There is a park right by our neighborhood that we decided to check out the other day. While we were walking around the pond I noticed a trail in the woods. So we decided to explore and there is just little trails that go through this wooden area in the park, so fun! We are loving Ohio, it still seems so surreal that we actually live here.

 

We have 34 trees in our yard. 34 HUGE trees in our yard. I never thought that after living in AZ and NV I would ever say anything such as, too many trees. Well folks it happened. Our yard is 3/4 an acre, put 34 large trees on that and you don't have much sunlight. I like sunlight, I live for sunlight. So eventually 12 of these trees will go. Enough to add sunlight to the yard, trust me there will still be plenty of shade and to remove two trees that are twice the height of our two story house and way to close and if a storm takes them out they will go right through the girls bedroom. Anyways when you have this many trees you really need some tree swings. So I quickly bought this yellow disc one. My kids love it. Such a new, fun experience for them to have a tree swing in their very own yard!

 

 

 

 

Residency requires so much time from David. After not having seen him for 6 weeks we were pretty excited to get to Ohio and have him back. But unfortunately his time his eaten up in his residency program. He is in the ER this month, and even when he is home he isn't really home. He spends hours and hours charting his patients. So the only "quality" time we get together is me sitting in the same room as him reading my book quietly. This is my view of our quality time together. 

I bought a tree swing for one of the many trees in our backyard and the kids and David were enjoying it one morning. Our new yard is kind of fabulous!!! 

And David found a black berry bush in the yard.

Fawn and Dave were SO great to drive our moving truck from Phoenix to Dayton for us. They left a couple days after mom and I did and arrived with our belongings two days after us. They got in at 10pm and our wonderful neighbors Mike and Brent and Downi Fish's boys helped us get it all unloaded that night, while David was working a 24 hour shift! Trisha even took my girls for me so they would stay out of the way. Fawn took the kids to the mall before she left to stock them up on pants for the coming Fall and Winter since they had none. We let the kids play at the mall for a few minutes and unfortunately these are the only two photos I got when Fawn and Dave were here. I am so grateful the drove the truck for us! I have amazing in-laws! 

We had stairs for the year that I was pregnant with Talli until she was four months old and then we moved. Dutch and Maylee were too little to appreciate the stairs then. Now they are old enough to truly appreciate stairs and pillow cases. Just keeping busy while I unpack the house!

Dutch has shared a bedroom since Maylee was 5 months old. He is so excited to finally have his very own room!

From the moment we moved into our house our neighbors were so kind. We discovered that our next door neighbors, Mike & Jessica had a son named Ethan, 7 years old. The neighbors across from them, Trisha & Brent Baxter have four kids, Laney, Brady also 7, Presley 5, and Tinley. And then the neighbors up the street in the cul de sac had three boys, Max 6, Peyton 4 and Ivan a baby. My kids were in Heaven to see so many kids living on their new street. The first night Trisha, loaned up air mattress and sheets, she is so nice. The kids invited my kids outside to play and they all hit it off. The second night here the Baxters had everyone on the street over for a welcoming BBQ at her house. I can't get over how kind and welcoming everyone is here. 

 This is a view of the Baxters house. I had a bunch of kids show up at my house and ask if my kids could come outside and play. My kids have never just come outside to play with neighbor kids. They love it!

 Although our street is a bit on a hill and Dutch crashed and burned on a bike pretty quickly.

I think we are really going to enjoy living on this street!

After living at Fawn and Dave's house for 6 weeks without David I was SO done and ready to be in my own space. I enjoyed being there but 6 weeks is too long! So the day finally arrived that I got to pack up my van and Mom and I headed out. The van was packed tight. Originally I put Maylee and Talli in the middle row and Dutch tucked into a tiny little space in the back seat. We made it about a hour down the road and realized that was a bad idea. Things started falling on Dutch and then we started smelling some sort of cleaner. So we pulled over to the side of the road and found the bottle of Pinesol that was leaking and got that taken care of and pulled stuff off Dutch. We also realized that we didn't take any pictures so we used this time, pulled over on the side of the 17 to take pictures of the over packed car. 

Right outside of Flagstaff we got caught in a huge rainstorm and quickly realized my windshield wipers did not work AT ALL. We could not see more than 3 feet in front of us, it was pretty scary. So as soon as we pulled into Flag we stopped at a gas station and Mom bought some windshield wipers and she put those on herself, there strangely were some extra pieces, but we just threw those in the trash can! And I did some rearranging and got Dutch put up in the middle row with the girls. 

 The first night we drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico, right outside of Albuquerque it started raining again, no big deal we just turned on our new wiper blades. And then one all of the sudden one went flying but luckily got caught in the other working wiper blade. So off to the side of the road we went. We realized then that all those "extra" pieces weren't extras at all. But we had some scissors and tape and we taped that wiper blade back on. We are so resourceful!  We grabbed dinner at Olive Garden and then found ourselves a hotel. It was a little bit of a sketchy area but we made it out alive.
  I like taking pictures at all the state lines that I possibly can. So here we are at Texas. The kids did really well the first full day. Jackie was super sweet and made them each a big bag of travel activities. And I made sure we always stopped for lunch and dinner and got out of the car and let them wiggle a bit instead of going through fast food.

 I don't even remember what state this was anymore. But we did stop for lunch at Fazoli's, it might still be Texas, it is the next picture I took after the state sign, oh well who knows.

 At one point we saw these crazy car "gardens" so we took some pictures.

 The kids did super good, I really can't complain. We only had one incident were Dutch and Talli and both fallen asleep and when they woke up, at the same time, they were crying and inconsolable and we happened to be driving past a Burger King when this happened, so I quickly pulled in there and we let the kids play for about 30 minutes to calm down and be happy and then we were on our way again.

 The second night we stayed in Oklahoma. We found a Red Roof Inn and got a room. It seemed like a OK area. But that night a huge storm hit. It seriously sounded like the hotel was going to come crashing down. We quickly realized it was not the best hotel and we could hear EVERY noise. Mom and I didn't sleep great that night.

These next few pictures were taken in Missouri. I could not get over how beautiful and green it was. It was making me super excited to be in Ohio living in this beauty! 

We were only a couple hours away from our destination when we stopped for the night. But the kids were starting to get crabby, Mom and I were just exhausted from a bad night sleep and driving all day. So we stopped in Terre Haute Indiana and Mom "splurged" and got us a nice hotel at the Holiday Inn. The room was nice, it was a nice, safe feeling area and it had a pool. We got some dinner and then we just let the kids swim for a couple of hours and move around after being trapped in a car for two and half days. It was greatly needed and appreciated!

The next morning when I routed how to get from our hotel to Ohio this is what the GPS pulled up. Apparently we were going to have to walk the last portion of the way, yikes!

                                                    
This water tower said 'Brazil', I was getting a little nervous that we were headed in the wrong direction :)

We finally made it to Ohio, YAY! We left Monday at noon and arrived Thursday about noon. Granted we made stops along the way, and probably could have done it faster but we choose not to. It really was a good trip, but I hope to not being doing it again any time soon. Ohio is so beautiful! 

We made it to our new home. 

                                                  And it only took 1914.4 miles to get here.

I am so glad my Mom went with me. I could not image having done that alone. The kids were great, we made it safely, over all it was very successful!