::monstrous move day 1::

Sunday was the first day of our monstrously huge drive across the country--from Warwick, RI to Santa Fe, NM.
Its a total of about 2200 miles and google maps thinks it would take about 26 hours to go the whole way--no stops. Crazy!

We left early in the morning--Sultan saw to it that we were up. Well, it wasn't too early, just about 7AM.
Starting with Rhode Island we went through about a billion states. Or that's what it felt like.
Check it out:
Connecticut

New York

(a little ways into NY we had to stop urgently for the bathroom--unfortunately we ended up somewhere in a cruddy part of the Bronx and got messed up trying to find our way back to the freeway. It was a little intimidating!)
New Jersey

Not our favorite state--at least the parts we saw of it.
Pennsylvania


In PA we stopped to eat lunch. We found a little park by a river and it was really nice, although Max was super cranky. And it was hard to keep Max and Sultan out of the river of course. Both were prettymuch captivated by the ducks.
The little river reminded me of a UT river, really. I'm sure out here they'd call it a creek or a stream, never a river!

We ate PB&Js, carrots and some stuff that a mom of one of Max's friends from school kindly sent for us to munch on. (Mmmmm, calzones).

Then we got back in the car and powered on. More states to see!!

Sultan's always ready to go.

Maryland

We just crossed through a bit of it, it hardly took any time, but it sure counts!
West Virginia

"Wild and wonderful" it was I guess.
Virginia! My namesake state!

We drove all the way to Christiansburg, where we were going to stay. We drove about 11 hours total.
It was a long day. It got hotter and hotter as we drove south west. Muggy, hot and yucky!

We were glad to get to the hotel. Max got to swim in the pool and we all got to rest a bit, which was much appreciated.
I'll leave you with a picture of Kris brushing the hairy beast outside the hotel room so that maybe he wouldn't completely fuzz everything in there.

We're all in it together!
Right now we plan to make Santa Fe by the evening of the 30th. We'll keep you posted.

::what flavor is your car?::

Ours is poppyseed.

The tree over our driveway has been dropping all sorts of weird sticky stuff. It doesn't come off much, even at the carwash. Poor poppyseed car.

Ah well, at least the tree is shady. And the car makes me want some sort of delicious lemon poppyseed cake. Mmmmm.

::lilacs::

I love our next door neighbors. I don't know a thing about them, except that they have this lovely huge lilac bush that hangs over the fence into our yard.

Looks like there's almost more in our yard than theirs, doesn't it? This is a view from the driveway. When I got out of the car for a while I could smell the delicious scent wafting out to me. It was heavenly.

I love the smell and the way the blossoms look. It was so fun to watch the bush blossom last spring and this. I'm just bummed that the flowers are gone now. My photos are from last week.

I'm going to have to have my very own bush someday!!

::friday fun::

So the rain finally let up on friday, luckily it was early enough that the fireworks show could go on.
First we headed over to the revolutionary war reenactment encampment that was supposed to be going on. But it looked like all the soldiers were still setting up and getting dressed. I guess even those guys have to have day jobs too.
After that we went over to the little park where the fireworks were going to be, so we could snag a good spot.

The view over the water was pretty amazing. Very serene. And the sunset was beautiful. It was a little ruined for me though, because somebody somewhere had the bright idea to bring a great big huge light unit with a loud smelly generator. That was dumb.
But oh well.
Max isn't usually out past his bedtime (which is eight or earlier) and so at first he was a little worn out.

This was just shortly before he got his second wind though, and started jumping on Kris, knee first.

I tried to get him to take a little nap, but he "wasn't tired." Yeah right.
He thought it would be hilarious though to pretend to be asleep in some pictures.

Proof I was there. For once.

Goofiness.
It seemed like we waited for the sun to set forever. It didn't help that the opportunistic flashing light stuff salesmen were there selling glowing things and flashing things. Bunches of kids were fencing with flashing light sabers. What kind of crazy parent buys those stupid things? Max was convinced that they were free. He kept saying they were "handing them out!" Yeah, handing them out in trade for LOTS of money!
So finally they turned the big lights off and the fireworks started.



Turns out they were shooting the fireworks off from a couple of positions. One looked to be out in or by the water, and one looked to be just beyond where the people were in the park! We didn't realize it until things were happening. Some of the big ones seemed like they were so close. My parents would've hated it.
Ever wonder what 30 seconds of fireworks might look like to a camera?

I didn't mean for my exposure to be quite that long, but once it started I was commited and I just tried to hold still. It's pretty cool.

When they started shooting a bunch at once (the finale type stuff) it got SO close and SO intense and SO loud that Max and I could hardly watch. I kind of felt like I was under attack or something. It was beautiful and amazing, but I think next time I might like it from a little further off!

But we had a great time together. And though Max was super duper cranky all day on saturday, we're still glad we went.