musings on moving from montana

My last post about Montana was sort of left "to be continued," so I thought I best continue a bit on our very quick jaunt out to Montana to move Matt's mom back to Wisconsin.  For lack of time to write a completely detailed post about everything that happened while we were there, I am going to make a list of some of the more noteworthy things that happened, or things we noticed and/or discovered along the way:

*Spending hours upon hours in a car calls for a lot of food.  We had every junk food imaginable: chips, cookies, candy, and cupcakes (I guess all of our non-healthy food started with 'c').  We had a few healthy things, too (apples, carrots, and sandwiches).
*iPods, a sermon series, Christmas music, movies and chatting will help pass the time driving.
*Seeing the mountains always makes me so in awe of our Lord and His creation.
*It takes a lot longer on the return trip when you're hauling a massive trailer and driving through a blizzard.
*November in South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota and Wisconsin is cold.
*Gas mileage is cut in having when you're hauling a trailer.  That's important to remember when it's 9* and the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota.  You may be very, very close to running out of gas before you find a gas station and may call 911 because you were really that close to running out.  God provided us with gas when we literally had none.
*It's always good to have friends in Fargo who are willing to house three very tired people at 3:00am so that you can catch just a few hours of sleep before continuing the last five or so hours of the trip.  Thanks, Ryan and Emily!
*God answers prayers.  We know we had so many people praying for us on this trip and we could see how He watched over us the entire time.  We were able to leave early and got ahead of a big snowstorm that we didn't even know was coming (although we did go through part of it).  We were safe through the storm.  We made it back in good timing.  We fit almost everything into our trailer.  And, we did have some fun times together despite a lot of things that were potentially stressful!

2500 miles

...is how far Matt and I traveled in the past four days.  I will attempt to write more of a detailed post about our quick turnaround trip to Missoula, Montana sometime soon.  We drove there to move Matt's mom from Missoula to Wisconsin and conquered a blizzard, a vehicle almost running out of gas, climbing three flights of stairs with many, many boxes, lack of sleep, icy roads, and cold temperatures.  But, we are glad to have her back and enjoyed seeing the mountains for a few days!

More to come...

Travels on the North Shore, part 2...

Our second day on the north shore including a lot of time in the car, but we had many stops along the way. To start, here is the view right outside of our room. I'm sure if the weather was warmer, we'd take a few more strolls down to the lake... but for now, at least we get to enjoy the beautiful lake-view.

Our first stop was about 10 miles north to see Cascade Falls. I've been here a few times before, but it was still nice to stop at. It's also fun to see each of these places in a different season than I'm used to seeing them in (summer).

Our next stop was after about an hour drive south to Gooseberry Falls. Matt didn't think he had been here before, so we stopped and walked around. It was, again, nice to come here in the late fall. It was so quiet... usually there are SO many people around!

Finally, we drove to Duluth. We will be driving back through there again tomorrow, but we thought it would be best to spend time there today since we will not get a chance to stop on our way home. We enjoyed walking around to a few shops, seeing the biggest ship we've ever seen come into the harbor and eating a late lunch at Grandma's...

It was another fun day today! Tomorrow we will be heading back home... and most importantly, to go see Miriam!

Finally home...

This afternoon completed the last part of our journey back home. We left Colorado at about 3:00 am on Thursday and arrived at my parents' house in the early evening. It was so wonderful to see Miriam, visit with my parents and grandma (who had come to visit for the day), and be out of the car! At least I got to sleep for a few hours of the 13-hour trip. I kept asking Matt if he wanted me to drive, but he managed to do the whole trip.

Something we noticed just as we were heading out of Colorado and into Nebraska was the humidity. I had always been told that it was so much more dry in the mountains, but I had never felt it quite as much as I did this week. I quite enjoyed not feeling moisture on my arms and legs 2 seconds after stepping outside. We managed to be away from the midwest during the hottest and most humid week of the summer thus far (and hopefully the worst of the whole summer... but I'm not holding my breath). So anyway, that was literally a lovely warm welcome back to the midwest. Thank you, summer.

We stayed at my parents' house Thursday and Friday night to rest up a bit and headed home this afternoon. Thankfully, our house wasn't completely destroyed by our cats and things didn't take too long to get somewhat back in order. We still have plenty of unpacking and organizing to do, but it's looking more and more like a house every day.

