Road Trip #2 - Long Lake, Niagara Falls and Lake Erie

Kiddos at Hoss's Country Store in Long Lake, NY

Our original plan for this portion of the trip was to leave Malone and head through Buffalo, NY to Ohio and Kentucky on the way to Nashville. After looking at mapquest - which for some reason said it was only 1 hour shorter to do that then go down 81 all the way - we decided to instead head to my parents' house for 2 nights. So, we left Malone and headed to Long Lake NY! We stopped at the Long Lake Diner to have lunch (our favorite), shopped at Hoss's and went by the cemetery...then plugged Nashville into the Garmin and found out it was 6 hours shorter to go our original route to Nashville!

Sooooo, we headed to Buffalo - our first stop on our trip to see Niagara Falls!!! Because we had gone to Long Lake and had to circle back west, we pulled into Niagara Falls around 7pm. It was, of course, still light out - so we grabbed coats (!) and headed to see the Falls! They were totally awesome and fun to see! We got sprayed by the water and took great pictures and Dan brought his binoculars to see them even better. We saw the Maid of the Mist boat and people getting drenched at the bottom. And we started the License Plate Game and had 24 or so even before we left the parking lot!

We drove a bit more after dinner at 9pm and stopped to spend the night in Erie, PA! The next morning we drove out to Lake Erie, with weather around 66F and played on the beach for a few minutes :) Then we headed off to Nashville through Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati and Louisville! We arrived a day early at Jeff and Sara's in Nashville, but they were gracious enough to let us crash there early...

Kids and Dan at the cemetery

Niagara Falls - American side!

The kids in front of the Falls - it was chilly and wet from the mist

Me and my Tweeter

Jack using his binoculars to scan the Canadian side

A friendly tourist took our picture and we took his family's

Megan

Kylie

Jack
Our car after we had walked around Niagara Falls for an hour or so... apparently the seagulls didn't like this side of our car and dive bombed it repeatedly!

All of us on the cold and windy Lake Erie beach! The beach was open for the season, but the lifeguard was huddled on the ground under a blanket because there wasn't anyone swimming!

My cute kiddos

Road Trip #1 - Malone

Anissa, Sam, Aaron

Kylie, Megan, Jack
Carl
Huck

Our plan for the summer is to road trip from up and down the East Coast of the US. Drive 4000 miles covering Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Delaware and New Jersey (and DC, too)!

Road Trip #1 was up to Malone, NY for Sam's graduation from high school! Aunt Sally was kind enough to let us stay with her and we had a great time seeing Gram, Dave, Kris, Anissa, Carl, Sam, Aaron, Alex, Sarah and Bridget, as well as lots of friends from there! Dan went to the actual graduation ceremony, we got to bottle feed calves, Jack learned to ride a mini dirt bike and shift it to 3rd gear (Dan taped a piece of wood to his shoe so he could shift easier with his crocs on), the kids swam every day there thanks to Dave and Kris heating the pool, we took Gram out to lunch 2x's, we all got to attend Cooks Corners and we had a great time getting to see everyone!!!

Sam's graduation cake and many, many awards

Kris's awesome kitchen

Church at Cook's Corner's

What Daddy made out of pipe cleaners to keep the kids occupied during the service

Miss Kylie

Gram and kids out to lunch after church on Sunday

Playing Ladder Ball at the graduation party with Anissa and Alex

Dan explaining to Jack how to ride the dirt bike - once he got the hang of it, he would make a big loop around the field yelling, "Woo hoo! Yippee! Yahoo!". I think he liked it :) And, he didn't crash (although Dan was pretty sure had we stayed there another day, it would have happened...) :)

Woo hoo!!!

Kylie and Jack both had fun riding the bike around the farm. At one point, Kylie was riding through the Heffer Barn yelling "Wheeeee" while the heffers galloped along behind her!

Kris was awesome and brought out bubbles and chalk and squirt guns to keep the kids occupied...Megan and Kylie had fun coloring next to the pool.

Megan's beautiful barn drawing

Dan and the kiddos out at the calf barn!

Jack feeding a calf

Climbing up on the ginormous hay bales...it made me sick to see Jack up so high - because then he swung from the rafters and I made him get down!

Dan and Dave

Aunt Sally and Gram - sisters

Us with Gram

Jack's cool shoe for shifting the dirt bike

And tired kiddos our last night in Malone...Kylie's already asleep :)

Stateside

We hit the ground running the moment we stepped off the plane. After clearing customs and getting our bags, we went out to meet Grammy and Grandad at the arrival deck and hand over 3 kids and 15 bags! Thankfully they were able to borrow Mark's truck for the bags and Grammy had Kylie's car seat all ready in the back for the 3 kids! They took them to their house for some dinner and hang out time while Dan and I caught a bus to the rental cars and picked ours up courtesy of Dan's work for the week!

We drove straight to CarMax at 6pm on a Sunday night and test drove 2 cars - the first was the one we had transferred there and it was disgusting and doable, but not what we wanted. I had been praying for months about the car we would buy and Dan asked the guy if there was any others available. We parked next to another one and it had a "sold" sign on it, but after the guy checked, it wasn't sold! We test drove it and loved it! It was the color we wanted, the mileage we wanted, the wheels Dan wanted, a dvd system and clean! We bought it and walked out of there with our new car at 8pm!

