Remember to....

When leaving for a camping trip, you always need to remember to:

get a tent, air mattress, chairs.
pack variety of clothes for a variety of weather.
basic toiletries.
sunscreen, beach towels and sunglasses.
food.
bug spray, games, etc.

oh yes, also make sure you pick up the tree that fell into your driveway/road so you can leave the house. this is also a good thing to do to meet your neighbors :)

AZ

We had a great time in Arizona. It was so great being able to spend time with family and become better friends with Max's siblings. I really married into the best family and I am so happy we were able to spend this time together.
These are just a few pics to try and show what the trip was about which is mostly just hanging out with each other! Also some sleeping in the car (try a lot of sleeping in the car... 26 hours down there and 29 hours back), Grand Canyon, New Years/silly string, and games :)
I took 8 zillion pics so I think I will put up a bunch on facebook if you want to see those... I just wanted to let you know that we are home safe and sound with a lot of great memories!

Hiking in the White Tank Mountains

Sleeping in the car on the way to the Canyon... poor Harmony is so squished in the corner!
Max and the seven deuce.

Awwww, just like 5 years ago... see pic here!

it was a very, very bright sun! and so cold up there!

Look how green Harmony's eyes are! Nuts!

Silly string fight at midnight on New Years!

The whole gang including Harvey the dog playing games and spending time together :)

:)

I don't have to work for the next 12 days :)
In 2 days it's Christmas :)
In 3 days I leave for Arizona :)
Arizona is warm :)
Wisconsin is not :(
but that doesn't bother me because I'll be warm :)
for a week anyway :)
I get to spend some time with Harmony and Isaac :)
I get so spend some time with Charity and Aaron :)
in Arizona :)

Did I catch a niner in there? (cabin 09)

8 friends + 8 dogs + corn hole + seven/duece + night owls + campfire + cooking + DQ + badminton + pontoon + well, you get the picture = priceless :)

holy younguns

Since we are leaving for our road trip on Wednesday, I was inspired to look at our old road trip pictures from when we went in 2004. We look so young! Max and I planned this trip right down to the hour and had the whole itinerary written out. Everyone kind of doubted we would be able to do a trip of this magnitude on our own, I mean, we were only 18. I believe we left a week after my 18th birthday since mom said we could not do it before then... We were gone for 16 or 17 days and traveled all around the west side of the country. Oh memories, this was back when digital cameras had basically just gotten cheap enough for people to buy. I got mine at my senior all night party. I didn't take a lot digital photos, mostly film.

Here we are in Colorado.

Iowa (obviously)

Seattle

San Diego Zoo

Grand Canyon

I'm super excited to leave for this road trip! I need a vacation so very badly, I just need to get away from this place and all that is happening. I need to spend some quality time with my husband and have some good conversations for once! We never have time to do that anymore :( If anyone has suggestions on great places that they have been to out east or have heard of something, let me know! We have left this road trip completely open so we have just the open road in front of us. The only then we know we have to do is be at Max's sister Kaela's wedding on Saturday in Vermont... can't wait!

honeymoon road trip

Now you might say that getting married in the Caribbean qualifies as your honeymoon but max and i do not see it that way. any excuse to take a vacation we say...

our plans are to go east and south to see some of that side of the country. max has kind of been that way but i haven't gone anywhere east so since our first road trip covered the western half of the state, this one will cover the east!

we were going to leave at the end of may but we have decided to switch it to july so that we can go to his sisters wedding in vermont. we had to extend the trip a bit and adjust exactly where we were going since we are going much more northeast then previously planned but i am very excited about this change! we got to see kaelas wedding which is very important. we have made it to all of his siblings weddings which took us all the way from bonaire in the carribean to idaho to right here in wi/mn so i really wanted to go to kaelas.

so our tentative plans are to stop for sure at niagara falls, then to kaelas wedding in vermont, loop through new hampshire and maine and follow the coast downward to atlantic city, washington dc, possibly down to south carolina depending on time and head on back up to wi.

i am very very very excited for this trip! i am also excited because not only did i take time off work for the road trip but since my bday and the coldplay concert are the next week and i already had time off for that, i took the next week off too! so i will have 2 1/2 weeks off of work. holy moses it will be awesome! no worries, i have enough vacation time to cover all this otherwise it wouldn't be possible to go!

now max and i have our general places we would like to go but i would LOVE any suggestions on places to go or things to see out east that we could maybe do. no one knows places better then someone who has already been there! rack your brains!

waukesha weekend :)

My visit to Waukesha to see my little sister was a lot of fun! Lynsie and I had a very fast 4 hour ride over to her apartment where we brought our stuff upstairs and immediately headed for the Goodwill. Now I said this thing was giant and I meant it but sadly, they had the smallest book section I have ever seen! Do you know how disappointed I was :( It ruined the rest of my Goodwill experience and I left with only one book that cost me a dollar. Sad. Caitlin found a few skirts and a shirt and Lynsie found a pair of pants.
We then headed to the mall to poke around. A little money spent here and there, none spent by me sadly again. I think we were just buying time until it was a suitable hour to start drinking :)
Finally, we kind of started getting ready to go out and have some good, old drunk fun. While we were getting ready, we started with a few "cocktails" so that it wouldn't be an expensive evening. Needless to say, since we had barely eaten anything, it didn't take much but that is the fun of it right? We needed a weekend to relax and just have fun and we did! Lynsie, myself, Caitlin and Caitlin's friend Amber all had a very good time together. We bounced from one bar to the next, we ran into Caitlins "man friend" and hung out with him for a bit. His name is Beau and he is very nice... a bit bushy (he has a very large beard) but very nice. Eventually we got back home late, late, late and I fell asleep rather quickly. Everyone else stayed up and found somebody to get McDonalds for them. Like I said, I was sleeping through all of this.
On Sunday we kind of lounged around due to the evening before. On Sunday night we had tickets to go see Death Cab for Cutie who were playing at Caitlins school for only $5! Death Cab for Cutie for Caitlin is like Coldplay for me. She is a diehard! We searched around for the tour bus and found it right at her school even though it was pretty early! Went home, lounged, got ready and headed out to stand in line very early so that we could have a good place to stand close to the stage. It was VERY cold and VERY wet but I did it because I love my sister... sometimes. She did have a couple cases where she sounded just like my uncle Todd. To those of you who don't know what this means, she was being very gruff and snappy/grouchy. I guess I don't know how to explain it but it's pretty funny. You can tell she is a Jewell.
The concert was very cool even though we had ridiculous people standing in front of us. Eventually we got in a good enough position to see the stage and we enjoyed the show! They played a lot of their new songs which I hadn't heard yet.
Monday morning Caitlin had school so Lynsie and I headed out around 1130. I was very sad to leave my sister all the way across the state even though she has lived there for 3 years now! What a weird feeling!
Here are some pics from the weekend...

p.s. I dyed my hair dark