Multiple Postings

Because so much has happened over the past few weeks, I will be trying to put up a post or two a day to get all caught up on what went on. So, if you keep up with my blog as I post new things, then you'll see them day by day. If not, scroll on down to Rob's graduation and start there. Enjoy!!

2 Years Old!!

2 days after we started our cross country journey, Gracie had her 2 birthday. She is officially 2 years old!! The morning of her birthday I sang Happy Birthday to her over and over again and she kept telling me "No...no my birthday." My family all sang Happy Birthday to her during the day and she still said it wasn't her birthday. Silly girl. We had a little mini birthday party at my grandparents in Pittsburgh for her, but she still wasn't sure what to think. Much thanks to everyone who remembered her birthday and got her a present. She's gotten gifts from various relatives through out the trip, but we still have not gotten her gift for her yet. I would like to have a birthday party at my parents so my sister can include her kids so it may be another couple of weeks but she won't notice if we are really late. Happy Birthday to my sweet Grace Marjorie!!

Sitting Up!!

So I don't know how she did it, stuck in a car seat for hours on end, day after day, but right before we moved and during our move Georgia learned how to sit up. She no longer topples over after a few seconds. She can sit there for minutes to an hour and just play. She's also figuring out how to get onto her back/tummy to roll around from a sitting position, and she's learning how to push herself up from the floor into a sitting position. She's not quite there yet, but she gets half way there. She's also been teething the past few days (during our trip to Rochester) and learning how to wave. She says baba and mama now, and I know that most of the time she is just saying the sounds, but the other day she was watching me get her a bottle and said "Mama Baba" and when she is playing on the floor and wants my attention she'll turn her head to look at me and say "mama" over and over again until I respond (and then she stops). I'd like to think that mama is her first word, but I'll wait a week or two until I know for sure. She's getting so big and I can't believe that she's almost 7 months old!

Sitting up so big!!

Taking a nap on the couch with a toy at Grandpa & Grandma Congdons.

Day 6 & 7 Of The Cross Country Exodus

We left Pittsburgh around 1 pm and headed north to New York. We stopped for the night on the outskirts of Syracuse and we took the girls swimming in the hotel pool. They weren't too sure about it and didn't really enjoy getting in and swimming but liked it when Rob and my brother Matt jumped in and splashed everywhere. They slept all right that night...not great, but all right.


After breakfast the next morning we headed to Vermont. Right before entering Vermont we stopped at a gas station to feed Georgia and realized that they had Dunkin Donuts. Well, I have never gotten used to Krispy Kremes. Never really liked them. So when we saw Dunkin Donuts we had to get one. Oh, yummy yummy boston creme donut. So wonderful. : )


We got to Rob's parents around noon and started unloading most of our stuff. It didn't take too long because most of the stuff we were unloading here was just going straight into storage. After that, my parents took off with the rest of our stuff for their house, and we will be going up there to take care of it all this coming Friday. We stayed down in Rutland to spend time with his parents and to go back down to Rochester, New York to visit with Rob's family down there that we haven't seen in 2 1/2 years. We are back in Rutland now staying with Rob's parents and starting on the job search. When we go up to my parents this Friday we will continue to search for work to bring in some money while we continue applying for a job that Rob can actually use his degree for. It was a hard trip and this is even a harder time for us, completely relying on our families to support us and our kids, and it really brings the spirits down. I continue to try and have faith that this is where the Lord wants us and that a job will turn up and we can finally get on with our lives, but it's hard to have hope when it's been six months since Robbie started the job hunting, and he's only had one interview out of over 100 jobs he's applied for.


Even though we are back with family we will continue to post about things going on for all our family & friends that live far away. We continue to keep many of you who are searching for a job (just like us) in our thoughts and prayers. We miss all our friends out west and we will keep in touch. It's good to be home!!

Day 5 & 6 Of The Cross Country Exodus

The morning started out pretty good. All three of the girls seemed to be feeling better. Gwen was pretty grumpy from lack of sleep and screaming a lot so I ended up having breakfast out in the car while she finished up her temper tantrum. We didn't have far to drive that day and before we knew it we were finally in Pittsburgh. It was so nice to see my Grandpa & Grandma McCauley after 2 1/2 years!! We saw most of my relatives while visiting there as well: my brother Jake had flown down because he got out of National Guard duty early; Aunt Karen and cousins Ryan & Johnny; Aunt Ruth; cousin Mary, her daughter Joanie and son Richie; cousin Katie and son Nate; Uncle Paul; cousin Lynn, husband Mike and daughter Lily; cousin Emily. Didn't get to see everyone but it was so nice to see so many of my relatives after being gone for so long.

We stayed the night at my cousin Lynn's house (thank you so much!!) and stayed in Pittsburgh until lunch time the next day. During that time we had so much fun! Robbie went swimming with my grandpa and brothers; the girls played with all the cousins (Johnny, Nate, Joanie, Lily and Richie) and had a blast; and I got to visit with everyone. It was great, but sad to leave again. Hopefully we'll get to see them all again before the end of the year. Here are some pictures:

Gracie blowing bubbles on the patio with Uncle Jake.

Nana (my mom) holding Georgia.

I will post more pictures of this visit later.

