Day 3! (Don't worry. I am not going to do all 35 days.)

States traveled: Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico)

Cities of interest: OKC, Amarillo, Albuquerque

Our kids looked like little homeless children through most of our trip. Every time they stepped out of the car there was some sort of food and drink on their food and face. Most of the time, both.

We saw tons of windmills in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Wyoming...I can't remember all the places but they were beautiful. I think Reno should put some in if the turbulence flying/landing there is any location of how much wind they have.

Texas!

Texas also had nice rest stops.
I am sure you needed to know that.

We started seeing these signs everywhere. Then I talked to Ken and he was mentioning how we have to eat at some steak place that is featured on the Food Network a lot. Melanie had also mentioned it. We had been eating peanut butter sandwiches up to this point so a steak sounded pretty good.

On the way to Amarillo there was a leaning tower of Britten.

There was also the largest cross we have ever seen. This church also had a life sized model of the crucifixion. There were more crosses than what I have circled. It was a whole little hillside and was very morbid.

The Big Texan. I personally thought the boot was a nice touch.

The cow adds to the ambiance.

You know you are in Texas...

This place was such a tourist trap.

It was huge. There was an arcade, a couple bars, a candy shop and the restaurant itself was enormous.

We were seated on the second floor.

It would have been fun to see this place hoppin' at night full of drunk cowboys/girls.

Fisher's food was served in a hat. They were nice and gave Cooper one as well.

Fisher and Cooper do not so well in restaurants. We have to leave large tips to make up for the messes they make.

The big deal about this restaurant is that you can eat all of this food (72 oz. steak, baked potoato, salad and rolls) for free if you do it in under an hour. ALL OF IT. Insanity. This picture does the steak no justice.

We had to play the part of the tourist.

We also had to teach Fisher that you stick you face through the hole...

Amarillo is not a place that appealed to me. (Sorry to any of you who might happen to be from there. Not my cup of tea.)

It amazed us how the land changed from flat Texas to southwest in a matter of minutes. Not too long after that, we crossed the border into NM.

The bugs were really starting to bug me.
(Pun intended in case you were wondering.)

At the NM rest stop there was a bronze casting of a dinosaur bone. Dinosaurs are sooo Fisher's thing right now. We could not get him away from there.

But the wind and clouds told us it was time to get on the road.

***

All of the following pictures are scenic ones. (For the grandparents- eventually I do have pics of the kids/family. I just have to get through all these ones since this was the part of the trip where our family was all together so I wanted to document it.) You can skip through all of these if pictures of landscapes bore you. In fact, you are in no way obligated to view any of my pictures on my blog for that matter.

I tend to view the world as one pretty picture so all the scenic photos make me happy.

NM scenic drive by.

(Most of these were taken from the car through bug splattered windows.)

Yummy.

New Mexico landscape.

New Mexico clouds and sun.

I think of this one as "Blue & Yellow"

New Mexico sunset.

Later I started to fool around with my camera.

This is what Albuquerque looked like as we drove through.

We had grand plans of driving on into the middle of the night to Flagstaff but the boys would not sleep in the car, I was tired (and so was Todd although he did not want to admit it) and so we lost out on our nice Priceline hotel and had to settle for a Microtel on the outskirts of Albuquerque instead.

Drive Out Day 2

States driven: Missouri, Kansas & Oklahoma

Cities of interest: Independence, Kansas City, Oklahoma City

It took us a few days to get a routine down for mornings in the hotel. I was still nursing Cooper, we had to eat breakfast which was a lot easier said than done in Fisher's case. Who wants to eat cereal when there are double beds to jump across and pillows up the wazoo to chuck across the room? Then we had to get ready, pack everything back up and into the car (and we had a lot of stuff since we were traveling for so long- not to mention all the baby stuff: travel high chair, pack n' play etc.), fill up the ice chests with ice... The boys would run around like crazy little children and Cooper became obsessed with toilet water and would make a run for the bathroom if we kept the door cracked even a tiny little bit. It was chaos every morning. By the 5th morning we were a lot more efficient.

Some mornings Cooper would take a nap. On the first morning we had already packed up his pack n' play so he took a little snooze on the bed.

Almost ready to take stuff out to the car.

Our view from the first hotel room.

The first morning we decided to go visit some of the church sites (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.) Right across the street from our church's Independence Visitor's Center is the Community of Christ's Temple. Fisher though it was awesome.

Here he is doing his impersonation of the building.

Todd was not to be outdone by his son.

We were the only people in the visitor's center and so the boys went a little crazy.

They had a great play area for kids with a little cabin.

And horse drawn wagon.

Fisher liked this one a lot.

Cooper refuses to wear shoes of any kind. He will automatically start crawling if we put anything on his feet. It was nice to be able to let him walk barefoot on nice clean carpet as opposed to all the nasty rest stops. :)

Fisher was excited to see Jesus.

Now we can cross that church site off our list of places visited. The Church does such a great job with all of their centers. Unfortunately Fisher makes it a little difficult to enjoy. He has a hard time going on the tours so we finally started telling the missionaries that it would be best to let us wander on our own.

Leaving the Visitor's center with a view of the other church's temple.

Dedicated temple site by Joseph Smith.

Kansas City.

I have now driven through there three times in different parts of the city. Two times I thought it was really ghetto and run down. On the way back home we stayed in a nicer area.

Entering Kansas. I did not get pictures of every state we entered but occasionaly I was on the ball.

Eastern Kansas was BEAUTIFUL. I loved it. All these pictures were taken through the window while driving so they aren't the best. Most of you could care less anyway about all my random scenic pictures but I loved seeing all the different landscapes as we made our way across the country and back.

Ignore the bug splattered windshield but the green fields went on forever.

So flat! Todd and I miss the mountains being out in Louisville, but even in KY at least there are trees to break up the flatness.

All the rest stops in Kansas were in the middle of the freeway so that both directions would pull off to the same stops.

I missed Oklahoma's sign but I will just say this- they had some of the nicest rest stops I have ever seen! The building in the back of the picture is only the vending machines. It is larger and nicer than all the entire rest stops through Nevada.

We would normally drive about 2 hours before the boys (especially Cooper) would start getting restless and need a stretch.

We had told Ken we would try to take a picture of the state capital building in Oklahoma City. Unfortunately for him, our hotel was on the other side of the city, it was getting late and the boys were fussy, we were driving without a GPS and we were racing the clock to be able to see the OKC Bombing Memorial before it got dark, so this is the sweet picture he ended up with. :)

Driving into Oklahoma City.

The Memorial from the street.

We had no idea what to expect so we parked and I ran in only to discover that it was beautiful and huge! I went back to get the boys so we could spend more time there.

The entrance which shows the only wall left standing from the bomb.

We arrived at dusk so we were able to see it while it was still light and by the time we left all the lights had come on.

One end has a wall that has 9:01 and then other end says 9:03 to represent the minutes before and after the bombing.

The only tree to survive.

The building behind the tree kept the wall as is after the bombing to reflect the damage done.

The Wall of Survivors.

The plaque explaining what all the chairs represent.

Each chair represents someone who died in the bomb. There are nine rows represent the nine stories. The little chairs represent the children who were killed.

There were beautiful quotes scattered throughout. I was really impressed by the whole thing. It was all beautiful and there was a definite feeling of reverence present.

The entryway looking over to the other side of the reflecting pool.

A wall outside where people still put things up in remembrance.

This part was the saddest for us. They laid grass back down and fenced in the area where the daycare playgound was where the children were killed/injured.

Pictures of the aftermath.

A plaque on the ground showing where the south entrance to the Federal building once stood.

Right across the street is yet another stadium.