Confessions of a Not So Well Behaved Woman: Driving through the mountains

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Driving through the mountains

I am in love with Ohio and West Virginia. Not sure that we could live there any time soon, but if I could pick any place to move, I might just choose one of those states. On the way out to Illinois, I slept through WV, but thought that Ohio was fantastic. It was country, but had big city elements; was open and green, but was populous enough to have all the services that you'd want. On the way back I saw it all - in all of it's mountainous splendor. It was, in summary, a place we'd like to live. If it were only a bit closer to the DC area...

So we drove to Illinois to see Tom's family and celebrate Great Grandpa's 80th birthday. The rents came to DC and the Florida kids were dropped off here by their mom, so we all roadtripped together in two vans. The kdis loved it - got to trade places and ride with Grammy and Grandpa, etc. Total mayhem. While we were in Illinois, we also celebrated Grammy's, Max's, mine, and Emily birthdays's. It was hot (not Texas hot but close), but we all had a great time. The kids got to play with their Florida cousins, they all got to ride a horse, they got to splash in the pool, and we all got to eat cake! A great trip all around.

We did see a few odd things on our trip, as well as the regular trip stuff:

Tom wanted to cut the glare so I suggested that he hide under this. He did long enough for me to snap a pic, and then he decided that he looked too much like a dork to keep doing this (even though he could see the screen perfectly. Silly man.)

Ian's headphones kept sliding down and falling off, so we adjusted them up as far as possible and added these socks, and he was good to go!

And it's not my worst nightmare, but the boys wanted pics in these chairs:

They'll learn soon enough that this isn't UT orange...or Garnet and Gold...

The boys enjoyed learning checkers outside of Cracker Barrel in Ohio. They were so excited, and actually "getting it," so we let them finish the game. It was speed checkers at the end, but Sam, teamed with Mom and Ian, played against Max.

We saw this truck in our detour through West Virginia (we wnadered off the highway in search of hte elusive Chick Fil A). If you can't read this (it's a phone picture so I don't expect you to be able to) it says: "Happiness is a good dump," and written upside down right below: "If you can read this roll me over."