We drove to Grammy's and Grandad's and I googled some place to take Kylie to the doctor's because she and Megan had woken up with pink eye on the plane! (Bad mom, I realize to only take Kylie - but Megan doesn't have any allergies and we figured we could use the drops on Megan, too - if you are a doctor reading this, please disregard the previous sentence). I found Patient First in Leesburg that closed at 10pm! We drove out, got medicine and headed to our hotel!

Monday morning we started getting our processing, medical appointments and visa and passport stuff done so we could head to Kuwait! Lab work for all of us (Kylie said she was going to "bust out of there" about the doctor's office when I said she would need a shot or to get blood drawn - and she was right - she was totally ridiculous and tried to leave, so 3 of us had to hold her down) and doctor's appts throughout the week. Kylie failed her suresight screening and resulted in us going to a pediatric ophthalmologist - who tested her well and found that the failure was just due to her pink eye. Jack came back high on 2 levels for his blood screening and we had to try 16 different pharmacies in 3 states to finally get oral anti-fungal medicine to kick his ring worm he's had for the last year. Thankfully Megan didn't need anything. It was a whirlwind week!

We drove to Mom Mom and Pappy's house to see them and Aunt Tiff and the kids. Dan went with Matt to do a house inspection on a house they thought they were going to buy (they didn't). We were supposed to visit friends, but with the kids having pinkeye postponed it for another time. And had to repack all our many bags and pare it down some to start our insane amount of road tripping for the next couple of weeks! Phew, all in week 1 while battling jetlag!

Yummy breakfast at our hotel every morning

We stopped by Tyson's Corner and saw their new American Girl store and had to walk through it! We were the only ones with a boy with us (Jack) and the only ones not carrying their dolls with them!

Ah jetlag is so fun...

And her fooling around pretending she didn't have jetlag :)

Mom Mom and Pappy on their front porch area relaxing!

Pappy and the boys - Josh, Mikey and Jack

Mom Mom and the girls
Megan, Hannah, Laura, Kylie and Sammi

Bugga and Grandad

Dan's cool rental car

We hit the ground running the moment we stepped off the plane. After clearing customs and getting our bags, we went out to meet Grammy and Grandad at the arrival deck and hand over 3 kids and 15 bags! Thankfully they were able to borrow Mark's truck for the bags and Grammy had Kylie's car seat all ready in the back for the 3 kids! They took them to their house for some dinner and hang out time while Dan and I caught a bus to the rental cars and picked ours up courtesy of Dan's work for the week!

We drove straight to CarMax at 6pm on a Sunday night and test drove 2 cars - the first was the one we had transferred there and it was disgusting and doable, but not what we wanted. I had been praying for months about the car we would buy and Dan asked the guy if there was any others available. We parked next to another one and it had a "sold" sign on it, but after the guy checked, it wasn't sold! We test drove it and loved it! It was the color we wanted, the mileage we wanted, the wheels Dan wanted, a dvd system and clean! We bought it and walked out of there with our new car at 8pm!

We drove to Grammy's and Grandad's and I googled some place to take Kylie to the doctor's because she and Megan had woken up with pink eye on the plane! (Bad mom, I realize to only take Kylie - but Megan doesn't have any allergies and we figured we could use the drops on Megan, too - if you are a doctor reading this, please disregard the previous sentence). I found Patient First in Leesburg that closed at 10pm! We drove out, got medicine and headed to our hotel!

Monday morning we started getting our processing, medical appointments and visa and passport stuff done so we could head to Kuwait! Lab work for all of us (Kylie said she was going to "bust out of there" about the doctor's office when I said she would need a shot or to get blood drawn - and she was right - she was totally ridiculous and tried to leave, so 3 of us had to hold her down) and doctor's appts throughout the week. Kylie failed her suresight screening and resulted in us going to a pediatric ophthalmologist - who tested her well and found that the failure was just due to her pink eye. Jack came back high on 2 levels for his blood screening and we had to try 16 different pharmacies in 3 states to finally get oral anti-fungal medicine to kick his ring worm he's had for the last year. Thankfully Megan didn't need anything. It was a whirlwind week!

We drove to Mom Mom and Pappy's house to see them and Aunt Tiff and the kids. Dan went with Matt to do a house inspection on a house they thought they were going to buy (they didn't). We were supposed to visit friends, but with the kids having pinkeye postponed it for another time. And had to repack all our many bags and pare it down some to start our insane amount of road tripping for the next couple of weeks! Phew, all in week 1 while battling jetlag!

Flying to the States

We flew out early on Sunday July 19th back to the States! Thankfully, we flew business class - the seats are AMAZING and made the trip enjoyable! We had 9 suitcases, 1 guitar and 7 carry-ons to last us approx. 19 weeks - 9 in the States and maybe 10 until we get our things in Kuwait! Kuhn Nar and Kuhn picked us up in big vans and took us to the airport and helped us get checked in - which was a huge help with so much stuff! I just had to keep track of the kids and our carry-ons!

Finishing Up Bangkok - Last Day in Bangkok

Our last day in Thailand was spent swimming at the pool with Ken and Amy's family and then heading out to eat one last time at CoCo Curries just ourselves...it was a great day :)

K, Megan, Jack, D
Kylie, M and Bonus

Their beautiful, amazing, wonderful pool!

Megan and K

Jack

D

M

Kylie

This Wild Man decided about a week before he liked having his head in the water! Now he's a fish!

All the kids having fun playing

Their beautiful pool - my favorite pool in the world!

Saying "See you later" to the Werner's - no goodbyes for them!

Last dinner at CoCo Curries

So yummy and we will certainly miss it!
Or, we can fly to Torrance California, where there's the only one in the continental US that has one (or Hawaii)!