Right now I'm sitting in a hotel lobby to type. It's about 7:45, which is what time I thought it was when I got up. Never trust the room clocks.
We are at the Northern-most point of our trip. I didn't intend to be here so soon, but we ended up driving through 1/4 of Oregon and the whole state of Washington yesterday. Washington was kind of a disappointment, to say the least. It's basically like Southern Illinois with evergreens and the occasional mountain. It's very overgrown, so even when you're right next to the ocean, there's about 50-100 yards of solid growth blocking your view. I was used to Oregon, so I was a little bitter. So I just kept driving. The second half of the drive was actually pretty nice. We came upon a beautiful mountain lake and have seen some good rainforest.
Today we have some big decisions to make. We could work our way down to Seattle, hike some mountains (my sister is pretty mobile now), and see where we end up. Or we could high tail it across the state to Montana, because honestly, it's only 9 1/2 hours away. Why not?

I think that the time change is making my sister feel pretty triumphant. Today she woke up at 7:15 after going to bed around 9:30, just like civilized people in the Midwest!
Yesterday we had a very touristy day. We went to the rose test gardens, which were beautiful and very fragrant. I'll have to post pictures when we get home.
Afterwards we attempted to find Chinatown, which we eventually did. We had lunch and then navigated our way out of the city. Portland driving is kind of scary: their roads are seemingly made of rocks with some asphalt mixed in, so they're very loud; there's lots of traffic; there are some pretty scary bridges. But I have my trusty navigator with me, so we made it around ok.
We headed to the coast and after an excessive amount of mountains we finally got there. We did find a French cheese shop that had brie samples. We ended up doubling back and getting some peppered brie and a baguette for supper. In addition to the cherries we picked up it was very tasty!
Today, since we are getting an early start, we have endless possibilities. We'll probably head South and start driving up the coast.
I have to keep reminding myself that it's only Monday and we have 5 full days left. There's no hurry.

Right now it's the early morning here in Vancouver, Washington (not Canada, which I hear is beautiful.) I've been up since 5:45, which is 7:45 central time, which is actually really sleeping in for me. My little sister, my travel companion, is still asleep. It's about 7:30. I've gotten coffee and taken a bath so far. Now I'm typing on my sister's old laptop that has the 'o' and 'i' keys missing. It's amazing how you take those letters for granted until you have to press little gummy circles very hard to activate them!
Today we are going to explore Portland, which I am told is a great city. It's very cool here, only the low 60's. Apparently, that's about 10 degrees cooler than usual. I'm already dreading going back to St. Louis where is was 98 degrees with 98% humidity. I was actually cold last night when we went to dinner. Speaking of which, it was fantastic. We ate at a fish house that was pretty popular looking, like there might be one in every big city. But it was very tasty. I got rainbow trout and my sister got coconut prawns. We wondered what the difference between prawns and shrimp is because they were referred to separately on the menu. (I'll let you know if I find out.) Then we visited Trader Joe's because honestly, neither one of us had ever been to one. We got a few toiletries at the Dollar Tree that we dared not take on the plane like mousse, tweezers, and razors. (I got harassed for taking baggies of lotion and Solarcaine on the plane.) By then it was 9, which is 11 central time. I was exhausted and crashed before my sister was done typing her blog entry. Our hotel has very nice beds and is generally more upscale than I usually stay in. We have one more night here before we head out into the great unknown, armed with a crappy laptop. I will (try) to keep you posted.

My mom has been taking my kids 4 days a week for 3 hours each day. It has revolutionized my life. I am eternally grateful. Even if she decided tomorrow that she was done, I would never forget the changes in myself that have come forth during this experience. Here are a few that I can think of:
1. I actually like my life.
2. I feel good about life and myself, so much so that I try to not wear pajamas when it is not appropriate.
3. I want to listen to music. I turn on the internet radio at home all the time.
4. I don't sit around watching TV all the time, trying to tune out the kids. I haven't actually watched TV in a month.
5. I look forward to my husband coming home, instead of equating it with another person vying for my attention.
6. I actually want to hang out with him instead of co-exist with him.
7. I'm actively searching for something to do with myself - something productive.
8. I've taken up gardening and landscaping the yard.
9. Even though I (remarkably) have not acquired more patience for the kids, I do enjoy them so much more.
10. I feel like myself, the me that I honestly have not felt like for the last 6 years.
Did I mention that I'm enjoying life again?
Thanks Mom!

Going East

What can I say? I was not born to blog...

It's been about a month now, but the memories are still fresh... These two are basically the reason that we have friends. When I was pregnant with the big one our college friends had just had their big one so we latched on pretty hard to eachother. In a small town, at a Christian college, there are few couples having kids, so the similar lives and experiences were a welcomed support.

Our trip was dreamed up when my friend wrote something on Facebook about us coming out East, though it was surely a joke. It inspired me to check ticket prices and though they are usually $400-$500 I found a way to use flexible dates and found tickets for only $117! We had to fly out of St. Louis (a 3 hour drive) and into Hartford (a 2 hour drive from their home) totalling 12 hours of travel each day. But the big one was on Spring Break and I didn't have any plans that I couldn't change, so we packed up. The girls were going on Spring Break!

But it was certainly not the kind of Spring Break that inspires legends, it was a little too cold for that!

We did spend a day at the beautiful beach.

We toured Providence and ate Dunkin' Donuts.

The little one learned some important skills that only little boys can teach.

We taunted our seafood before enjoying it in a coastal feast.

And in the end we came back a little weary but a lot cooler, just from having visited the East Coast.

Spring Cleaning 1

This is what I found this morning. It's (hopefully) our last snow of the winter. The big one said that she felt like we'd fast-forwarded through Spring, Summer, and Fall and were in Winter again.
But, it's still Spring and we have been doing lots of cleaning. I cleaned out the camera, for one, and here's a few highlights of what I found:

The little one turned two at the end of January. Surprise! She has been acting very 2-like. She likes to dictate the house and demand her way, but she's just so little and cute. She is however, sleeping all night in her bed and is starting to use real words, other then, "EHHH, EHHH!" while pointing.

On our trip to St. Louis we came across this cool tree at the Art Museum.

The girls are such tree-huggers, or at least fake-tree-snugglers.

While on vacation, the little one got a nice shiner. She was in a street fight with some other kid in the line for Ben and Jerry's. The kid loves her ice cream.

The big one hijacked the camera. Again. And took more artistically riveting photos like this one. Again.
The cleaning has spread from the camera to the house, actually from the house to the camera, but I'll (maybe) post more on that later.

Last weekend we went on "vacation." It wasn't a real vacation because it wasn't relaxing, but it was nice to do something different (even if it was more exhausting than real life.)
We went down to the St. Louis area, our old college stomping ground. The whole trip was, in my opinion, an elaborate ploy to revisit all of the delicious food that we loved when we lived down there. We started at the pizza joint in our college town and were sorely disappointed by the lack of cheese. Our next attempt was the Thai restaurant that we have been faithfully returning to since 2000. There we received the harshest blow: the cook had left and apparently taken all of the deliciousness of Thai with her. Thankfully (and I do mean that only God could have provided us this opportunity) there was a waitress that sort of remembered how to make #33 (or #36 according to the new menus) and she wrote it down for us (in English.) It is almost embarrassingly simple, but it's a real treasure. Our last visit was the old 24 hour truck stop that didn't disappoint. The chocolate chip pancakes were as fabulous as ever. Pepper those events with odd encounters with weird people, 5 hours of zoo time, swimming, and bad mattresses and you have one exhausting weekend! But maybe even better than a vacation that you hate to end is one that makes you eager to get home.