home sweet home

10 states
13 beds
27 days
5839 miles

And now we're home.  It's a strange feeling to be "home" in a house with all of our stuff, but not remember where we put it.  Before our trip we had only been here for 12 days and hadn't finished unpacking.  We still have piles of pictures to put up, curtains to hang, boxes to unpack, and piles to put away ... somewhere!  We're glad, though, to have had the opportunity to be with family before entering another intense season of life.  We probably won't do this drive again.  It was LONG.  But we made the most of the miles.  Check out what we did/saw:

• Painted Hills (North Dakota)
• Ate dinner on a Montana ranch (my cousin Randy's house)
• Drove up to Silver Lake on Mt. Baker in Washington State (with my grandma)
• Met two of our nephews (Henry and Luke) for the first time
• Camped near Mt. Ranier with Danny's mom and brothers and their families for 5 days
• Checked out an enormous wind turbine up close near the Colombia River Gorge
• Multnomah Falls, Oregon
• I had LASIK surgery
• Spent a weekend scrapbooking with my dear friend, Julie
• Visited our sending church in Canby, Oregon and Danny's brother, Eric's, church
• The kids attended VBS (Pandamania)
• Attended Danny's Grandma's funeral
• Craters of the Moon National Park (Idaho)
• Upper and Lower Mesa Falls (Idaho)
• Yellowstone (WOW!)
• Drove over the Big Horn Mountains (Wyoming)
• Mt. Rushmore (South Dakota)
• Watched a crop-dusting plane and helicopter doing their work up close
• Drove the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway and visited the sites of her childhood (in SD and Minnesota)
• Spent the night in Mankato, Minnesota (where Pa used to go on big trips)
• Found Maud Hart Lovelace's childhood home, about which the Betsy and Tacy books are written
• Ate more peanut butter sandwiches and fast food than I care to see in a long, long time. :)

Yellowstone was absolutely spectacular.  We saw bison, elk, coyotes, deer, geysers, thermal pools, mud pots, waterfalls, stunning views, and license plates from almost every state in the Union (even Hawaii!).  Eliana loved the geysers and hot springs. Emma's favorite part was seeing deer.  Easton has been talking about bison ever since.  It was really fun experiencing it all through their eyes.