Oh the Place We'll Go...day 3

Today we got up early, 7:30 am...still not as early as Dad would like I think. We enjoyed another continental breakfast and got on the road. We knew we would be crossing into Iowa early which also meant we would cross the Mississippi River!! After Iowa came Minnesota and then South Dakota. We had a good traveling day although we were definitely beginning to dread getting back in the car. At this point, we had opted to putting Browni in the crate, which sat behind the driver seat. We had also dug into the bag of Tootsie Roll candy that Aunt Jean got for us, this would prove to be a great solution to the long, boring roads in Iowa and Minnesota! We stopped for lunch at a Wendy's in Minnesota and they had a nice fence that we tied the dogs to and ate outside...now dinner was a different story, I'll write about it later in the post! Enjoy the pics!

Crossing over the Mississippi River into Iowa.

Dad and I on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River. The dogs were very unsure about the water! We found a little area of boat docks that had a stone staircase leading to them, it looked as though they hadn't been used in years! The Mississippi was definitely what I had imagined it, big!

Dad enjoying the view, Browni ready to go! I was testing the camera so I'm not sure Dad knew I was taking his picture :)

Award for the BEST WELCOME CENTER goes to... IOWA! We had to wait about 5 minutes for it to open, but it was well worth the wait. It was basically a gift shop, but it was two stories worth of a gift shop! We decided to purchase our state t-shirts here, so they are probably the best quality t-shirts in our collection too! We didn't take the dogs out for this picture because they were just out at the river...so it counts!
Well, sometimes you just can't be ready for the state sign! The bottom reads "Fields of Opportunities" and we agree that there are definitely plenty of fields in Iowa...opportunity?

So the next five pictures comprise the World's Largest Truckstop: Iowa 80. I measured how big it was by the amount of pictures it took so I'd say 5 makes it a pretty big place!

Dad and I realized later that these funny looking airplane wing things are actually the rutters for a turbine! This is where the truck stop began...
and kept going...

and going...
and going....

and ended :)

This is pretty much the scenery in Iowa...fields and turbines. We really enjoyed seeing the turbines though and every time a new batch came along we would estimate how many there were...always more than the last bunch :) They really are huge!
Award for the BEST STATE SIGN goes to...MINNESOTA! By far the most detailed sign and so it made for a good topic of conversation for a while. Just think about all of the state signs you've seen!

A very cool welcome center and probably the runner-up. There was a staircase that lead down to the "pet area" which was really a nice trail down behind the welcome center. So, as we came back up on the opposite side of the welcome center we realized that we were walking into a cloud of ladybugs! They were everywhere!! We had to wipe them off of each other when we got into the truck...Dad thought he had one go down the back of his shirt and sure enough when he leaned forward there was a little bump on his shoulder blade and we had to rescue the little guy :) Unfortunately the front of the truck suffered from the cloud of ladybugs... :(

We stopped at a Wal-mart to purchase our state t-shirt and found this little lady walking around in the truck...we ended up transplanting it to Washington...every once in a while it would walk across the window and then disappear somewhere in the truck.

South Dakota...Great Faces Great Places.

The South Dakota welcome center...the least welcoming. Why? Well, the bathrooms were open, but the desk had a chain link wall in front of it and the sign on the desk read: "Closed for the season. Will reopen in May." LOL! We could not get over that!

We were very curious about the dead trees on the hillsides in South Dakota...and still are! We enjoyed this scenery more than the flat fields!

Well, as it became time to stop for the night we realized that there weren't very many cities to choose. We stopped for gas in Presho and the attendant told us there were places in the next town called Murdo. We pulled into Murdo and found several hotels, however we also found out that it was the opening weekend of pheasant season!!! ALL of the hotels were occupied!!! Who knew!!! We decided to stop and eat at a local diner and here is what followed...

Waitress: "Hi, the special tonight is the Roast Beef and Vegetables, it's a dollar off the menu price. What can I get you guys to drink?"

Dad: "Diet"

Me: "Lemonade"

Waitress: Bringing us our drinks. (apparently lemonade translates to Mt. Dew in SD) "Have you decided?"

Dad: "I'll take the special."

