On the Road Again...

I can't believe it has only been about a week since my last post..it seems like it has been over a month. Things around here are very, very busy. We left last Wednesday to head to Missouri to see Terra graduate from medical school. Darren's mom and step-dad came up on Tuesday evening to do us the HUGE favor of taking care of our babies while we were gone. We left early (4:00am) Wednesday morning. We drove just over 15 hours the first day. When I say we I mean Darren and my dad! I offered to drive but there were no takers. It worked out wonderfully though they drove in shifts! 15 hours or so landed us in Rock Springs, Wyoming. We went across Idaho, Utah and about an hour or so into Wyoming. This was the best time for us to stop as we lost an hour each day of our travel. So there we were arriving in Rock Spring...which sounds like a beautiful city, but is quite the contrary. I shouldn't judge I guess and definitely can't say for the entire city, but the area we encountered was definitely a "pit stop" kinda town. We got in between 7 & 8 pm checked into the only hotel that had 2 rooms available (smoking rooms none-the-less). Dropped off our luggage and set out to find a restaurant for dinner. We ate at the Flying J's (truck stop) restaurant and the rest of the evening was quite comical as was our cross country drive for the most part. Let's see they were out of EVERYTHING, their microwave broke apparently in the middle of our dinners being "cooked", so they told us it would take a bit longer to make all of the food...this may tell you of the quality of the food itself! After dinner we were off to shower and sleep for our whole 3 or 4 hours until the next morning. Let me tell you morning couldn't have come soon enough....
On day 2 we (they) drove another 15 or so hours. Because our progress was much better than anticipated we made it to our final destination in Kirksville, Missouri. Luckily the hotel we were staying at had our rooms available for the extra night and we were very happy to be settled at least for a couple of days. Two of my favorite parts of the trip happened this day and that was seeing very distinctly and openly the sun rise in Wyoming (it was GORGEOUS) and seeing it set in Missouri....Made the road trip completely worth it. I saw many things I would have never seen flying. We arrived in Missouri just before 7pm, checked into our hotel and awaited seeing Terra. We were are very tired from our travels. On day two we had finished traveling through Wyoming, crossed Nebraska, touched in Iowa and made it down through Northern Missouri. We had beautiful blue sky's and mild traffic on the way there.
We got to relax a little on Thursday evening with Terra, explore Kirksville's just a little bit, get some dinner and then off we went to the local watering hole "Dukums" to meet up with some of her friends as well as see Erin and Barbie! The four of us (mom, dad, Darren and I)were so exhausted we barely made it past an hour at the bar! We went to bed just shy of midnight and got almost our full 8 hours of sleep.
On the 3rd day of our trip, we got up early, to the surprise of us all, had breakfast, did some shopping. Ryan arrived just in time for us all to return to the hotel to get ready for the Awards Dinner. We got to be there when Terra receive two awards! That was very exciting, I am sure she was embarrassed, I always have my camera in one hand! After dinner we headed out to another hang out, but we were all beat, so the evening was short lived. Mom and Dad retired a bit earlier than us but not too much.
On the last day we were in Kirksville, we went to breakfast at the hotel, got ready for Terra's graduation and off we headed. Her graduation was at 11:00am at Truman State's Auditorium. It was a fairly timely graduation, which we were all thankful for. It was the reason for our entire trip, but you know how some commencements drag on and on...this was indeed not one of those, thanks goodness. The weather was beautiful for outside pictures. We did a little more shopping, spent some more time with Terra and Ryan. We got to take a tour of Terra's school and see where she studied for those 2 years and then see the museum for Osteopathic Medicine which was very interesting. Off we went to get ready for our last night in Missouri, we had dinner reservations that evening at Il Spazios (one of their favorite restaurants) for that evening and I can attest their pizza was delicious...
We left for home the next morning at 4am. We drove 18 hours the first day so we could have a shorter drive Monday. Also, we didn't want to stop in Rock Springs again. We made it to the best hotel of the trip in Ogden, Utah it was a Comfort Suites. For any of your road trip travelers out there this city and hotel are a definite recommendation! The city is very big and the hotel was VERY nice....after dinner, we got to enjoy it for all of 3.5 hours, but it was great.
We drove 12 hours on Monday and arrived home shortly after 6pm. We were so very anxious to see our sweet boys. Brooklynd had a rough night getting adjusted, but is back to normal and Braeden was excited to see us, but enjoyed his time very much with his grandparents. We are very happy we had someone here we completely trusted so we could go through that adventure! Overall the trip was a lot of fun. I will post pictures on the next few blogs! Hope you all enjoy!
As for this week, we are very busy again. Terra and Ryan flew into town yesterday morning. Darren had another softball game last night, they lost by one...what a bummer! Tomorrow is the bachelorette/bachelor party, Friday is their rehearsal dinner & Saturday will be the beautiful wedding. Kody's birthday will round out the week, he will be 7 on Sunday! Darren's mom Marcia and Step-dad John are visiting Crater Lake currently, but will be watching the boys for us for the wedding festivities, we are very lucky to have such helpful families.
Hope you are all well!
Loves.