We made it!

WARNING!!! This is a very LONG post but it covers a very LONG trip (1600 miles)! Friday was like a fun little mini vacation for me. I flew in to Nashville on a very early flight Friday morning.. Dustin and Joslyn picked me up and we had lunch at Mc D's (a popular stop on the trip)... and then we made a little detour and stopped at the Amish store. I just love driving into the Amish area... it is always beautiful and green and clean.
The corn fields were plentiful in Kentucky. I wish they were ready to harvest...

We went into this Amish store... I wished I lived by one of these.. It was food storage heaven.... bulk food, fresh butter and canned stuff (and the BEST gummy worms I've ever eaten... really!) and the coolest thing was they had a big glass window you could look through and watch the women make this stuff. I sooo wanted to take a picture of them because I was so impressed.. but I respected their culture and privacy.
Next stop was The kids home

and here is a picture of their newest addition... Snowball the rat!

We did a little family time and got ready to go to my favorite place for dinner...

The Wood Shed!!!! I can't say enough about how GOOD (everything I've had is great... I go there everytime I'm in Kentucky) and cheap their food is!!! They should spotlight this place on the food channel!

I had the catfish dinner.. only $5.95 and the best I've ever eaten! The hushpuppies are heavenly and the coleslaw and white beans... YUM!

Great down home cookin and very friendly people. We all had full happy tummies!

But no matter how full ya can't leave without some homemade pie!

So I had some great family time before we started out on the great adventure. Not too many pics.. we were on a mission to get to AZ in two days... It was dark when we left home and this is Missouri... we drove through All of the ozarks I think and we saw TREES for hours!

Sleep time...

great travelers...

Breakfast at McD's... Mmmmmmm

On to Oklahoma... I was trying to get a picture of that indian statue

VERY windy here... which was the ONLY bad part of the trip. We both got dust embedded eyes and Aimee had an eye that looked like a cherry by the time we got to the hotel. Everywhere we stopped the wind and dust sandblasted our eyes. Something we did not anticipate.. We got medicine for Aimees eye and it got better and I ruined my first pair of contacts.. wore my glasses part of the time (and had my sunglasses on top of them... I did NOT look glasmorous on this trip) then used another pair of contacts! I'm staying home from work today not because I'm tired, but to get my eyes back to normal.. because I can't even think about putting contacts in my eyes!

We stayed at the Hampton Inn in Clinton Oklahoma (yep we checked out the big cities!) we just COULDN'T drive any further... VERY nice and a much needed place to rest. We drove for 14 hours on Saturday!

All ready for another day of driving!

Amarillo by morning!!... here we are at ANOTHER McD's

We saw a LOT of NOTHING in Texas...

See all the WIND... STILL windy when we stopped in Tucumcari New Mexico.

Happy little travelers! (with a little help from grammy's bag of STUFF that would appear at just the right time!)
A whole LOT more NOTHING in New Mexico! If the world gets too overpopulated there is plenty of room still in Texas and New Mexico!

Yay.. a Taco Bell this time... (I can't believe how excited I was for Taco Bell!) we really ate high on the hog on this trip! (notice Aimee is covering her eye... see eye story above)

The end of the trip... most of the car is covered in bug guts from several states. We drove 15 hours on Sunday. I don't have a great here we are at home finally pic cuz it was late, dark and we just wanted to get to bed and close ours eyes and hope our eyeballs would still be there in the morning. But I will say that this 1600 mile long trip was very pleasant, the weather was good, the car drove smooth, the girls were cute and great and Aimee was a joy to be with. We are VERY thankful (and thanks to map quest... we never got lost once... although we questioned a little of mapquests definition of HIGHWAY through some little towns in Kentucky and Missouri)that we made it home safely!Family is great and it is GREAT to be home!

Trip time...

