Linkin Park

Tim went to his first concert this week. He got to see Linkin Park, and a bunch of other bands he didn't know. He went with Jaron one of his best friends. They had a lot of fun, I wish I could have gone too.

Tim doesn't start school until after Labor Day so he and I are hanging out at home during the day not doing much of anything.

Kara started High School last week, so far things seem to be going well. I'm excited about her photography class since my last class involved a 35mm camera and learning to develop pictures in a dark room. I hope she learns things about our new digital camera so she can teach me. I have struggled in my attempts to use my past knowledge on this new technology.

My school starts this Saturday, yes I actually signed up for Saturday classes, that way I only have to drive into campus once a week, and the rest of the family can fend for themselves for the day.

Home at last

No pictures today. We drove about 8 hours to make it home. Stopped a few times, mostly for food and other basic needs. But also stopped to race go-carts for the first time. Tim wasn't tall enough but they didn't check that and let him drive. He had driven Grandpa's Gator, but said it was fun to drive without anyone telling him to slow down and be careful.

It is good to be home, but now I am going to have to start cooking and cleaning again :P

36 States

First, I feel like I short changed our day in Boston, it was a long hectic day. I would love to spend a few more days there, I could spend a lot more time seeing the historic sites, Kara would enjoy it too, but Tim, not so much. He could care less if this was a place that changed the course of America, but I drag him along as much as I can. Here are a couple of observations about Boston, there are Dunkin Donuts everywhere, actually that is throughout the North East but outside of Boston we saw an intersection where there were literally a Dunkin Donuts on two of the four corners. So we have had our share of munshkins (sp?). Also, Bostonians are very nice. As I was trying to find our way to China town and our parking lot, I consulted my handy dandy map and both times I did, someone stopped and asked if they could help me. I was very impressed by how helpful they were.

OK, yesterday I wasn't able to post because Hilton didn't offer wifi in the rooms only in the lobby and I didn't want to mess with sitting in the lobby. But what I didn't post was our stops in Rhode Island. We stopped by a local library, and a very pretty one too. Kara has this dream of being a librarian in Rhode Island and so we let her see at least one library.


We then stopped by the beach for most of the afternoon. It was a beautiful day. The kids played in the water, I chose not to get in and instead read for hours and got a nice bright shade of red along my right side.



Along with watching the kids swim, and reading, I also watched the crazy seagulls, this one and I had a staring contest


Today was a driving day. We pretty much spent the day driving. We drove through the Bronx (I didn't realize until we were in the midst of that traffic that we would be getting that close to NYC) we made a stop in New Jersey to do laundry, and then found a hotel in Pennsylvania, one with a pool so that the kids could get out some energy.

Well with all of this driving my kids have now been in 36 states, most of the 14 left to see are in the South. I guess we have more trips in our future.

ups and downs of vacation

As promised here are a few pictures from Salem. BTW, I loved Salem, it was a beautiful town, and fairly easily to get around.

Today was spent in and around Boston, we spent the morning at the beach, it was cold but that couldn't keep Tim out.

Kara hung out on the beach and worked on Sudoku puzzles

We then went to the historical section of Boston, here is where it is believed that Paul Revere began his ride

If I remember correctly this picture is the church where the lamps were hung. One if by land two if by sea.

This is the State Capital with actual real gold leafing on the roof

After touring some historical sites we went to China town to get some dinner.

Not pictured is the time we spent searching for somewhere to find a GPS so that I could then find everything else we wanted to see. Boston was alright, but it is a little too big and too crazy. I like cities a little more manageable.

We are now in Rhode Island and I am really tired.

POOP SMELLZ LIKE CHICKEN ^.^---BTW that was just written by Tim

M and M

We made it to Maine and Massachusett today. We didn't do anything in Maine other than get in far enough to say we have been in the state. It was raining and there wasn't much we wanted to see so...we ended up heading back south to MA.

We spent some time in Salem, visited the Witch Trial Museum and took a trolly tour. We then got lost again driving to our hotel room.

