Pretty, Pretty Princess

Amy Anderson sent us this fantastic game! Teddy makes quite the prince with that crown.

Marie and Claire were able to both enjoy the game. Claire was just happy whenever we passed jewelry her way. Marie got the concept of spinning, moving your pawn, and then getting a piece of jewelry. She didn't quite get that the space you landed on told you what piece you got.

I won the game this time around. Marie just wanted to keep playing again and again.

Look at that cute princess! She was thrilled to show off her new jewelry.



Sweet Corn Festival

We just got moved in and then the first weekend there was the Fairborn Sweet Corn Festival! I love corn and it was only a mile from our house. So we strapped the girls in the stroller and started our walk over! We took a family picture in the "Can you 'ear me now?" sign. Marie didn't want to be bothered by taking a picture. There were too many things to go see and do.

 I LOVE kettle corn, so we had to get a bag. The girls were a big fan too.

We watched a little bit of the Fairborn show choir while we ate free freezies!

 I always want to get one of these giant, club looking turkey legs so we split one between the four of us. They actually aren't that delicious, but they are fun to eat.

The festival was at the park so the girls were able to get their worms out. They loved climbing over all the new equipment. We had a hard time getting them to leave.

This balloon was a big hit. The girls were sort of hesitant to get close, but then they decided they were brave enough to go touch it. We had a great time and were able to enjoy our new area's activities.





Flashback to Mt. Whitney

 I don't know if you remember way back in August of 2010 when I posted about our Mt. Whitney in a day climb... well we FINALLY got the pictures from the guy who carried his huge camera all the way up. I was excited to get these pictures because it reminded me that I was in shape at one point and I won't always have a large pregnant belly. I love being able to feel Boy Shillig, but I am ready to get moving again.

 So here is a view from the top looking down the valley that we climbed up. We camped all the way at the bottom of this valley where the trees run out. We left bright and early so we could start hiking by 3 am.

 Here is the sign in book at the top of the Mt! This cabin is where a group of hikers died when they took shelter in a metal roofed cabin from a lightening storm.

 Up and up we go! I think going down was the worst part. Next time I would definitely bring hiking poles for the way down.

This is the marmot that stole food right out of our bags. He lives up at the top and must make some good loot because he was pretty hefty. He only got a granola bar from us.



Our New House!

We finally made it to Ohio! Our 'new' house is much older than our last house, but it definitely gives us some more space in some areas. We also have the ability to have some more plants! We already turned in the dirt for a nice garden next year.

I would say the worse thing about the house is the kitchen. It is long and narrow and there is no pantry! :( The appliances do work much better though! Our counters also don't have the tile ridges which are a pain to clean.

Our living room is great! Teddy already has a fish tank up and running to make it feel like home. I will add some pictures of that later. I do love that there is brand new carpet throughout the whole house!

Of course it wouldn't be a home without my crafty/computer room.

Our girls share a room still. There is another room waiting for Boy Shillig that is currently the storage/random room. He will be sleeping in a bassinet in our room for a couple months after he is born anyways. We got his clothes in the dresser and our hospital bag packed. We are excited for him to come!

One thing that I was really excited to get was a trampoline! We found this one on craig's list and got a great deal on it. I love that it has the net around the outside. It has saved the girls more than once. Our girls like the grass, but I think they miss the dirt! Teddy cut up a bunch of wood and they just wanted to play in the saw dust. Claire doesn't like the longer grass and Marie can't stand it when it is wet. The cooler weather is great! They are outside almost all day. The mosquitoes make them come in at night time.

Climbing with the Andersons and Egberts

We made another stop along the way in Colorado that I forgot to blog about! We were able to see some great friends that we haven't seen in awhile.

We also were able to do some great rock climbing at Garden of the Gods. Marie loved playing with Eldon. They would chase each other around and jump off of rocks together.

Claire was a more serious climber and would cry every time I took her off the rocks.

The kids had a great time playing together and it was good to see some old friends. We spent a couple nights at Amy's house, so it was a nice break from driving. Hopefully we can make it back to visit in less than four years next time!

