Amber Waves of Grain

So I am so behind in the blogging department! I have like 10+ posts I need to make, so bear with me as I play catch up. I am just going to start with our move, and then if I am ever able to catch up I will go back and recap the summer.

August 25th marked the day of our 6th wedding anniversary, but was also the day we packed up our moving truck for yet another move (this time clear across the country).  It was fitting to spend our anniversary this way seeing that  moving seems to be what we do (I am pretty sure this was the 8th or 9th move ).

This move was INSANE. I knew it was going to be crazy with the time frame, but I thought I was in somewhat of a good place a few days before we were supposed to head out. Boy was I wrong! I dunno what it was maybe the fact that not everything was going with us (we left about half our stuff in a storage unit in Utah), maybe it was having to sort between the stuff trying to decide what we really needed to take with us but for some reason this was the most stressful move to date.  Thanks to the reinforcements, Jake's Family, my Aunt Krissi helped me with the kids and our Elders Quorum we were able to make it happen. (Though Jake and I literally packed/cleaned until 5am the next morning to be able to finish...craziness I tell you, not to mention the fact I am way too old to be pulling all-nighters!)

Georgann had taken the kids earlier that evening so that Jake and I could do the mad dash of finishing all the packing, so at 5 am we put the lock on that truck, (we did one of those that they deliver to you since we hadn't found a place to live and didn't want to deal with keeping all our stuff in a moving truck for who knows how long once we got to Boston) and pulled out of our driveway in Bountiful and went to Jake's parents for a few hours to get some sleep before we started our 4-day drive to Massachusetts.

Day 1 - SLC, UT to Nebraska

Left: Our moving truck at just before pulling out at 5 am. Right:The open road, we had a fun time observing all the things outside our windows, this was the cloud Carder said looked like Mickey Mouse.

I was anticipating a bumpy ride with the kids. (Brenn is just at the age that she hates being in her seat for too long). But they did surprisingly well. This day was the shortest driving day, and breaking it up with a lengthy stop at a McDonald's playplace made for a smooth roadtripping day.

Day 2 - Nebraska to South Bend, Indiana
This drive really opened our eyes to how much of the United States we hadn't experienced. I am pretty sure the cornfields outnumbered any homes/people we came across substantially. I thought Utah was semi-rural prior to this, but that is definitely not the case after experiencing hours of driving and seeing very little signs of civilization, only more and more cornfields. (we now understand the line in America the Beautiful where it says "Amber waves of Grain," in the midwest that is what America is.

We stopped for lunch in Nebraska and saw this huge grass area surrounded by cornfields across the street (because that is what there is in Nebraska).  At lunch we saw the cutest Amish/Minnonite Family, they were not much older than Jake and me with a bunch of kids, all dressed old -chool, it was awesome. (p.s. I didn't know they were allowed to eat at Arby's). After eating lunch we took a wiggle break and did some races in the field (we tried to run the energy out of the kids) and let the kids explore the corn rows a bit.

Bottom Right: Carder cheating at the races by giving Jakes leg a little extra dead weight.

This day was by far our longest driving day. And we experienced the bumps of roadtripping with kids. Brenn had been a little under the weather. Anyway that evening as we were about to cross the border from Iowa into Illinois she gagged and threw up everywhere in the car. (seriously I don't know where her little tummy was hiding all of that fluid?!?) We had to stop at a gas station, strip her down bathe her in the sink there and then strip her car seat and scrub as much as we could with the window washing paper towels at the pump. Glorious I tell you. Right up there with the poo-cuzzi Carder created when he was around that age on one of our road trips from California.

Day 3 - South Bend, Indiana to Palmyra, NY (with a brief pit stop in Kirtland, Ohio)

Part of the reason that our day of driving was so long the prior day is that once Jake saw that we would be passing through South Bend he just had to make it one of the places we lodged so that he could go check out Noter Dame's football stadium and campus. (Yes I am married to a crazy sports addict.)

Carder at Breakfast. He is sipping his orange juice so weird because as he tells me "he has to get it to the right taste buds" I guess those right taste buds must have been on the sides of his tounge. Silly boy.

After breakfast we went and checked out the Fighting Irish Football Stadium and got a peak at the famous touchdown Jesus. Carder made me laugh so hard as we pulled into the stadium's parking lot. He said, "We are stopping here cuz dad wants to see this really bad. Dad is a crazy fan of stadiums." And yes his dad is such a crazy sports fan that even though Brenn had just fallen asleep he put  that napping baby over his shoulder to tramp around the campus.

Top Left: Carder "Tebow"ing; Middle Left: Carder with the squirrel he found climbing a nearby tree; Lower Left: Jake and konked out Brenn in front of Touchdown Jesus

When we were mapping out our road trip I knew we would be passing by a lot of church history stuff. Since the drive was so long already we didn't really want to tag on any extra hours, so our one minor detour from the most direct route was going to be a day in Palmyra. I had looked up Navoo and it was like a 6-hour detour, which meant that would have to wait for another time. However, for some reason I totally spaced on Kirtland. I was on the phone with my my Mom when we were in Ohio and she asked me about this and I so I looked it up and found out it was off of an exit literally right on our route. Since we hadn't really been planning on it, it was evening when we stopped, so all of the venues/tours were closed down for the night, but we were still able to walk around the beautiful grounds and see the temple.

The kids loved playing on the temple grounds...Kirtland was beautiful. It far surpassed what I had pictured it to be like in my mind. (It kind of reminded me of the grounds of that Garden Park building in Salt Lake)

Brenn let us know she was willing to help with the driving at one of our pit stops.

Day 4 - Palmyra, NY to Boston, MA

We got to Palmyra in the middle of the night.  So after sleeping in a bit the next mornining we were ready to start our day of exploring the town. 

We started off our day by Jake doing a session at the Palmyra Temple while I stayed with the kids and checked out the beautiful Temple grounds.

Next on the agenda was checking out the Smith farm and the Sacred Grove...

President Hinckley came up here to acquire this land. The temple is actually built on land that was owned by the Smith family. From the farm the temple spire is beautifully framed by trees off in the distance (this picture does not do it justice).

Top Right: That is the tree that the Smith family planted in Memory of Joseph's brother, Alvin, right after he died.

These are the original (yes that is right, I said ORIGINAL) bricks to the fireplace in the frame house.  It blew my mind that these were the actual blocks that Joseph had touched and once hidden the golden plates beneath.

After touring the homes/buildings on the grounds we headed off to the Sacred Grove. So beautiful, so serene.

The Farm and grounds were so beautiful, I was almost ready to pack my bags and buy a plot of land right there in Palmyra. Carder loved running around the wide open space (not so much a fan of the long tour, but hey he got something out of it hopefully). 

We would have liked to have done more, but after the whole tour aspect of the Smith Farm the kids were DONE. Brenn fell asleep in our car and wanting to take advantage of that time for the last little bit of our drive, Jake and I drove up to the Hill Cumorah and took turns taking Carder out to the monument.

It was such an awesome experience to have gotten to see some of these sites. After Palmyra it was only 6 more hours and we got to Brittany and Leon's house just outside of Boston. 

Thanks to some advice from my Aunt Jill of making sure all of our stops were at a park or play place (those kiddos better realize how much there Mama loves them by putting aside all that I believe in and eating at McDonald's a couple of times so that they could get their wiggles out) so the kids felt that they had done something other then sit in the car all day, we made it through our 4-day journey spanning 1/5 of the United States (Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts). What a wonderful start to this next adventure for our little family.