we left Utah on Tuesday June 26, 2018.
Wed.-sat. : Nebraska with cousins. We played and played and played! We went to the winter quarters temple, we went fishing for the first time in our lives!, and we swam in the lake at a nearby campground.
Sun-Thurs: Grove city Ohio to visit family. Quick trip to Cincinatti to see my nephew’s baby blessing on Sunday and then spent the week of 4th of July with Ryan’s Aunts and Uncles and Grandma and cousins. So great! Some fun things: the kids love Aunt Karen’s house and Unle Neil’s cooking! We had a water fight on the 4th that the boys still love talking about. Loved having soda at almost every meal at Grandma’s House. And they loved riding bikes and scooters with Dean’s kids.
Thursday: kids and I went up to Columbus to meet up with a former roommate of mine back in college! So fun to see Adria and her family. It’s been a long time! The kids had fun getting to know new friends. I really enjoyed catching up and hearing what their ward is like in Toledo. We went to a library and then went to Kristyanne Keene for a treat! Yum!
Friday and Saturday we spent touring Kirtland Ohio and then Palmyra, New York. It was a long way to go and a lot to see in just two days, but I’m so glad we went. The kids were able to know more about church history and we enjoyed it. I think the Kirtland temple has greater meaning to me now than when I was a kid. Can’t imagine the sacrifices that were made to build that building—but also what glorious things that happened there too! I also loved going to the sacred grove again and being able to teach my kids more about Joseph Smith and prayer. They enjoyed seeing where the Book of Mormon was printed. We also got to see the Palmyra Temple. I’m glad we went all the way up there!
Sunday-Sunday: Cincinatti Ohio to visit my sister and her family
We LOVE being with cousins again! The kids had a great week and the adults did too! The dads worked and the moms and kids played! 😊 we went to splash pads, parks, the zoo, out to eat, chick fila day, etc. 💕 the week went by too fast. Kels and I looked nuts sometimes out and about with our 9 kids altogether! Ha! But it was sure a great week of memories and adventures!
Sunday: we drove through Pittsburgh to NYC! Stopped in Pittsburgh briefly to see downtown and then to see where Ryan grew up. It is a spectacular city! Fun to walk by the river, go through the tunnel and take some drone footage. Then showing the kids where he grew up was awesome for Ryan. We have done that with some of my childhood houses in the past in Utah, so it was cool for us to imagine life for Ryan there 20+ years ago!
Monday-Tuesday-NYC!
I think this was definitely a highlight of our summer for the older kids. They talk about Nee York—Times Square and the Statue of Liberty and a restaurant we went to called “the melt”. It was a lot of walking but neat to go see some things that were meaningful to the kids. We also learned while there that we do not desire to live in big cities anymore at all! 😆. Met up with my former roommate Calli while there too!
Tuesday evening through Wednesday morning we drove out to Long Island to see some MBA friends who we haven’t seen in almost 3 years—the Bennett’s. It was sure fun reconnecting and the kids hit it right off again even though they didn’t remember each other. Man! The MBA feels like a lifetime ago! We went to a yummy ice cream place with them called ??? (I’ll have to go look it up again! Ha!)
Wednesday-Friday we drove through Philadelphia to see the temple (very neat temple!) and then went to Washington DC. We saw the DC temple first—the visitors center there is a lot like on temple square. Unfortunately we couldn’t get very close to the temple itself because it was under construction. We tried to pace ourselves a little bit better after quite a lot of walking in NY but it’s so hard to do! Everything is very spread out in DC. We went to the national archives which was awesome because we had showed the kids the movie “National Treasure” just the week before! Only downside there was kobe fell off a kid size chair and bit his tongue—screaming and blood everywhere! 😕 We also explored the smithsonian museums and the air and space museum. We saw the national monuments from afar and the Capitol building as well. Our Airbnb here was nice but felt weird to be living amongst other people’s stuff instead of an empty space. But it’s ok. It worked!
Friday we drove down to Wrightsville beach for a family reunion trip with some of Ryan’s family. It was an amazing house in an amazing location! We were in heaven all week! Harbor with a dock right out back and then a 5 min walk to the beach. It was a little squishy to put all 7 of us in a room for the week—but that didn’t stop us from enjoying ourselves and making memories. We collected all sorts of shells, went boogie boarding, kayaking, paddle boarding, boating (Kyler even tried water skiing!) and eating lots of yummy food and enjoying time with family we rarely see!