Indianapolis Speedway!

Our Penske truck blew a tire when we were about 30 minutes away from Indianapolis. We were hoping that maybe they would have some speedway skills and be able to change our tire in 10 seconds. They did have a very fast response time and the truck was back on the road in about 30 minutes!

 We eventually got to make another fun stop at the Indianapolis Speedway!

 We got to see all the winning cars that they had on display. The older cars had two drivers because it would take them more than a day to finish the race!

 The cars got smaller and smaller driver seats. I think Marie would take up the whole space!

 We also got to see the trophy where they engrave each winner's face!

We got a ride on a tour bus that drove us around the track! We got to cross the bricks! A lot of these bricks still remain underneath the current track. Originally the whole track was made of bricks. During the short drive we did around the two mile track, they said we would have been lapped 14-16 times!

Marie turns 3!!!

Marie turned THREE on our road trip! I felt bad that we weren't at home and I wasn't even able to make her a birthday card. We took a couple days off from driving and celebrated at Teddy's Uncle John's house. I tried to make it as special as possible, but I think Teddy is right when he says that the birthdays are more for the moms than the kids. I know that she won't remember it, but I felt it was in my motherly duties to try to make her day special.

We got some chocolate milk for her birthday! She probably would have been satisfied if that was all we did for her all day. This girl could do the gallon challenge if it was chocolate milk.

She got to play with all the other kids at John's! They let her play with all their toys and let her wear these fantastic glasses.

 Our girls love the water, so it was perfect that Marie was able to go swimming on her birthday! She was even able to swim all by herself with the floaties on her arms.

We got some poppers and horn blowers for her birthday too! She also got a special birthday hat. Teddy made her a fantastic chocolate birthday cake with crumbled cookies and Kit Kat's mixed with cool whip frosting. Yum!

Marie got some Dora pj's and a huge jug of cheese puffs! I think it turned out to be a pretty good birthday even if I wasn't able to make her a card. Happy birthday Marie!

Papa Bob's Food Challenge

Papa Bob's BBQ ended up being the one and only food challenge that we were able to do on the road trip. After Steven started saying how he thought he could eat most of it, he got put to the test.

 The sandwich was enormous! It weighed 6 lbs!

We were able to determine that it takes 3 lbs of food to fill up Steven because he was able to finish half of it. The remaining half of the sandwich would have been enough to fill up the rest of our group! I thought the pig timer was a perfect touch to the challenge.

Fun stops on the way!

 Although I was super excited to be on the road and more than 1 hr from our origin, I was a little disappointed that we only got to see the Grand Canyon as the sun was going down. It was still quite the view!

 It was about 30 minutes until it was black outside and we headed back to the car.

 Marie and Claire spent a lot of the road trip with stiff necks.

This is the oldest church in Albuquerque that has served the community without interruption since 1706.

We also went to see this rattlesnake place that had all different kinds of rattlesnakes to see. The girls kept the shop full of hissing noises! They love snakes!



On the road?

So we get all packed up and hit the road! We were excited to get started, but our progress was quickly halted...

After driving about an hour (almost to Barstow), the back wheel of the Corvette flew across the four lanes of traffic and miraculously missed all the cars. Not only did the wheel fall off, it sheared off all the bolts and broke the spring. This was not going to be a quick fix.

We called up a tow truck to get it the rest of the way to Barstow. There was no way to attach a full bed trailer behind the Penske truck. We spent two nights staying at a hotel in Barstow and knew that we had to get on the road somehow. We were tempted to take Spencer's advice of just abandoning it on the side of the road. After all attempts to make progress failed, we heard back from our saving bishop that he could come pick it up! Not only did he pick it up, he brought it back all by himself and is going to have it worked on. He saved us big time! We were able to hit the road again!

Our road trip sort of started from Sacramento. We stayed at Christine's house for a night after our China trip since we flew into San Francisco. Along our road trip, we plotted out different Man vs. Food restaurants that we could stop at. We went to Parker's to check out their hot dog challenge. We ended up not doing the challenge, but just ate their delicious food.