St. Louis - Day Three

We woke up on day three in St. Louis! We decided to slow down our road trip and have a little fun. To start the day off we drove into downtown and bought our tickets to attend a Cardinals game. The game did not start for a couple of hours, so we walked around some parts of downtown. It was another great day to be sightseeing, and I was feeling so much better!

When we bought our tickets we got this great deal where for $11 you get two randomly assigned tickets, so we thought what the heck what's the worse that can happen. Well when we redeemed our vouchers, we were given SRO tickets. We were both like what does SRO stand for?

Well, we looked hard to find it on the seating chart, then after finally asking someone we discovered it stood for "standing room only." I did not even know there was such a thing! That is the first ball park that I have ever been to where it has "standing room only" seating (if you can call it seating) available.

There was no way we were going to stand for an entire game. I did not drive all that way to St. Louis just to stand for a game, so Robert and I decided to just pick a seat in the stadium and hope for the best. Robert got real gutsy and picked some awesome seats in left field about 10 rows up. I was thinking more like upper deck, but not Robert. :) As our luck would have it, we ended up picking the best seats! Almost every seat around us filled in, except ours. We never were asked to move or had to change seats. We totally lucked out! We even were shaded for part of the game.

It was fun to experience a Cardinals game and see all the All-Star hype since the game was just hosted there. However, it was one of the most boring games we have ever been to. There were no home runs or great plays. The Astros beat the Cardinals 2-0. There was not a lot of action, but we still had a lot of fun!

After the game we went over to the Arch, so we could go inside it. I guess our luck for the day ran out at the Cardinals game because I think we picked the busiest time to visit St. Louis. On the Arch's lawn, they were holding a huge outdoor concert, so the area was packed! It took us forever to finally get up in the Arch.

These were the carts (elevators) that we rode up in. They were tiny, and it was probably the most fun part of the whole Arch adventure.

After waiting in line forever, we finally made it up to the top!

Looking out the tiny windows they have. The room at the top of the Arch definitely surprised me. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would have been.

Well, that was our long day! We only did these two things since they took up so much time! It was worth it though, and we had lots of fun. The only downside was that after spending all day in the sun sightseeing, we had to drive another leg of our trip afterward. We decided we were going to make it to Nashville that night, so we could save on a hotel stay and spend the night at my sister and brother-in-law's home. Sadly, they were out of town, but they were nice enough to let us stay at their house. Thanks guys!

It was a long drive, but we MADE IT!

Day Two - Ahead of Schedule

Day two started out way better than day one, thank goodness! We got up early and ate some breakfast then hit the road. We made it to the Kansas City area around 1 PM.

We stopped at a little town called Liberty to visit Liberty Jail, a historic church site.

We enjoyed seeing the jail. It makes everything seem more real. You could definitely get a better sense of what the early pioneers went through. This is the only picture we were able to take as we were rushed out after the presentation for another group to start. I was pretty bummed I didn't get more time to look around.

After that, we drove to Independence to visit the Church's visitor center there. We learned all about the early Mormon Pioneers.

This is the RLDS Temple. It was fun to see all the different branches off of the original LDS church all located on the same block in town. We had a great time visiting some historic sites. After spending the afternoon learning about the pioneers, we decided to continue our drive East and head towards St. Louis. As we got close, we decided to pull off an exit and check into a hotel. However, to continue the wonderful adventures we have been having, every hotel was totally booked for lots of exits. I do not know what the heck is going on in St. Louis this weekend, but every hotel was packed full. We finally found one after an hour of checking around. It is not the best hotel ever, but it will do the job tonight. Thank goodness this is our last hotel stay of the trip. After this, we will be staying with relatives the rest of the trip. Also, I am starting to slowly get better. Each day is an improvement. Well goodnight! We will be heading to Nashville tomorrow after spending the day in St. Louis having some fun.

Day One - What a day!

Sorry there will not be any pictures today for a couple of reasons. First, I woke up this morning at 3 AM with severe cramps. I did not get much sleep after that, so our plans to leave early out of Midway around 7 AM did not happen. After spending the entire morning throwing up in the bathroom, I finally decided to brave it and hit the road, so at 9:30 AM we headed out the door. I think I had food poisoning. What a crappy time for that to hit, right? I know! The rest of the day was painful and long, so now you know why I was not quite up to taking any photos. :) Poor Rob had to drive the whole way today because I was unable to sit up straight in order to drive. He rocked it though! Secondly, there was nothing to take a picture of anyways! We made our drive through Wyoming and then Nebraska where we are now currently staying. There is nothing much in those two states but wide open land. To cap off the eventful day we were having, around 8 PM we decided to continue on another hour to the next city of Kearney where we wanted to spend the night. However, we had no idea what we were in for. Out of the blue we hit this terrible severe thunderstorm causing torrential downpour and massive amounts of lightning. We were even lucky enough to follow the storm the whole way to our destination. Sounding fun huh? Well it was exciting, but scary! The news report kept threatening that funnel clouds were forming, quarter size hail, and massive wind gusts up to 60 MPH. It was the classic Nebraska thunderstorm!