All in all, we had a wonderful trip and are already eagerly awaiting this conference next year!

p.s. we managed to only come away with 45 license plates. We missed Delaware, Vermont, West Virginia, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Bummer.

I'm so excited...

...to see this face tomorrow. I sure hope we make it back early enough to see her! We miss her :)

trip to Pike's Peak

We decided we couldn't visit Colorado Springs without going up to Pike's Peak, so we took the trip on Monday afternoon. It was a perfectly sunny day to go up to the top! We opted to drive up and were warned that it was a gravel road with no guard rails. However, I thought that was a joke and wasn't really expecting such a terrifying experience. All in all, despite the frightening drive... it was truly beautiful.

This was about 4 or 5 miles up the 18 mile highway. We still had far to go!

This was closer to the top... just to give a little perspective on what the roads were like. Obviously, it's not quite as scary when you can't see the thousands of feet on the other side of the cliff.

And, of course, there was snow! It was in the 40's up top... brrrrr!

We made it!

Next time, I think we'll go up on this...

Beautiful! What an amazing, creative God we have!

It's pretty clear how "America, the Beautiful" was written up there!

More Colorado...

I'm probably just going to be a day behind on all the pictures, but here are a few from yesterday (continued) at Estes Park...

This was the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. We just wanted to take a closer look at it because I thought I had seen a documentary about it a few months ago (randomly). We looked around inside a bit and also found out this was where Stephen King stayed and was inspired to write "The Shining." Frightening. I still can't watch that movie... but anyway, the hotel was pretty neat!

We had lunch at a cute little Mexican restaurant and had this as a view. It was lovely eating outside right next to a river!

And last night we went to Garden of the gods. It was pretty neat... the pictures don't do it justice.

Today we went to Focus on the Family and Pike's Peak. Also, we had the first session of the worship conference tonight. It was unbelievable... we'll have an amazing two days ahead of us! More pictures and stories to come!

44

...is the number of license plates we've seen on our trip so far (and yes, we even have Alaska and Hawaii!). We're hoping to get those last six in the next three days. I love looking for license plates!

Road trip!

Tonight I am writing 1,000 miles away from my typical location in our lovely new home. We are in Colorado Springs! We have been looking forward to this trip for so long... we knew that at the end of all of the busyness that came with moving into our new house, we'd get to go on vacation! Well, it's not technically a vacation since we are actually here for a worship conference, but that doesn't mean we haven't taken advantage of the beautiful sights around here. Here is a brief picture tour of our trip thus far:

This was yesterday morning at our hotel in Nebraska. It is the only picture we have from Nebraska seeing as there really wasn't anything more to do there. However, it was my first time in the state, so that was exciting! We decided to stay halfway in central Nebraska to break up our trip a bit. We drove about 7-8 hours on Friday and then 7 or so yesterday. It was nice to have a break halfway through.

That is the view right outside our hotel. It's pretty lovely walking out and looking at Pike's Peak!

This was at Estes Park. We drove there today (about two hours north of Colorado Springs). It was a lovely drive up through the mountains. We then saw these elk (I think?). They were roaming around on the golf course.

I went slightly off the main path to snap these photos of the elk... until I noticed one started getting up and heading toward me. We were slightly terrified and ran back to the sidewalk again.

Along our walk around Lake Estes... it kind of reminded us of Lake Tahoe. It was very beautiful!

...also along our walk. It was quite windy!

Well, I'll try and post more pictures tomorrow if we get a chance. We are planning on taking a tour of Focus on the Family and then go up to Pike's Peak. After that, we're going to have dinner with a college friend and then go to the first session of the conference. It's been a great trip so far!

We're Back!

...and have been for a few days now. But I'm just finally getting a chance to sit down and write about it. I'm still trying to make sense of a massive pile of mail, stacks of laundry and dishes, and just being back home. I made sure the house was cleaned before we left, but that lasted about 30 seconds after we returned!

But, that being said, we had a wonderful time. We left early Tuesday morning before Miriam woke up because we wanted an early start and thought it might be easier to leave while she slept. We drove about 9 hours that day and made it to Indianapolis before dinner (including the time change). We actually got there earlier than expected, especially since we decided to take some random routes so we could see some different cities. It was a good drive... but very quiet considering we're used to Miriam being in our backseat!

