lite-Brite. 

This was Audrey and Alaina playing house in the bathroom. They were making "soup", which was a little scary, considering where they were doing their cooking.

  Today Danny and I drove to Charleston, got lost because we thought we could get there without the GPS, turned the GPS back on and finally got to visit with Danny's cousin who lives out here and her four kids. We had lots of fun with them and their kids looked so much like Alex, with red hair and blue eyes just like him! They had so much fun playing and visiting and Robin made some killer peach cobbler with ice cream! Yumm....

     Drove back to Parkersburg and got totally lost trying to find the swim park because someone, let's just call her Megan H., or M. Haroldsen had given us the wrong address. We finally found the park, where the library was having their end of year party. You had to attend one of the activities over the summer, and since Tristan had gone to the closing one with Megan, we figured that counted! Actually, I didn't feel bad at all about going, as they were planning on four hundred people and had maybe 75. They had ordered 100 pizzas and there were soooo many left over! They were going to take them to the local homeless and battered women's shelters. So we ate pizza and treats and then went swimming, at the same pool we did two day ago! Oh, it was so refreshing and fun and then we did the huge water slide that went down the hill. It was super fast and Aiden cried after riding it! Even Alex said, "Whoa." We rode until 9pm, when they kicked us out, and then put all these exhausted kids to bed.

    Tomorrow we are driving, again, this time to Amish country. Danny wants to visit the place that lets you taste 60 different varieties of cheese, and Megan says that she thinks maybe we should be Amish. "They have everything we want. Land, horses, farm animals and gardens. We could be Amish-Mormons. Mormish." If we come back wearing bonnets and skirts, you will know that Megan succeeded.
  So pretty much, Meggie is very silly, the kids are having so much fun playing together, we are hardly sleeping at all and we still have a week left! Ahhh... heaven!