Waitress: "Umm actually the cook just told me not to serve the beef, it's no good...so actually that means we can't serve...(going through a list of things on the menu that use the beef)..."

Dad: Holding back a laugh! "Ok...I'll take.........

So our dinner at the local diner was very entertaining...or maybe Dad and I were really tired from the road, but we found this to be SOOO funny! We had to keep our laughing down cause they had no music playing and there were lots of people in the diner besides us.

Anyways, we got on the road and headed to the next town, Kadoka. We found 1 hotel and it was pet friendly. I think we would have been fine leaving the dogs in the truck at this point. We very happily laid down and went to bed that night!!

Stay tuned for day 4!

Oh the Places We'll Go...day 2

Our second day we woke up to a cold (38 degrees F) West Virginia! We enjoyed some Continental Breakfast and got on the road around 8:30am. We decided that we would try to get up earlier on day 3, which we found to be pretty easy considering the time change! We continued through West Virginia, into Kentucky, then Indiana, and finally Illinois.

We dug into our stash of food today; I had packed lots of unsalty snacks in order to avoid swollen ankles. The fresh apples and peaches were especially delicious, thanks Mom and Dad for preparing those! Also, I forgot to mention that Mom made some cinnamon covered pecans and peanuts which were gone in I think the first day and a half, right Dad? And Emily made chocolate chip cookies that didn't survive the first day :) You guys were too good to us!

We passed into Kentucky about an hour into our day, so that meant we stopped after just an hour of driving. You all know how Dad would normally feel about that...but we were beginning to have fun looking for Wal-marts at this point (where we got our state t), so I think we were both ok with stopping. It also broke up some of the time for the dogs and we didn't have to make too many stops for them.

Sorry this is so far away, just imagine the pregnant woman running to get into the picture! I nearly had to fly over the bushes to get there in time and then with it being so far away we couldn't see the light flash on the camera anyway! So now imagine Dad and I talking about whether it had been long enough :)

We passed into Indiana around 12:30pm, and also into Central Time, so now we are 1 hour behind J-ville. We stopped at a Wal-mart of course and bought lunch at the deli. We then tied the dogs to a tree in the parking lot and ate in the truck with the windows down! :)

The weather was gradually getting warmer, thus we shed our winter coats. Not sure why Indiana has a Southern welcome center...surely it's not that big of a state. Also not sure why it's lemon yellow, unless it's supposed to make it easier to find, in which case it was not. I was driving and Dad was on the phone with Johnny, so I didn't see the beyond bright welcome center and ended up turning the wrong way and going back into downtown Louisville, KY. I think I'd like to visit there one day, the one block we drove around was very nice. I stacked the camera on two boxes of candy on the hood...what do you think happened to the candy? You guessed it! We lost one box of Reese's Pieces but were able to save the Junior Mints :)

We got to see this cool, giant clock thanks to my mix up. This was our second time passing into Indiana :)

For those of you who don't know, Nick is an Indianapolis Colts fan so Dad and I decided to drive into Indianapolis to try and find him some Colts memorabilia. On the way we passed the Speedway, Nick was pretty jealous of this! I did find him some Colts stuff too! We also got authentic (because they are from Indiana!) Hoosiers t-shirts!! We didn't actually make it into Indianapolis because the neighborhood began to get questionable.

Into Illinois we went around 6:00pm. There was a good place to set the camera, so no leaning your head to the right :)
I have a bit of a tree fetish, so when I see pretty trees I take pics! This tree was in the nice pet area at the welcome center...the dogs enjoyed a little exercise!
We decided Illinois, and later Iowa, are pretty much just fields and wind turbines! They were really cool to see, at least the first few hundred, right Dad?!
I thought the sunset in Illinois was really pretty, however the camera thought the dead bugs on the windshield were more interesting! So, if you can see past the fact that we had driven all day without cleaning the windshield, the sunset was very nice!

We had so much fun today but were so ready to stop that night. We found a pet friendly Holiday Inn Express, we had some Taco Bell for dinner and decided we would find an Illinois t-shirt in the morning. The time change didn't help because it meant we were tired at 8:00pm CT because it was 9:00pm ET. By the way, my ankles were doing really well and I was still pretty comfortable in the car. We went to bed early so we did have an earlier start on day 3!