We got all checked into our hotel and went out for dinner in Indianapolis. We were looking forward to having these built in "dinner dates" throughout the trip. However, by the end, we were very ready for home-cooked food! Anyway, after dinner, we drove around Indianapolis a bit and saw where the Colts play and what not. Nothing too exciting, but we thought we should check out the city a bit since we were there.

Matt went to the pre-conference on Wednesday while I sat in the hotel room. I wasn't sure what I was going to do all day, but the day actually went by quite quickly. I was able to get ready in the morning without any distraction, do some things online, catch up on some tv, read, take a nap, and try and enjoy solitude. I did get bored by the end, though. One day of complete solitude a year is about all I need :) We did get to meet our friends Erik and Anna for lunch that day. They "just happened" to be swinging through Indianapolis to catch a flight, so we were thankful for the opportunity to catch up with them! We enjoyed hearing what the Lord is doing in their lives and loved sharing what He's been doing in ours. Plus, we got to do all of this at Chili's, a restaurant Matt and I have missed since moving to Eau Claire.

Wednesday night we went to an informal concert with some of the artists from Integrity. We hadn't heard of most of them, but enjoyed the worship and stories they shared with us.

Thursday was the all-day conference that we both attended. We went to a few different sessions throughout the day and soaked in a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most of the sessions were more beneficial for Matt and his worship leading, but we enjoyed being able to bounce ideas off each other and just take in the speakers with two sets of ears. We learned a lot and pray that God will use what we learned at our church in the way and timing He decides.

Friday morning was just a short wrap-up session that finished before noon. We took off and headed south toward Nashville, Indiana. We had heard this was a great little town to go to, and we found out that it definitely was! We enjoyed a meal at a hometown pizza shop and walked around the town for an hour or two. There are just blocks and blocks of cute little shops and buildings. It takes you back in time a bit. Plus, the fall colors were just beautiful in the rolling hills surrounding it. It was quite lovely since most of Indiana prior to that point was pretty flat. Overall, I'm pretty sure I enjoyed the shopping a bit more than Matt, but we both said we'd like to go back there again someday.

We had planned to drive only a few hours to stay somewhere else that night, but we ended up being a bit ahead of schedule and decided to press on as far as we can. Well, when all was said and done, we pressed on to Waterloo, Iowa. This was mmm... about 7-8 hours longer than we were planning. Our friends Mike and Amy live in Waterloo and we wanted to visit them on our way back home. Well, we pulled in at about midnight... chatted for a few hours (and watched the boys play Wii)... and decided it was probably best that we stay there that night before we hit the road again. We slept in Saturday morning (for the first time in over a year), enjoyed a breakfast of Mike's homemade crepes, and hit the road again. We pulled into Owatonna just as Miriam was waking up from her afternoon nap. It was such a joy to see her again... even though she wasn't quite sure what to think at first! We had a great evening playing with her and catching up with my parents. We left on Sunday afternoon and have been very quickly welcoming ourselves back to reality again.

It was a great trip and we're thankful Miriam did so well, too. She even came back talking a little! I guess a week at Grandpa and Grandma's house helped her learn some words... she is now saying "night-night" and "cuckoo" (after the fascination with their cuckoo clock). She has already been saying "please" (kind of... it comes as "thhhhh"), and is mimicking much of what we say. I'm not sure if I can consider those her first words, but they sure sound like it to us!

If you managed to make it through this entire entry, I'm impressed :) There is probably much more I could have wrote, but this was as condensed as I could make it.

Road Trip!

Next week, Matt and I will be traveling across the country (well, maybe just traveling a few states away), to go to a worship conference in Indianapolis. We're REALLY excited to go! We are also leaving Miriam with my parents for the week while we are gone. This will be the first time she's been away from us for that long. So, we are a little torn... we'll miss her a LOT, but are also really looking forward to having some "just us" time. Even though most of the trip will be traveling and going to the conference, we'll have part of one day to go to Brown County in Indiana. We heard it's a beautiful place to go -also sometimes called the "Yellowstone of the East." It should be very lovely at this time of year. We will also get to hook up briefly with some college friends for lunch in Indianapolis (Erik & Anna) and on our way back home through Waterloo (Mike & Amy and maybe baby L). It should be a great time. At the conference, we'll also get to hear artists like Lincoln Brewster and Jared Anderson and some more. Pray for us as we travel and throughout the week. We hope and pray this will be a refreshing week for both of us.