Although it sounds like we had one heck of a day, which we did, there were some great moments too, like seeing three rainbows, lots of wild animals, and trying to make the best of being in the center of a severe thunderstorm.

Well that about sums up our day! We drove 780 miles today, which should be our longest leg. YAY! We are in Kearney, Nebraska tonight, and we plan to drive to Kansas City tomorrow. I hope to have pictures for you tomorrow. On a side note, I am starting to feel slightly better and even was able to keep down some dinner. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Good night from Nebraska!

Moving Day - Florida Here We Come!

Well the day has finally arrived! We are leaving beautiful Utah to go to sunny Florida. After three long days of packing, the moving truck finally arrived! I could not wait for them to arrive. I was so sick of packing and cleaning. I officially hate moving!

Here is an action shot of the Explorer being loaded up onto the truck underneath all of our boxes. I am so glad that we are having our stuff moved across the country by professionals. It was great to have them come and load up all of our boxes for us.

Last shot of Robert outside standing on our street.

After a long three days of hard work, we finally got to rest. As a going away present for Robert from Ford & Huff where he did his law internship at, they let us stay in their company villa up in Midway at the new Zermatt Resort. It was well needed after spending three days hunched over boxes!

It was an awesome way to kick off our trip. Tomorrow we will wake up really early and begin our drive through Wyoming and Nebraska. We are hoping to make it to Lincoln, NE tomorrow, so wish us luck!

Well goodnight! Keep checking out our blog as I will try to keep it updated as we make our trip!

Going Away Parties

So this past weekend was our last weekend in Utah before we move, so both sides of my family decided to throw Robert and I a party. This way we could see nearly everyone before we left.

To start it off we went up to my Uncle Garn and Aunt Kim's house where we got together with my Tolsma side of the family. It was a perfect day to have a cookout with hot dogs and hamburgers and play some games outside. We played horseshoes and this other fun game like horseshoes where you throw these roped balls onto a stand to earn points. It was a lot of fun!

Some of us were not as skilled as others and kept getting the roped balls stuck in the tree, so Kim had to cut some branches down to clear a path.

I think I need some more practice. ;)

Where's Tyler?

It was a lot of fun getting together again and catching up. We are going to miss being able to see our family so often.

Jenny, Aunt Lori, and Grandma Tolsma

Cousins


The following day we got together with my mom's side of the family and the games continued...

This time we played some croquet and money was at stake. I almost took the first round, but my cousin Drew took me out! Lucky bum won $20! My Uncle Murray won the second round.

Tyson, Jessica, Drew and I sitting back and relaxing after finishing up our game of croquet.



After eating taco salad and playing croquet, we took our party up to Mountain Green where my Aunt Susan and Uncle Bob just moved. We celebrated my sisters birthday and ate lots of dessert.

Farewell! Thanks to everyone for making these past five years here in Utah awesome. It is definitely going to be a bittersweet move. We are excited to start a new adventure, but sad to leave family and friends.

Swimming Party

Last Monday, we went over to the Asay's barn to have a last get-together with two other couples in our ward because two of us our moving.

The Asay's were so nice to open their home to us, so we could all hang out and go swimming. Here we are left to right: Kaydee, Eunice, Jaclyn, and me.

They have the sweetest pool! As you can see, they have a 12 foot rock wall that you can jump off of into the pool. The boys loved it. I think they liked climbing up the wall more than they did jumping off it. I spent most of the time on the dark water slide tunnel that they also have.

They also have these water guns that you can shoot at people while they are swimming.

Here is the gang! The Cranes on the left, Jaclyn in the middle (her and Brandon are moving to VA for medical school), and us. It was such a fun night! We had the best homemade burgers I have ever tasted, swam, played lots of ping pong, and ate some yummy desert. We keep saying how much we are going to miss our ward when we move. We have been so lucky to have met such wonderful people, and they will all be greatly missed. I wish we could take them with us to Florida!

Timpanogos Caves

On Saturday July 18, 2009, Robert and I met up with my mom and Grandma Tolsma to hike to Timpanogos Caves. It was my mom's gift to my grandma for her 79th birthday. This is something that she has been wanting to do for quite some time. Also, it was the first time for Robert and I.

Here we are starting the hike up!

On the way up, we saw some beautiful wildlife.

It is a steep hike, so we had to take a couple of pit stops for rest. My mom and grandma did awesome!

It was a perfect day to hike. Look at the amazing view we had on the whole way up the side of the mountain.

We are halfway there!

Getting closer...it started to get pretty steep towards the end.

We finally made it!

Once we reached the top, we had to get all geared up (wear jackets) to go on our cave tour.

It was a really fun cave to explore. It was really narrow at times.

Cave spaghetti

On the other side! We made it out. Now for the easy part: the hike down. Except that was the part that made us most sore the day after. I guess we are not use to using those muscles that it takes to go down a steep incline.

One last view of the beautiful canyon.

Well she made it! Way to go Grandma!