Snow?

We woke up this morning to snow! The kids were super excited and couldn't wait to come home from church and put on their snow clothes and build a snowman! I guess we didn't think we'd get snow in the desert, at least in November!

We Survived!!

Well, we finally made it to our new home in Richland Washington after 2 weeks on the road across the U.S. We really had a good time seeing everyone that we saw and doing all the fun things that we did. We started out by traveling to Columbus, Ohio where the 1st ever Wendy's Restaurant was built. We're big fans of Dave Thomas and the Value Menu at Wendy’s ("chicken nuggets" is the most important food group for our kids, followed by pizza and fruit snacks) , and I couldn’t pass up the chance to stop by the place where it all started. We got a few Frosty’s and browsed the odd collection of Wendy’s paraphernalia, including a 1979 picture of Arnold Swartzeneggar, as "The Burgernator", serving up famous old fashioned burgers for a Wendy’s promotion. Priceless!

After a stop in Indianapolis, we went onto Nauvoo and toured the Carthage Jail and saw the temple and everything. Kelsie learned how the early saints made bricks and was able to bring a souvenier home with us (at least one more thing in our already crowded car).

After our quick trip to Nauvoo we drove to Ames, IA where Wally's brother and his family live. The kids had a great time visiting their cousins and going to the butterfly pavilion the next day. We continued on our journey to Denver where we spent some time with Grandma and Grandpa Paxton. We had a great time swimming at the Rec Center where Kelsie passed a swimming test so she could slide down the waterslides all by herself. We also went to the Natural History Museum and learned all about the art of making rockets. Wally, Kelsie, Brandon, and Grandpa all built rockets and launched them to try to reach 100 ft. After about the 4th try, we decided to call it a day (at only 40 ft, all little disapointing for the scientists of the family). We also had a snowstorm while we were in Denver and the kids had a great time playing and throwing snow balls.

We drove on to Moab, UT after Denver and met with my sister and her husband who live there. We had a lot of fun hiking around in Arches National Park. The pictures don't really do it justice, but this is one of the most beautiful parts of the country!. Wally HAD to see the petroglyphs, so Kenna looking at some Petroglyphs, and taking a Safari Hummer ride. It was super fun and such a beautiful part of the country. We would have loved to have spent more time there (Wally was itching for a nice mountian bike ride) but had to continue on to St. George, UT where we stayed with Grandpa Scott. We had a nice visit with him and stopped by Grandma Scott's grave where we put some flowers on her headstone from us. It was nice to finally be able to pay our respects and see where she was buried. We didn't get to stay as long as we had hoped in St. George, but we had to hurry on to Visalia, CA to be there for my sister's new baby blessing. It was really fun to see a lot of my side of the family that weekend and the kids had a great time with their cousins. We stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Watkins for about a week (a VERY much needed break from the car) and were able to spend some time with Great-Grandpa Watkins, eat lunch in Grandpa Watkins classroom, do a little shopping, and go to Grandpa's football game. Kelsie and Brandon had a great time and really liked the football game where they got to go down on the field with Grandpa at the end of the game and lead the team huddle in the "1, 2, 3 Go Rangers!" cheer. Between that, the cheerleaders, and the band, it couldn't have been a better night!

We left early the next morning for our trek up to Washington. We stopped at the Big Trees in central California and hiked around for a little while. The kids had a good time walking through trees and seeing how big the trees really were. We found out that Kelsie is a little claustrophobic when we tried to go through a tree that was a little more of a tight squeeze to fit through and she decided that was enough for her. We spent the night in Northerns California and then drove the next day through Oregon and onto Washington. We stopped at Crater Lake in Oregon and finally reached Richland that evening.

We lived out of a hotel for 3 nights after we got here and were finally able to move into our new home on Nov. 1. We signed Kelsie up for school and she started her new school. She was really nervous but had a really good time her first day. We live close enough to the school that she gets to ride her bike now and has a lot of fun doing that. We spent Halloween trick-or-treating at the mall where both kids got more than enough candy, but still had a great time dressing up and getting the candy. After being in a car for most of the past two weeks, and all sugared up with their fresh stash of Halloween candy, we had a hard time getting them to sit still for a picture of their costumes. The picture here is the best we could get. Now that we are in our new place, we have been busy unpacking and trying to set up our house which is always more work than expected. We took a break yesterday and saw the Care Bears at the mall. Kelsie and Brandon were both really excited to meet a real live Care Bear, and secretly so was Wally. We met with our ward for the first time today and it seems really nice. It's huge compared to where we came from, but both kids had fun in their classes and Wally and I met some nice people. Wally starts work on Monday and we're really excited for everything to get back to normal again!

Sixteen days, four thousand three hundred and seventy two miles later, we're at our new home. Hopefully it wasn't too boring to read, and I guess if you got to this part I was able to keep it interesting enough to read on! Hope we can all keep in touch!