Oh The Places We'll Go...

Well, my Dad and I set off for Washington...of course there were lots of things that had to be done that morning: I ended up at the hospital first thing in the morning saying goodbye to the Suggs. Grandma Linda had to go in for surgery that morning. After that I took Bell with me to get Sanford, then took Bell home, then headed back to Mom and Dad's to gather the last few things and get on the road.

The next few pics follow our first day on the road!

Yes, we're in the car and actually heading out. Of course lots of things are going through my head like did I remember everything, where did I put the X-terra key (which I never found!), etc.
Dad tied a rubber spider to the tail gate and Lil' Jas ran after us thinking it wasn't supposed to be there :) Mom, this is the only time I held the camera out of the window!

Pilot Mountain...aka "Pimple" Mountain, right Dad? :)

Ok, so this is our first state line and I cut off the V, so this is the Virginia state line not the Irginia! I hope this isn't something that will happen often considering we have 11 states to go :)

Just a nice picture of the Appalachian Mountains...to compare to the Rocky Mountains later in our journey!

Browni had no idea how long she's going to have to sleep on this trip...she really should have tried to stay awake a little longer!

Sanford looking around wondering what he did to deserve this!

Yes, it's raining, which I thought we weren't going to hit 'til we got to Washington. It was pretty chilly out there too!

We did have to ask another tourist to take our pic, which means we got the whole state name! The dogs really didn't understand what was going on.

So we stopped in Charleston, WV for the night. We stayed in a nice Comfort Suites that allowed our pets. We ate McD's for dinner and bought our first t-shirt at the K-Mart down the road. We also had to buy a gallon of water because that was one of the things I forgot, for the dogs. We felt pretty good that night. Browni started out on Dad's bed and Sanford on mine, but Dad said about 5 mins. after I fell asleep Sanford was with him too...hee hee!

I'll post our second day in a few days...so keep checkin the blog :)

Twas the Night Before Moving...

Just a few pics of the night before I left. Dad made "Holiday" dinner because I won't be here for the holidays this year :( Riley and Judy came over and brought a yummy dessert! Kerriann and Jason got a little carried away with the chocolate pie :) Anna and Shelby are getting SO big! I'm really going to miss my neices and nephews and all of the growing they are going to do!!!

Moving to Washington

Packing/Moving Day!! October 13th we packed up all our stuff and off it went to Washington!





The moving truck parked in front of Mom and Dad's house. We had a few things here to be picked up first...then we headed over to the storage unit. This is where the majority of our stuff was located...and the majority of it needed to be packed!



Kokinda's don't do anything without a crowd! Emily, Gabby, Katie, and Galina joined me at the storage center while the movers finished packing our things in the truck. The movers enjoyed the show :)



Off it goes...all that's left now is me and the dogs!

My Wonderful Mom and Sisters Threw me a Baby Shower

Preparing for Baby Julius!



Emily made this beautiful cake and we love the owls!



Kerriann and Erin were in charge of food, we had white chili and
red chili and lots of other delicious treats! Kerriann found this
recipe for little owl faces, too cute!!



Me and Granny (#9 on the way!)


Playing the lovely "Guess How Big the Belly Is" game! We
had two winners because they were literally the same size
ribbon! Congratulations Aunt Jean and Cynthia Johnson!


Opening presents...always fun! Katie is on the webcam sitting
in the chair. I'm so glad Sonja and Johnny were able to hook
up the wireless internet for us so Katie could be in on the fun!
This is what Nick and I look like as owls....sooo cute!!!

Finally I just want to say thank you to everyone for sharing in this
exciting time for Nick and I! We are so happy to be having our first
child and can't wait to welcome him into the world! Love you all!!!

Nicholas is home!!!

So, Nicholas graduated from Submarine school in Groton, CT on Sept. 11! After a short delay in orders he was able to finally come home on Sept. 16...and this is what greeted him :) I was very excited for him to see the belly in person!! He waited until that evening to tell me where we are going and for those of you who don't know...we have orders to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Washington! Nicholas reports there on Sept. 30 and I will hopefully be following about 3 weeks later.