Cross Country Road Trip (Part 2) Stay with the Kingsford's

When we arrived in Rock Hill, South Carolina, we were so excited to see our friends, Tyler and Emilie Kingsford and their adorable children, Mason and Bentley. We hadn't seen them in over a year and were really excited to see how their life was out in the South.  Looking at the pictures we took, I noticed that I didn't get a single one of Tyler or Emilie or their baby girl, Bentley!  Not sure what I was doing there!  But I did get some of what we did with them! 

Our first day, we went into Charlotte.  Its a pretty cool city.  Tyler showed us the building he worked in for Ernst and Young.  It would be so interesting working in a high rise "uptown" as they call in Charlotte!

We went to the Nascar Hall of Fame.  Very interesting and very fun!

Here is the grand entry hall.  It was pretty cool!

Here's all the kids with this car, too bad I didn't pay attention to what was what.  Not sure what kind of car that is or who drove it or why it was even in the Nascar Hall of Fame. 

Here is Ava and Lily outside of the movie theater.  We watched an educational movie about the history of Nascar.  Very interesting and educational, since I knew nothing about Nascar before I went here! 

Ava showing us where we are, the Nascar Hall of Fame!

 

 

Some pretty cool cars!  Once again, don't know who drove them or anything!  It's hard to read anything when you have 3 kids with you! 

 



 

 

 

Here's Will trying to keep up with the big kids! :)

  

Hanging out on the track!

 



 

 

 

Cory and Lily manning the pit!   They were a pretty good little pit crew! 

 

 

Will and Ava being their own pit crew! 

 

I'd want a pit crew as cute as them, who cares about speed, right? 

 

Ava reporting the race on the radio.

 

 

Getting comfy in a racing seat. 

 

 

Or maybe not so comfy...hahaha! 

 

Waving the flag to start the race.

 

 

Stopping the race, is that what the red flag means??

 

There were these white rocking chairs everywhere!  Tyler said that it's not a Nascar thing, it's a North Carolina thing? 

 

 

We all did a race simulation.  Ava and I rode in that purple car behind her.  We were going like a 185 miles per hour!  Our fastest lap time was 45 seconds, which sounds fast to me, but I have no idea if it really is!  We came in 3rd in our simulation.  Cory and Lily came in first.  Is anyone surprised? 

 

 

We all enjoyed ourselves at the Nascar Hall of Fame.

 

After that we just walked around uptown Charlotte. 

 

We saw an Indian wedding.  So interesting.  They were all singing and dancing up the street! 

 

Ava and Mason running through the fountain in front of the Wells Fargo Building. 

 

 

It was a pretty cool city. 

 

 

The next day we went to this four story play place! 

 

 

It was madness!  And it was so hot!!!  We all got pretty sweaty in there!  Gross! 

 

 

Then we went to this river, I forgot the name of it!  But there were so many rivers out there and they are like real rivers!  Huge and wide!  The other thing I was shocked by was how warm the water was in the river!  I'm so used to mountain snow run off rivers!  So Will wasn't cold at all even though he is naked! 

 

 

Ava having fun throwing rocks. 

 

 

Lily wading! 

 

 

There was a butterfly flying all around Lily.  Can you see it?

 

 

We went on a little trail. 

 

The kids had so much fun! 

 

Lily and Ava both loved Mason so much!  Ava has asked multiple times since we left if we can go play at Mason's house.  She also keeps saying he is her best friend! 

 

We had so much fun visiting with Tyler and Emilie and we are so glad that they let us stay!!!   



Cross Country Road Trip (part 1)

I have a brother in North Carolina and Cory’s best friend is also out there.  I have been wanting to make a trip out there ever since they both moved out there and now that we are going to move to Australia in a couple of months, the chances of being able to make the trip were getting more slim.  So Cory finished school on August 8^th.  So on Monday, August 13^th , we started toying around with the idea of making a cross country road trip out to North Carolina.  That is 32 hours of driving!  32 hours!!!  With a 5 year old and a 3 year old and a 10 month old!  That is complete madness.  We thought about it, and it started sounding really fun!  I thought, what a good way for us to see a lot of the United States before we leave them behind for 5 years.  So Monday night we got the idea, by Wednesday morning we were on the road!  We are crazy!!!!  But it was kind of exciting to just get an idea and do it!  The spontaneity makes me feel so free!  Cory ran out and bought two Kindle Fires for the girls, we packed and tried tying up any loose ends before we left.  So far

far the trip has gone fairly well! 