OK here is my take on city lay out. First, why in the helk can people not make straight roads? Why are so many cities filled with winding curvy roads that are impossible to keep track of which way you are driving? Then, why do neighboring cities have major roadways with the same name even though the streets are not connected? UUGGHH!!!

I got to the hotel, finally, and discovered that my power cord to my computer was left in the last hotel room, so I am going to post this quickly so that I can save some power. I will add more pictures hopefully tomorrow, assuming I can find my way to the closest Circuit City to buy a new one. And a GPS so that I don't have to drive up and down the wrong Washington street again.

Vermont and New Hampshire

Today we drove into Vermont and New Hampshire. Both are beautiful places, it makes me wonder why the helk we live in Indiana. The road we traveled through Vermont brought us through many small towns all filled with local shops and almost no chain stores, or restaurants.

Bennington, VT also had all of these neat statues that were often difficult to distinguish from pedestrians. Kara took pictures of all of the ones we came across. Her love of taking pictures of strangers was given the opportunity to get close up and creative.

It was the type of town that would be nice to live in, but traveling through with three hungry people who are reluctant to try new things, the Olive Garden in NH was a welcome sight.

While in Vermont we stopped at a cemetery where Robert Frost is buried.


The cemetery also held the remains of a number of Revolutionary War soldiers, their graves were marked with flags. It was neat, but because all soldiers were men, the feminist in me wanted to also show recognition of the women who sacrificed and would have even been willing to give their lives for freedom.


We then made it to the coast and spent a little time walking on the beach.



Tim reminded me of his father when he decided to start getting in the water when all we intended to do was walk on the beach.


Today's drive was a little long for the third driving day, and through the winding mountain roads that were beautiful but slow. We are looking forward to a little less time in the car tomorrow.

Back in the US

Last night we went to bed excited to wake up and have some excitement. The excitement began earlier than we expected when the fire alarm went off in the hotel at 2:30am. Looking out the door and not seeing any smoke I took a minute to get a bra on and we headed down to the lobby and sat with our fellow guests until the fire department checked everything out and said it was a false alarm. Not being able to get right back to sleep we watched Nickelodeon until we were ready to get back to sleep.




When we got up in the morning the kids got ready very slowly. They were enjoying themselves watching Sesame Street, here they are following Burt’s instructions to “pat your head, rub your tummy, hop on one foot and sing Mary had a little pigeon” We could have stayed in Indiana and done that.





We then went to Niagara Falls. The falls were beautiful! I even got a picture of Kara smiling, she normally likes to make goofy faces for pictures.














I'm falling












































it was also fun seeing the diversity of people there. I don’t know how many languages we heard and Kara loved taking pictures of random people.

We made it back into the US where I noticed that we do a lot better job of marking directions to a highway than they do in Canada. I was happy to see that after getting lost or nearly lost a number of times.

We decided to stop by Palmyra and walked through the Sacred Grove. It was a nice peaceful place. We didn’t stay long or take a tour because we needed to get back on the road.













We made it to Albany, NY and will hopefully have a good night sleep.

Howdy from north of the border

The kids and I made it to Canada today. We left home this morning and drove into Michigan, the 30th state the kids have now visited.

They actually posed like this for the picture at the rest area.

We then entered Canada, no problem crossing the border, and I figure if we can't cross back we will just move in here, it is so beautiful.

It was a long drive; the kids passed the time by being goofy.

We finally got to the hotel. As Kara got ready and had some down time, I took Tim to the pool. He swam while I read. It was too close to dusk to hit Niagara Falls, so we drove to the Downtown area of St. Catherine and walked around. It is such a beautiful area but most of the pictures Kara took were with her cellphone so I don't have those now :(

We found a wonderful vietnamese restaurant

and stuffed ourselves. The kids were both talking about what a great day we had, even though we really didn't do anything. Then...

as I tried to get back to our hotel I couldn't find the South bound entrance to the freeway and got lost, after driving through a nice neighborhood and quite a ways into a vineyard I called Glenn and freaked out a bit, found an address on a church and he was able to mapquest us and talk us back to our hotel.

I just asked the kids and they still think it was a good day, Tim said getting lost made it even better.