Are You Ready For This?

So, if you haven't gathered by my new blog heading, we've MOVED! That's right. June 19th & 20th we loaded up our house into a Penske and headed out to Kentucky.

Here is a picture of me (when I was still in a good mood) moving boxes around. Look at all that junk in the background!







The whole family came out to help us. The boys' most favorite place to "help"? The ramp of course!







Here is Campbell doing a little moving jig. Who knew moving could be so much fun?







And yes, I actually have it, a picture of Ben doing hard labor. Mom, you may want to keep this one for the record.

Ahhh, the boys hard at work, or are they hardly working? We were so grateful for all the help we got from our family. We really could not have done it with out them. Thank you Travis and Ben for moving all the heavy stuff and sticking with us till the end even when no one from our ward showed up, thank you Joann and Amelia for watching the kids and keeping them out of harms way, and thank you Mom for your Super Cleaning abilities (we got every cent of our deposit back)!

After our move up to Spokane from Arizona last year I was NOT looking forward to moving all our stuff and 4 boys this time cross country. Last year Andersen said that we would never move all our stuff by ourselves again, but somehow the terrible memories had faded for him. Luckily Andersen would let us break from his rigid travel plans to see a few sights a long the way. I think the boys' favorite stop along the way was our hotel in South Dakota that had a water park attached to it.


If you don't know my Dad very well it may be helpful to know that he is really just a big kid in disguise. So when he and my Mom booked the hotel, instead of waiting till we were at least an hour away from it, my Dad "revealed" the big surprise that we would be staying at a hotel with a water slide. Every time we stopped that day the boys asked if we were to the water slide hotel yet! Thank you Dad! Thank goodness it was all it was cracked up to be when we got there. I was actually quite impressed.


And I think the boys were too. Infact, they would have been willing to sacrifice dinner to stay longer in the water. That is pretty huge when Campbell passes up food for anything.


We all had a great time and it was a much needed break from a stressful move.





Our next stop was Mt. Rushmore! How can you go through South Dakota without seeing Mt. Rushmore, so we stopped to see it.


It was really quite impressive. I don't know, do you think Porter could be President some day?







I love this picture of my Parents. They were so wonderful helping us drive for 5 days. We just hope that they'll want to come and visit us again :0)

Our next stop, Independence, MO. Independence has some historical significance for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). It was here that the saints had settled for a time and dedicated some land for a temple to be built. But before they were able to begin construction on the temple the saints were driven out of Missouri , taking refuge north and across the Missouri river where they then settled the town of Nauvoo, IL. The cornerstones of the temple are still there in Independence and the boys helped me find the markers.

I'm not quite sure what Campbell is doing in this picture, but I think he may be trying to hold his eye open for the picture. It was a pretty sunny day.

There is an amazing visitor's center across the street from the temple site. Complete with a small cabin and covered wagon that kids can play on.


Mason finally got to drive the team when Porter and Campbell weren't looking.

Our next stop was St. Louis, MO and even though I had to single-handedly DRAG everyone to go see the St. Louis Arch I think we all had a great time. I love these pictures of Porter and Campbell "holding" up the arch. It was a beautiful day and when the sun was setting Campbell kept yelling that the arch was on fire! When we all looked it did look like there were flames on the arch because of the way the setting sun hit it. It was really cool.

Campbell's face cracks me up in this picture!

Not only did I have to drag everyone there, but I had to do some smooth talking to get everyone up the arch.

To get up to the top you have to get into these little "pods" that according to the explanation were designed by a carnival ride engineer because of the Arch's arched shape. Luckily for us all we had to do was ride to the top, not climb any stairs.

Here we all are at the top of the arch and on windy days it can really sway up there,
but fortunately for my dad it was a calm day. He was more at ease when we were back on the ground level :0)
Here are the boys looking out one of the small windows at the top.
I even got a picture of some of the flooding that was happening on the Mississippi River. You can see a bunch of trees and light posts out in the middle of the water.
This is one of the views from the top. On the left is the Cardinals Baseball Stadium. I'm glad we were all able to stop at "The Gateway to the West."

The first thing that the boys (Andersen and my Dad) wanted to see when we got to Lexington was the Rupp Arena where the Kentucky Wildcats play basketball. Right next to the arena was the Wildcats Basketball Museum. Special emphasis on the WAS because the week after we went it closed down. Lack of funding or something. That's too bad because they had some really cool stuff

Like this virtual one-on-one basketball game that the boys loved. We all just laughed the entire time.

My Dad's one request was to get his picture taken in front of a southern plantation house so here he is sitting on the porch enjoying a nice southern afternoon.
Now all he needs is a cold glass of lemonade.
We were even able to go inside where the owners have turned it into a 5 diamond restaurant.
On our way out one of the waiters was eager enough to tell us some ghost stories about the house. Apparently the place is haunted, complete with involuntary swaying chandeliers, and cups flying off mantelpieces. Spooky.

And of course we couldn't let my parents leave Kentucky without visiting an authentic Kentucky horse track.


The horse track in Lexington is called Keeneland. Famous for its yearly horse auction.
We even have some neighbors that are here because their son is going to Jockey school. Jockey School!

Just beautiful! There were no races when we went, but we will definitely be going back. It's only $3 admission and kids are free.

Thus ended our marathon move to Kentucky which will be our home for the next 4 years. We have an amazing ward, that not only moved all of our boxes and stuff into our apartment in 29min., but found us a house the same day we moved in! Honestly, when does that happen? That's right, while we were still driving, a family from our new ward said that they were selling their house and would hold on another offer if we wanted to come and look at the place. Andersen had actually seen it online before we left, but thought that the house would be sold by the time we got to Kentucky so he didn't think any more about it. We loved the house AND the backyard and made an offer the next day, all within 24 hours of us being in Lexington. If all continues to go well we'll be closing July 30th. Thank heavens for the power of prayer!