It's trip time for me... first thing in the morning I'm flying to Nashville/Kentucky.... THEN... a 1600 mile road trip back home! Not really a vacation... just driving from there to here with Aimee and the girls ...BUT I'm sure there will be some fun and great sights along the way. Of course I'll post about it when I get back... hopefully Sunday night! Have a great weekend everyone!

from Brazil...

Here's the weekly news from Brazil...

Oí família - Everything is going good here and good to hear that the demolition is almost done. The furniture looks nice and the airplane pics are cool. My companion is crazy about airplanes, He took a piloting course before the mission. This week we conferred Bruno and Suelen who were baptized last week and I did one of the confirmations! It was my first one and i was a bit nervous but it was all good. The remodeling is supposed to start soon and they are going to enclose the chapel because tons of dust and crap comes in every week and it takes forever to clean.We are also going to get some classrooms and everything is going to get painted nice and it should be an actual chapel when its all done. When they start it will be about 30-45 days until we can meet there again so we will probably have church at someone´s house for a while. But it´s all good. We should baptize again this saturday when we get Luan´s mom to sign the baptism papers. That´s about it for the week. We are going to have a zone conference tomorrow with the president and those are always good. You always learn something in a zone conference. I didn´t take any pictures this week so i don´t have anything exciting to send to you guys... I´ll see you all later then. Tchau Elder Lewis

The weekend...

This past weekend was MORE demo of course... but it is ALMOST over!

LOTS and LOTS of demo.... and what I didn't really realize was how MUCH

DUST there would be!!!! My WHOLE house looks like this!!! BUT.... I went to the store and bought every kind of cleaner for every kind of surface... so eventually it will be back to normal. When we sit down to eat then get up we have to do a bum check to make sure we don't go out of the house with dusty bums! THAT would be embarrassing!

But the fun news is my last piece to the bedroom set came and I went shopping...

... I bought a couple of buffet lamps for our nightstands. So besides making sure Mike had cold drinks (like fresh lemonade), getting my nails done (I did black toes... first time... no pic, I don't do feet pics), cooking (did a new yummy 30 minute roll recipe), cleaning (some dust), grocery shopping (great coupon savings), laundry(should have done more... still have some), church (was wonderful),sleep (didn't have to get up at 4!), a quick dip in the pool (it's one way to get the dust off), and going through one of my tubs (I'm saving that for another post) that was pretty much my exciting weekend!

Trent takes flight!

This story starts a LONG time ago when Brother Brummett promised to take Trent flying when he got his eagle. Trent DID get his eagle (we seem to have the tradition of boys getting their eagles right before they turn 18) so the BIG day for flying was last Saturday (just got the pics). They flew to Casa Grande and back and even gave Trent a little flying instruction. Trent had a GREAT time (if ya get the chance ask him about his experience especially as the plane did a dip...) Thanks so much Brother Brummett and Brother Hansen!

Saturday surprise...

I know this post is a little late, but I had quite a surprise last Saturday... I was doing the usual Saturday stuff... like going to the grocery store.. and when I got home my bedroom was full of new furniture! We've had so much car expense lately (just ask our new best friend, Scott at MIDAS !) ... I just put the thought of new stuff aside til all the vehicles are up to par. So WHY did we get new furniture you might ask?!!?.... Well.... when we moved the old furniture(Mike's 20 year old bachelor stuff) out to do the remodeling... we knew it was NOT going to be going back in. But in the meantime we've been sleeping on a mattress on the floor and living out of boxes. The last piece is getting delivered tomorrow and the whole set is BEAUTIFUL! Thanks Mike (and Furniture Plus) for the wonderful surprise. You ARE the best!.... now I have to go shopping.... it's time to decorate!

remodeling update...

Our demolition/remodeling/dust storm (DUST is EVERYWHERE) is still going on... but MUCH faster now... thanks to Mike's new handy dandy manly roto hammer! It takes the old tile/grout/cement off like butter... but boy is it noisy! So it won't be much longer til all the demo is finished and then on to the FUN stuff! Thanks Mike!