Nomad Southeast Trip, Day 1: Winter Solstice!

Woot! I am excited to relive this trip, even though it was a roller coaster of good and bad. But the good was very good and overall, it was a learning experience.

This year we decided to take a trip instead of giving presents. We always end up spending more than we say we will, giving more than we say we will, and I'm ultimately overwhelmed with the sudden influx of all that STUFF. I dread Christmas and birthdays and get grumpy in anticipation. We're working on changing to bypass all that. 

December 21, 2018: To McAlester, Oklahoma

We set a goal departure time of 9 am and we made it! Had to have our van parked on the street outside our housing nook because the HOA was having road work done. So all remaining last minute packing had to be walked out further and took longer, but we made our goal time. 

Dancy was always falling asleep, forcing me to pause our audiobook so she wouldn't miss it. Most commonly heard phrase: "Mom, I'm hungry!" Second most common: "Mom, Dancy fell asleep again!"

Some of my road trip features:

Dashboard navigation. DVD is 10 years old, but gets me where I need to go and saves my phone battery for audiobooks.

Double USB phone charger, FM transmitter that uses my phone's Blu Tooth to play my digital audiobooks over the van speakers. Favorite app: Libby. Run by OverDrive, but more user friendly. Second: Hoopla. Current book: The River by Gary Paulsen. For the kids' listening, I turn the playback speed to 1.5 or 1.75 depending on the reader. For myself, I listen at 1.75 or 2x depending on the reader. We get through our books faster.

Glove compartment: snacks/breakfast-to-go, games, hand sanitizer. Toward the end of our trip, this is also where our ziplock bags of sand and shells got stashed.

Door pockets: Bandaids, hair ties, bobby pins on top.

Snacks, gum, lotion in the middle.

Water bottle, essential oils bag, graham crackers, book on bottom.

I read aloud while Shad drives. He does all the driving because it's less stressful to him than tending to all the kid demands.

Like lunch. Peanut butter and honey. No stopping!

Open Kansas road with wind turbines.

Built-in DVD player. Current "in-flight" movie: Inside Out. "Who's your friend who likes to play? Bing-Bong! Bing-Bong!"

Green in December!!

And then, after spending all day out in the beautiful sunlight (okay, well, all day with window views, anyway), we got treated to a spectacular twilight display with the clouds.

And then a simultaneous moonrise and sunset!

Skewed light. That's the moon.

What a glorious way to spend the Winter Solstice, enjoying the full cycle of light on this day of darkness and to celebrate the return of light!

Nomad Midwest Trip, Days 18 & 19: Heading Home

The 8.5 hour drive from Rochester to Bloomington, Nebraska was easy and went pretty fast. We stopped at Costco in Omaha for our midway stop to walk around. We ate samples, bought some more snacks (they had the Fiber One bars that Colorado Springs and Aurora stopped carrying!), and bought smoothies at the food court to carry out for lunch. Bad idea there. Not two minutes after Four had hers (mind you, she was already buckled in) she dropped it. Okay, I'll get a towel out of the back end to cover that up because I sure can't clean it right now! And a second one spilled before we got to Kansas.

Bloomington is home to Mike and Laurel McDonald, who are Two's adopted grandparents from our church in Kansas. Laurel was her Primary teacher and Two just decided one day that she was always going to sit with them to keep them company. She was going to adopt them. They do love each other dearly.

We had dinner with the McDonalds. Mike had a little bag of polished rocks he bought for Two at Little America because he thought of her when he saw them. She had brought a bag to church once to show him. They also gave her a necklace.

Porch cuddles

{Mike and Two}

{Four, Mike, Two, Five, Laurel, Three, One}

You know you're in Nebraska when there's retired military planes and tanks in the parks.

After leaving the McDonalds, we stopped in Smith Center for a porch pickup of 6 gallons of honey from my beekeeper. Yes, you read that correctly. I have a beekeeper in Kansas. He sells a gallon of honey for $32. I'm out and wanted to really stock up because who knows when I'm gonna drive through next. And one of my forest friends wanted a gallon, too. And small town life in Kansas means you can leave $192 of merchandise on your porch for a customer to pick up and you know that she's gonna leave a check in the door.