We started by going through Wyoming.  Here is our first potty break, only 2 hours into it at the Little America somewhere in Wyoming. 

We're an awesome looking group!

 

Everyone on their devices in the car. 

Lily on her Kindle Fire.  She was obcessed with Angry Birds, she even said so herself.  Those exact words-no joke.

Ava on her Kindle Fire. 

Even Will had his own Super Duper Computer.  He was quite pleased with it. 

Cory had headphones in probably 90% of the entire drive time so he missed out on all the noise in the back.  And boy did he miss out! :)  I think he started the trip listening to Huck Finn and ended it with a biography of Benjamin Franklin.  Sounds like we missed out also! :)  I think he probably got sick of all the taps on his shoulder and then me saying, "Ava/Lily has to go potty." 

Party in the back! 

 

Ice cream break in Cheyenne.

Boy, it was windy!

Ava trying to balance on one foot.  So cute!

Will stretching out.

The girls having races, getting all that energy out!!  So glad they had a golf course there for us to use! :)

 

Made it to Nebraska!

Shows what an exciting day we had when this dinosaur was such a hit!

Look at all the corn!  I think the entire state is full of corn! 

 

We stayed the first night in Kearny, Nebraska.  The girls were so excited to stay in a hotel!  They were hilarious walking in!   We swam, of course, until about 11 at night!  We are party animals! 

We got up bright and early the next morning and hit the road.  We got through Nebraska and into Missouri in pretty good time. 

We decided to stop and go to Liberty Jail.  It would probably be difficult to keep little children reverent during the presentation regardless, but little children with hours of bottled up energy was a nightmare to keep reverent!  But I am still glad that we went.  Lily had lots of questions about Joseph Smith and bad men after that!  We had some good discussions.

 

We continued on to St. Louis, which was a cool city to drive past. 

I was trying to get a good shot of the arch in St. Louis.  Nice pull ups, you're probably thinking, but the arch is back there, look hard and you can see it! :)

Shortly after we pasted St. Louis a wicked rain storm came out of no where and continued for four hours!  I kept expecting us to drive out of the storm area at any time, but we never did.  I also kept expecting it to let up a little, but instead it just continued being a torrential downpour for miles!  The best part about the storm was the thunder and lightning.  I have never seen anything like it in Utah, that’s for sure!  It would take up the whole sky.  It was purple and pink!  There was one huge lightning and almost simultaneously an enormously loud thunder cracked through the sky!  It was amazing!  Even more amazing was we could smell the electricity in the air!  It was pretty cool, just not the best driving conditions!  But we made it alive to the city of Metropolis, about 5 miles from the Kentucky boarder. 

Metropolis, home of SuperMan and Wonder Woman! 

Lily as Wonder Woman

Ava as Wonder Woman

Lily as Superman

Not sure why, but this picture makes me laugh, do Cory and I not look hilarious here? It's cracking me up!

Cute little Super Will!!

The next morning we hit the road again.  We drove through Kentucky and on to Nashville.  We stopped in Nashville and visited this really weird replica of the Parthenon on Vanderbuilt University's campus. 

We decided to skip the Museum inside and hit the playground instead.  We had learned our lesson from Liberty Jail. 

Lily swinging

Will swinging

And Ava swinging, sweet look, Ava!

 Is this not the cutest thing ever?  We had to get proof of Cory being a fun dad!! 

Some sort of Liberty Bell??

Cute little children's garden

There were these weird looking benches all over, so I thought we'd get a picture in one. 

But I still couldn't get everyone looking!
 

 From here we went on to our first destination, the Kingsford's!  We thought they lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, because that is where Tyler works.  But it turns out they live in Rock Hill, South Carolina.  So what is one more state to add to our list of states?  So far we had been to Wyoming, Nebraska, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and now South Carolina.  We rolled in about 9 pm after stopping at the Taco Bell where Ava fell in love with quesadillas!  She kept begging for another one the whole trip and we didn't get her another until the last night of our long trip!  That is all for now stayed tuned for part two, our stay with the Kingsford's!