Road Trip 2009

Beautiful Montana Our Last stop before reaching Spokane.


Nelson, the Girls, and Lance



Maddi trying out the Go Cart

Maddi and Uncle Pat

Lance and Jacob

Mia enjoying the hot dog she roasted all by herself (with a little help from her cousins Nelson and Jac0b)

Maddi and Aunt Linda

Aunt Jilly a lot of blankets and a tiny bit of Ella.

Roasting Marshmallows and Hot Dogs

Maddi and her icecream face!








Mia and Aunt Linda doing some Gardening!

We reached Montana on Thursday night and spent all day Friday there and left for Spokane Sat. Morning. We had a blast hanging out with the Browns.

On Thursday we headed off for Linda's house in Bozeman but we got to take a nice little break half way through in Rexburg, where Jill's Fiance Dane was living. He was living in the apartment he and Jill would move into after the Wedding in June and taking some classes but they had to do the long-distance thing for a couple of months which isn't easy so it was nice that we could stop by for a couple hours and see future Uncle Dane. :)

Grandma Chris

Mia and Ayden

Grandma Tresa

Kathleen's Gradparents

Lisa and Joel, Aiden, and Grecia

Next stop Utah. We stayed with Lance's Sister Lorie from Monday night thru /thursday Morning. The girls had a blast swimming in Aunt Lorie's pool. Maddi true to her fearless nature was even jumping of the diving board. We also got to see Leslie and her family and the girls just loved getting to hang out with their cousins. An sadly I have NO pics of our stay with Lorie (that just tells you how tired we were that first day) We also took a day to drive up tp Provo and see my Gradparents, Lisa and Joel, and my Mom and pick up a dresser, and then head to Sandy to see Grandma Chris.

My cute cute Niece Grecia

From Indiana our 1st stop was in Nebraska where we stayed at a hotel that had a small water park. this was a nice break for the girls.

The Moving Truck also had this lulling effect where anyone riding in it just drifted off to sleep (this would include Lance...poor guy....drove the whole way with no breaks....I think we must have had a little divine intervention because I don't know how he stayed awake....or maybe I should say...how he didn't crash when he wasn't awake.)

Lance drove the Moving Truck that was also towing our little Truck and Jill and I drove the Mini Van. The Moving Truck was DEFINATELY the cool place to be though and the Girls let me know that almost every time they were in the Van. :)

Off we Go! Jill and I in all our "No Make-up, We haven't slept in 2 days, Bliss!"

For a more detailed/hillarious account of our trip I will refer you to my sister Jill's Blog where she did her own post on our little adventure.

http://jillanddane.blogspot.com/2009/06/small-taste-of-mommyhood-warning-this.html

Our Last Day

My Little sister Jill so kindly came out to Indiana to drive with us back to Washington. She was an awesome help the last two days of packing odds and ends and getting ready for the week long road trip.



Saying Goodbye to my cute 1st house. I didn't realize how sad I would be to leave it until those final moments!

Big Huge Moving Truck...Washington...Here we Come!

Karen my wonderful friend and neighbor who while in the middle of a move herself, watched the girls all day while we packed the truck.

Saying Goodbye Continued

I don't know what we would have done without the Henries living right down the street from us. Last Date Night with Gracie and Ashby

Saying Goodbye

The last two weeks in Indiana we soaked up every last minute with friends that we could.

Last Girls Night out!

Shari and Ashli two of our most favorite NICU Nurses. It was so fun to see them one last time!

Lindsay my awesome friend who I began to have WAY too much in common with! :) Her baby Kingsley was in the NICU about the same amount of time as Ella just a couple months before Ella, and then had to come on a monitor as well. Lindsay came over one night to keep me company and hold my fussy little Ella after she got shots, the night Lance had his last Game Night with his guy friends.

The Robertsons. Somehowe we didn't get a picture of Greg, but here is little Michael and Ashlee who was such a good sport while Mia played "Salon"

Lucy and Maddi. These tow little girls got to tag-along all year long while Lucy's wonderful Mom Charlotte helped me out with preschool.

One of Mia's most favorite friends Andrew who she got to know during preschool. We can attribute all of Mia's StarWars knowledge to Andrew!

Abigail and Julliet. It's hard to believe that we started doing playgroup with Abigail when She and Mia were barely a year old! We were sad we didn't get a chance to get Elise in this picture as well!

The Best Neighbors! Mia and Maddi just love Alex and Ian.

Alex was one of the first kids Maddi considered a friend and would get excited to see. We miss Alex!

Purdue Favorites

Lance's sister Leslie came out to help us pack up the house before we moved and she was such a huge huge help to us. We took a break from packing for part of a day and we had fun walking around Purdue's campus. Lance had wanted to take pictures of our favorite spots on campus before we left and it was fun that we got to have Leslie with us to do this!

One last time to play in our favorite fountain! We attended many play groups here.