Summer Updates

It seems like it has been forever since my last post.  I would say that we have been extremely busy, and we have, but mostly, I haven't been capturing life but rather living it with little time to actually write about it.

I am going to give a basic rundown of our summer and what we did with some updates on our basement project.  We are almost done!!!

This year we made a summer list.  Like last summer, we didn't intend to get much of it done, but to my surprise, we did a lot of the things that were on our list and added a few things that we didn't originally have on the list. 



Here are some of our favorite summer activities that we did this year.

Family Movie Nights
Thrift Stores
Riverfest Petting Zoo
Softball
California Road Trip
Homemade Ice Cream
Basement
Visiting Friends and Family
Humane Society
Potty Training (still working on this one)

The basement project is coming to an end!!!  It seems like everytime I try to clean my house there is more sheetrock dust that gets kicked back up, but we are approaching an end.  Right now every thing is painted and we have two doors for a closet and into the laundry room.  Tom has done all of the work by himself with the help of a few friends.  We just have the carpet and trim to put down.  Tom is going to do the part himself too!!!!  It has been fun to learn so much about home improvements.  I don't think that hanging sheetrock is one of my favorite things to do, but I was glad that I could help him out in some small way.


I had some trouble uploading pictures, so there are no pictures this time, but I will try to get some on the next post.  Hopefully it won't be quite so long in between posts.

Road Trip 2012- Part One

Most of you who have been following me and my family or who know us, know that Tom and I started a long time ago to try to visit a new state every summer.  I don't think that we have quite done that exactly how we planned it, but you know how sometimes life gets in the way and other things take higher priority over vacations.

This year we were invited to go along on a road trip with my parents to California.  My dad is from California and I was born there and spent the first 8 years of my life there.  So it was great to get the chance to go back and see some things that I remember and to also catch some things along the way.

The first big stop on our trip was to the Four Corners Monument.  None of us had been, but my husband, who is a very devout map reader saw that it was along the way and since we were ahead of schedule, he convinced us to go.  The monument is the border of the states, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.  It really is just a cement plaque that you stand on with those states on it.  But there was some shopping involved too.  There are many Indian reservations out there, and they make lots of really neat jewelry.  We also got a T-shirt with the 4 corners states on it.  We always get T-shirts when we travel.

Tom, me, Jaycee, and my mom and dad posing at the plaque.

Jaycee was pretty much taking a nap when we got there and wasn't too into the heat and shopping for jewelry, but she was pretty good about just hanging in there even though her routine was non-existent.

There were a lot of these types of mountainous formations out there.  I thought this one looked like the Prudential symbol.

Saying cheese while cruising in the van.

We divided the trip up into 2 days and spent the night in Arizona.  Then we headed for LA.  The road to Los Angeles was long.  I think we just were anxious to get to our final destination and that part of the trip was mostly through the desert.  Not the greatest landscape for sightseeing and really hot when we made any stops.  Also gas was higher in the desert than anywhere else.  Most of the time we could find gas for a pretty comparable price to what it was before we left Kansas.

This was the first part of our road trip.  We were fortunate to have a DVD player to keep us entertained, well Jaycee at least b/c we only brought kid movies.  So even when she was asleep the adults watched the kid movies too.  We were also fortunate that we didn't run into much traffic at all.  I will get to part two as soon as I organize that part of our trips pictures and figure out which ones to weed out.  We took like over 250 pictures on the whole trip, and I am still sorting through them to decide which ones I really want to keep for my vacation book.

the Ehrlichs

Utah Trip (Part 1)

So as I promised, I am writing this blog about our trip to Utah.  How did we come up with Utah you ask?  Well, it was really not anything brilliant, I wish that it was, but we / I literally looked at our map at home of the USA and saw that we hadn't been out west.  So I chose Utah.  After doing some research, I saw that there were some pretty cool things to do out there, and I have always wondered about the famous Salt Lake.

When to take the trip was the next big question.  With all of our refinancing our house, painting, many many many summer projects, softball, Bible study, etc.  We just didn't know when a good time to go would be.  We were planning on taking this trip after we/ Tom had finished painting the house, but we just realized that project was taking longer than we had originally anticipated.  So we just decided on a week that we didn't have stuff going on outside of ourselves and went.  Utah here we come!!!

Along the way, we stopped off in Denver, Colorado area.  There my cousin, aunt, & uncle live.  I just reconnected with them at my little brother's wedding, and they were so excited to have us come hang out with them for a couple of days on the way to Utah and on the way back.  I wish that we could have stayed longer, but that just means we have to visit again soon.

A couple of funny things about the trip to Utah.  Our stop over in Denver, was quite unique.  We went to my cousin's house and were greeted by her son and many of his friends b/c it was his 12th birthday.  Tom, Jaycee, and I were really worn out from driving all day and just wanted to relax.  Jaycee was a trooper in the backseat and we tried to keep her busy with books and such (I think I will get a DVD player next time).  We were talking and Jaycee just wanted to be up and down all night long.  Then as I went to pick her up, you will never believe what happened.  Barf!!!  That's right, Jaycee barfed all over me.  Gross!!!  She has never done anything like that so far.  But I guess there's a first time for everything.  We cleaned ourselves up and hung around just long enough for Nathaniel to blow out his birthday candles and open presents.  That was about all I could handle.  We headed back to our hotel, and Jaycee threw up on me 2 more times.  I could not figure out what was wrong with that girl.  What a way to start our trip.  We were beginning to think that maybe we should just go back home.  But Jaycee was acting fine and back to her normal self after that.

The next day, we were in store for more driving.  We decided to go through the mountains.  It was a beautiful drive, but I got absolutely no pics, since I was driving and everyone else was sleeping.  But take my word for it, the drive west through Colorado on I-70 is beautiful.  There are also a lot of really cool ski towns back through there if you ever think you might want to go skiing.

We finally made it!!!  The very first parts of Utah were not impressive at all.  We kept seeing exit signs, but they said "No Services."  Why would they make an exit if there was no service or anything there?  Beats me.  Well, Tom and Jaycee sure liked this rest stop we finally had to ask the lady working at the visitor's center if there was going to be a gas station anytime soon.

This was our first impression of Utah.  Very dry and dessert like.  But it wasn't hot.

As we started to see signs of civilization, we noticed that the mountains were getting bigger and prettier too.  Finally signs of life.  We were glad to see this.  Salt Lake City pretty much has mountains all around it.

Driving through the city was pretty fun.  We/ Tom found us a really nice hotel that had a kitchen in it.  I loved that, so that we could save some money by not going out for breakfast, and eating lunch there too, or eating dinner there whichever worked out best for that days activities.  It did help. 

 Tom is mapping out the next day's plans.

 One view from our hotel room

Another view from our hotel room.

Well, the adventure has just begun.  We were pretty tired by the end of the day, so we watched cable TV, since we don't have it at home and crashed.  All 3 of us.  We'll talk to you soon for part two of our trip.

the Ehrlichs