Day 3 & 4 Of The Cross Country Exodus

Day 3 started off a lot better than other days. Grace finally had her appetite back but Gwen was still pretty sick. Today was full of driving driving driving. We drove from South Dakota to Iowa. Nothing special happened. I do have to say that if we had not been able to get a dual screen portable DVD player I don't know how we would have survived this trip. Towards the end of the night Georgia seemed like she wasn't feeling well, but I didn't think much of it because she hadn't got the high fever like the other two girls. So we stopped to feed her around 8 or 8:30 and while feeding her my brother started in with food poisoining. So we went a little bit further to where my dad had booked a hotel for us. It was the best hotel we had stayed in yet. The girls went to bed early thanks to getting them in their pj's and feeding Georgia when we stopped (she stayed asleep when we got to the hotel and slept all night) and we got to bed early but unfortunately my brother was up all night...poor kid.



We slept so good that night, and the next morning we didn't have any problems either. Breakfast was amazing...in fact, it was the best hotel with the best food that we had all trip (from start to finish). We hung out for a while though so my family could get more sleep because of my brother having food poisoning. Gwen was feeling a lot better but now Georgia seemed to be coming down with it (thankfully not as bad though). We had planned on going to Nauvoo that day, but because my brother wasn't feeling well we decided we would skip Nauvoo and drive as far as we possibly could towards Pittsburgh. We passed through the rest of Iowa and all of Illinois without any problem and got into Indiana. It was starting to get a little late and we had planned on stopping around 8 or 8:30 to get a hotel room before Georgia had to eat again but thought it might be better to do what we had the night before and get the girls in their pjs and feed Georgia and try to drive some more. So we stopped, fed her and left to keep driving. My dad had wanted to stay in Elkhart, Indiana but we thought we would keep driving. Well, scratch that when Georgia started screaming the minute we put her into her car seat. She screamed for 15 minutes, gagged on her own spit and threw up everywhere. At least half of what I fed her.



So, we found a hotel, I washed her car seat with our dish soap as best I could, gave all three girls a bath in our handicap accessable shower in our handicap accessable hotel room (no tub sides...an adventure) put the girls to sleep, washed sippies, bottles and binkies in the bathroom sink with our dish soap and went to bed. Needless to say it was a late night...one in the morning late. I was really tired and worn out by this point, and I had broken down and started crying at least twice that day (one time due to the realization that I wouldn't be able to spend as much time at my Grandpa & Grandma McCauley's in Pittsburgh PA as I thought we were going to). What a trip...everything going wrong, bad days getting worse...would it ever get better?

Day 2 Of The Cross Country Exodus

Oh if only the nightmare of our first night had been the end of it all. This morning as I was feeding Georgia she gagged on her own saliva and puked up everywhere!! Robbie had already taken all of our stuff to the car and truck so I had to get him to go back and get me some clean clothes for her. I cleaned my clothes off as best as I could (since she didn't get me all that bad) and we were off!! The day was full of giving Gwen Children's Motrin and Tylenol and trying to get both Gwen and Grace to eat. We spent the day driving through the rest of Wyoming and into South Dakota. We stopped at a National Forest site for a Native American Medicine Wheel that has survived hundreds of years, but the hike round trip was 45 minutes. I wanted to go so bad because I have always wanted to see a Medicine Wheel (I've read a lot about them) but we were already behind on our schedule and so hopefully we'll be able to go back some day to see it (it's located in the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming). Gwen and Grace watched movies a bit that day and did a lot of activities/read books that my parents had gotten for them just for the trip. Here's what Grace looked like after an hour of coloring with a dry erase marker (and the window...and her clothes...and her seat tray...and Gwen as well...good thing it came off with a wipe...bad that it stained their clothes...oh, and the cute car seat strap covers? Yeah, my sister and mother in law helped me finish those off quick before we moved...that's right...hand made baby. I'll post about them on my craft blog sometime in the next few weeks).

Our first big stop was to see the Crazy Horse monument. It is not even close to being completed and it just might be completed before the end of my lifetime, but they have his face completed and it was so awesome to see (even more amazing were the pictures of what this thing is going to look like when it's completed). I have never seen anything like this before and I am so into Native American history/legends/folklore. I have been into it since I was a kid. Again, I missed out on the museum and other artifacts around the visitors center because I had to feed Georgia. We switched formula with her about 2 weeks before moving because she had been spitting up a ton with the regular similac formula and while this helps she's been having a harder time getting used to the taste. Anyways, here are some pics of Crazy Horse (if you want to know more about it, they have a website: http://www.crazyhorsememorial.org/ ).

Anyways, a short drive after Crazy Horse we arrived at Mount Rushmore. I have never been there so this was just as cool to me. It was cool to Rob and I in a different way as well...we are big fans of the National Treasure movies so it was cool to see some of the places that they filmed for the second movie. After Rushmore we were all pretty tired and hungry and went to find a place to eat and sleep. It took a long time to finally find a hotel and by the time we did us grown ups just ordered into our rooms and we gave the girls my left over Subway sandwich from lunch that day so we could get them fed and into bed. Needless to say it was a late night and we were so hopeful to get a good nights sleep after having such an awful one the night before.