travels

** sorry this post is a bit unorganized

We're home!! We're back from our many travels. Last Thursday evening we drove to Davenport and spent the night at my moms.. then on Friday we drove out to Germantown, Ohio (near Dayton). My sister Danya got married on Saturday and here are a few pictures of us all dolled up. For the most part the wedding went well, I really enjoyed meeting all my sisters friends and getting to just hang out with her. Although we didn't get to chat much it was fun just being there for this part of her life. Danya was even brave enough to join us for our tradition of eating breakfast as a family before we all depart our ways. So on Sunday morning, our family all enjoyed a hot breakfast at the Waffle House.

Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of just our family so these are just a few candids. I was a bridesmaid so I was extra dolled up (wuwee!). Check (x) one goal accomplished: I did not have a farmers tan for the wedding. Although it's not the best tan ever I'm happy that there are no obvious lines.


Then on Sunday we drove to Maryland and stayed with a college friend of mine, Jenelle. She and I went to UNI back in the day, and basically lived together for 4 years. The first two we both lived at Campbell Hall at UNI, then
we the last two years we shared an apartment. She (and her husband) has three kids so it was fun to see them playing with Wendell and the youngest is three
months old so babies are always fun to hold.

Phil and I had a very relaxing time and felt like we were at a bed and breakfast. We got our own bed, 3 meals a day (not the p,b&j we ate on the way out and the way back) and even a few treats like fresh eggs (they have chickens), mint tea (from their yard) and fresh veggies from the garden.

There's a picture of Wendell with his "binoculars" looking for a bear. We didn't realize there was one here in Iowa waiting for us... as I saw there was one in Jesup.. wow, that's close!

But we did see some long haired cows that were pretty neat looking.

And we also went to Swallow Falls and saw God's handiwork. Our camera isn't the best but the place is beautiful.

Harlie enjoyed her ride in the backpack carrier. I think we'll do some more hikes knowing how much she likes it. It seems that both Wendell and Harlie love being outside so it should be interesting what happens when we go camping in a few weeks.

Jenelle lives in the mountains and this is where we stayed. I'm not sure if you can zoom in but there are some canoes on their deck that her husband built. And he also used some of the tree's as siding for their house. He's quite the outdoors man (compared to us city folk).


















Wendell (and her two older kids) loved riding bikes up on the deck. All they did was go back and forth and around the table following the leader. Between this and the pool that we later put out, Wendell was quite entertained. When we got back in the vehicle to come back I felt like I hadn't seen him in a few days because he was outside playing almost the whole time.


And the ride home was the exhausting part. We drove back and stopped at Richmond, Indiana for the night (border of Ohio and Indiana). We didn't make it as far as we wanted due to a major truck accident on the interstate but it was a nice place to stay. We played in the pool and then pretty much went to bed. We ate our free continental breakfast and got back in the vehicle again. As long as Wendell got to watch some movies then he was pretty happy; Harlie however, was a bit tougher. She was ready to get out and was not so happy whenever we put her back in her car seat.

So we made it back yesterday safe and sound. We had a great time with family and friends and really enjoyed the trip for the most part. Now it's time to unpack, do laundry and get back into the swing of life. There are a lot of fun and scary stories (like emergency car repairs, taking a gravel road without a map, in the middle of no where, to get around a traffic jam on interstate in Ohio, and jogging up a mountain that was so steep I thought I was running place) but can't blog about everything so that's it for now.