We made it to middle-of-nowhere Kansas around 9 and the kids went right to running out their energy. We visited with Charly and Tony until around 10:30. Three was the only one who indicated being tired and wanting to go to bed. The next day was dreary and we didn't feel a need to venture out in the mud to see the farm, so we stayed inside chatting and playing and watching Wonder Woman. When the movie finished around 1 in the afternoon, I noticed that Three wasn't watching or playing in the other room. I went to find her upstairs in our bed.

We had a late lunch and said our goodbyes so we could get home with only a 5 hour drive.

{Three, Four, Charly, Two, One, Five}

We got home and the kids immediately set to work to quickly unload the van all together. I ordered Chinese delivery for dinner and we went to run around the park while we waited for our food.

Nomad Midwest Trip, Day 1 and 2: Gateway Arch and Cahokia Mounds

We've embarked on a new season in our lives, one of separation from our dad/husband, and one of getting as close to nomads as I can manage. And so it was that on Tuesday, August 21, we packed up our van, said tearful goodbyes to Shad, and hit the road, destined for Leavenworth, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City.

For the sake of this blog, I'm numbering instead of naming my kids.

I love that they posed like this on their own!

{Five, Two, Four, One, Three}

It was a beautiful, gray, misty day! While I have no desire to revisit certain parts of my life in Kansas, this did my soul good.

We stopped at our favorite gas stop in Kansas, The Oasis in Colby, where the kids got to play at the playground for a bit after we gassed up and used the bathroom. We also bought saltwater taffy, which turned out to be great because not only did we all enjoy it throughout the trip, but it also served as a desirable alternative for Five if there were treats offered to us that he couldn't have.

We stayed the night with Rachel Johnson's sister, who lives around the corner from her. Rachel Johnson was in my ward when I was growing up and I used to babysit her kids. I remember specifically that I babysat while she and Andrew went to see Bourne Identity. I also remember feeling like they overpaid me and even though I fought it with Andrew, he refused to see my way and I his. So I'd leave some bills in the car. True confessions, Rach! Anyway, when I was needing a place to stay to bridge us over to Louisville, I reached out and they were happy to accommodate me. Then Rachel's sister took us in because Rachel was going to borrow mattresses from her. It was fun to visit and catch up on each others lives for a night. In the morning, we departed for Louisville, with a midway stop in St. Louis.

Growing up, any time my family went on road trips, my sisters and I would request to stop at the border sign to take a picture, or to get dropped off by the "leaving..." sign and picked up at the "welcome to..." sign so that we could claim we had walked to Utah or Wyoming or whatever state. I realized on this trip that that isn't always possible when you're driving in the east and most borders are defined by rivers and the signs are on bridges without shoulders.

I love driving through rock walls!

While I did most of the trip planning, the kids did pitch in requests like, "If we're ever in St. Louis again, can we ride up the Arch? And climb Cahokia Mounds again?" And so we did.

This is the tram ride up the Gateway Arch.

{Four, Three, me, Five, Two, One}

{Two, Three, Five, One, Four}

{Five and One}

{One, Five, Four, Two}

Aerial view of the Mississippi.

{Four, One, Three, me, Five, Two}

The domed building is a museum; the circle on the ground is the new entrance to the Arch.

Three wanted a picture just with me. She made several photo requests during the trip.

All loaded up in the tram pod.

You know, because I didn't grab a picture of the kids in front of it.

Welcome to Illinois!

Just 15 miles east of St. Louis lies an ancient Native American site called Cahokia. This civilization was a booming metropolis with a population of 20,000 in 1250 AD, exceeding London's population at the same time period. The Cahokians built many earthen mounds, the most prominent of which is called Monk's Mound. It has a base larger than that Pyramid of Giza and those people built it one woven backpack of dirt at a time. At present day, it is a 152-stair climb to the top. 

You can see the Gateway Arch in the distance.

Zoomed in

{Two, One, me, Three, Four, Five}

Everyone climbed all the stairs up and down on their own. There was no carrying this year.

Illinois was beautiful to drive through, with a gorgeous hazy sunset.

Welcome to Kentucky!

Our destination was to stay with my cousin Eric and family, which was really nice because they live with his wife Maria's parents, so it was a doubly nice hosting situation.