October Road Trips

October was filled with road trips. We left our dining room in shambles to spend a weekend in West Virginia with my grandparents (the girls' Nana and Papaw). We also drove out to Chicago for Luke's best friend's wedding. He joined the Navy and went out to Chicago in July, so that is the first we had seen him since then. The girls do very well in the car, and although they were both short trips, we had loads of fun. The girls actually stayed in West Virginia a week before we went down to visit, so we only had Avery while we worked on the house. It just happened to coincide with my grandma's side of the family getting together at the family cabin in WV, so there was a lot of family members that I hadn't seen for a long while that were there. I hope we get to do that more often!


The bridge to West Virginia on 77 in Marietta


Athena sniffing out the back window. She had a comfy ride down since we didn't have Lexi or Lilly in the car.


Avery ready for a walk. It was her first trip to Nana and Papaw's.


We started fishing in the creek to catch minnows and crawdads


Nana brought out the nets


Papaw had a nap on the porch


Avery decided to nap as well:)


We could take pictures all day of butterflies on their flowers


We visited Hunter's house to play on the trampoline


Avery eating a pea


Lilly and Lexi helping in the kitchen


Papaw showing the girls how to mix a drink up at the cabin..LOL


Avery and Mo


Papaw in his natural state


Papaw doing what he does best


Great Aunt Shirley with the girls and I


Lexi and Lilly munching at the cabin


The old Lawson house up on Spruce


A short walk and Avery was out!


So Lexi walked Mo instead


Party at the cabin


The Schartiger Clan


On our way to Chicago!!!


The girls being silly in the backseat


Avery sleeping in her carseat


The odd and awesome things we see on the highway


Pit Stop


The scary hand dryer


Half-way through Indiana, right outside Notre Dame


I seem to always take pictures of water towers


The highway going by Chicago O'Hare is a great opportunity to see an airplane!


Traffic going the other direction was INSANE!! I don't know how city people commute like that.


The girls in front of Lake Michigan where we took Sean and Rachel for wedding pictures


Sean's brother taking a picture.


A tunnel


My powershot battery died on the way home, and Luke's camera was in the trunk, so I took Chicago shots from the highway on my cell phone...


Chicago from the car


More sights to see


and of course, a choo choo!!

We Survived the Indianapolis Airshow

and all I got was a lobster for a husband ;)

We finally got on the road about 6:30am on Friday (5th)and didn't stop until we got across the border (about 3 hours). We arrived at Mt. Comfort Airport a little after 10:30am. The girls did extremely well on the car ride and only napped a tiny bit towards the end. We spent all day until about 4:30 looking at the static displays (they were still parking some of them) and watching the practice fly overs. (Friday was Media Day, so not a real show) The girls and I were tired and went back to the car about 3pm to soak up some air conditioning, so we watched the Blue Angels from the car while Luke went back to the flight line for pictures. Luke ended up using the 5D most of the day, because it seemed like his Sony wouldn't focus on any of the far away airplanes.

Our hotel was in Greenfield, about 15 minutes away, so we drove and stopped at an AppleBees and ordered the Carside-to-go. The girls were crashed, but woke up when we got to the hotel. We ate and got into our swimming stuff and swam in the pool at the hotel for a bit. After that Luke headed out to Wal-Mart to buy some supplies he would need to try and fix his focus problem on the Sony. He had wanted to head back out to the airport at dusk because they were doing hot air balloon flights, but it just got so late so fast, and I was so tired, and with his camera problem and sunburn, it just didn't happen. We had lights out a little after 9pm and we were out!

On Saturday we were up pretty early, about 8 or so. Luke went down and got our continental breakfast and we slowly packed ourselves up to head out for a day at the airshow. Luke had fixed his focus problem with the Sony, so we packed up. Luke feared a sunburn on top of his sunburn (He was too manly for suntan lotion) so he wore pants and his hoodie to keep off the sun. Since we had already seen the static displays, we went straight for the flight line and picked a spot to sit in. Luke went off to buy a couple of the umbrellas that mount on the back of folding chairs so we could have a little shade. The girls kept busy with some toys and coloring books. By the time the Angels flew by (they came in from the Indy airport) Lexi was busy cleaning the wagon and had little interest in them, and Lilly wouldn't keep on her earmuffs, so she sat in my lap and I held her ears. Luke had had enough and was nearing heat exhaustion, so we packed up right before the Blue Angels ended and got to the car and fought traffic out of there and heading for home. We made it home about 10pm and put the girls and ourselves to bed, and that was that.

We had a good but exhausting time, and Luke is by far the worst of with burn on his arms and legs. He also has had a problem with one of his ankles swelling a little bit before, and now both ankles are pretty swollen, so they have been up and wrapped and iced, and I'm sure we need to find a doctor for him to go to.

We took over 1500 pictures, and have been going through them and lots of video, so I will post them here as they turn up.

The airshow does have a photo contest for unedited pictures in 4 categories, so we picked a few and he's been asking everyone for their top 2 favourites in each category so we can decide which ones to send in. The link for them is here: Photo Contest Page

Here is a video Luke put together about our trip.