We stayed in NC for a week and then drove down to Sanibel Island Florida. We drove half day to Savannah Georgia where we stayed overnight at a very nice Airbnb. Then we drove the next day to Sanibel island. There was a Perkins restaurant near our lodging so we had that for dinner. Kamryn still asks to go there again! Haha! Ryan took the older kids out to the beach on Saturday morning to find cool shells. They were successful but it was tricky because we found out there was toxic algae in the water called “red tide”. So, We just enjoyed a weekend of relaxing in the airbnb in Sanibel instead. There was a hot tub at the house that the kids loved swimming in on their own. So fun to have a “pool” to use as we want! 😊 we went to church there on Sunday and had a lot of people ask us to move there! Very friendly people.
By this point we had been mulling over where to live after the summer was over and weren’t feeling all that desirous to go back to Utah. We kinda had tentatively decided to move to Florida—Orlando. Experience what it would be like to live near Disney. 😊. So we drove through some neighborhoods on our way to the Randall’s house on Tuesday. We didn’t really feel great about the places we drove and weren’t really sure what we should do. We drove right through Disney world which nearly killed the kids that we weren’t going in! (Ha!) but we made them feel better when we told them it was over 100 degrees outside and crowded! It would be miserable!!
Tuesday night we stayed overnight with some friends—the Randall’s. They live in Orlando. It was fun to catch up with them again. They have 2 darling boys. We went swimming with them and had dinner and just chatted. It was good.
Wednesday we left around noon and drove 12 hours up to Cincinatti again. It was a long drive but actually went alright. The kids were asleep by about 9. Then Ryan and I stayed up together as we drove and we talked and laughed and reminisced. We ended up finding all of our old songs from high school and making a playlist in Spotify. It was fun! A night I will Long remember.
We spent a couple days in Cincinatti and then both our family and carter’s drove out to Independence Missouri. We saw the visitors center and the community of Christ temple. Then the next morning we went to church and liberty jail before heading up to Iowa to meet up with the Moe clan for our Lakehouse reunion!
Sunday through Friday we spent in Iowa with the Moe clan! It was a Greta week. Spiritually uplofting, fun activities, and good laughs and memories. The kids loved the lake with the trampoline and the deck that you could dive off or fish off. I loved the devotional every day. We taught the kids how to play concentration that trip. We liked playing nerts and shuffleboard and pool and spikeball. We went on one field trip to the winter quarters temple and visitors center.
Friday-the Utah Moe’s headed back to Utah. We and Carters headed to Nauvoo. When we got there it was almost dinner time and it wasn’t hot. We weren’t really sure what to do first. But we went to the temple grounds for a picture and then headed to Joseph and Hyrum’s graves. Then we went to the brick Smith and blacksmith. Both were pretty neat to hear about. We also went to the pioneer pastimes where the kids got to play as pioneer children would have. I love that they have that for kids. The Airbnb we stayed in overnight was close and our only option—nauvoo is seriously in the middle of nowhere! ☺️
Saturday—we headed back to Omaha! Our last stop before our summer was over!
We spent almost an entire week at the Rose’s. We went to the zoo with them (amazing zoo!!) we also went to the lake to swim again, spent time at home, went to the park. The kids were having a good time with cousins again but all of them were a little edgier this week and I’m sure the exhaustion of the summer was the reason. It was time to go “home” again.
Saturday August 18, 2018 we drove back into Utah valley again. Saw the beautiful mountains we missed all summer!
Stats from our trip:
Drove over 10,000 miles
Saw 6 temples (wanted to do more but had to cut a couple for timing purposes)
Didn’t get a single ticket!
Found the best Chick-fil-A ever just outside Kirtland Ohio!!
Learned how to love out of a van and a suitcase
Kids learned to be more responsible for their stuff and I learned how to let them
Listened to a few audiobooks
Kids played plenty of hours of iPad games and movies and books!!
Read the Book of Mormon almost every day we were gone. Made it work with whatever the plan was that day—reading at home, in the car, listening to the audio version, etc.
realized we love the trees and rain and don’t mind humidity.
We HATE bugs! (Kyler gets eaten alive!)
