The Fairfax on Embassy Row

We checked into our hotel. It is really nice. We booked tickets for this evenings night tour. We are waiting for our tour bus to come. We visited the Smithsonian museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian museum of American History. Both were very nice and had so much to see and look at. I took a couple pictures of our hotel with my phone.  Does anyone recognize some of these things from the Night at the Museum movie??

Going to Washington DC

We left at 8am to head up to Washington DC. We are hoping to see many of the museums and national monuments. I guess there is a night tour of the monuments that we are going to try attending. I prearranged for us to have tickets fir the US Capitol tour tomorrow morning. The weather is REALLY HOT! It is going to take us 2.5 hours to get up there. We have a hotel booked already in Embassy row on Massechusetts Ave. It is the Fairfax at Embassy Row. We need to pay for parking ou vehicle. Hopefully the Excursion will fit in the lower garage. Themuseums close by 5pm, so we will need to hit some of those when we arrive. We packed some things to eat for lunch. We are excited to see the nations capitol.

Colonial Williamsburg, VA

Here are some pictures from our travels today: 

Last, but not least, here are some pictures of the lovers in our group!

We are here, in Virginia!

Sorry I didn't update this last night.  We were all so wiped from being in the car for 2 whole days.  We arrived around 6:30pm last night.  David and Xiang were at a party being held for thier homeowner association.  They saw us when we arrived and hurried back home.  Paula brought some corn on the cob, so we quickly heated up some water.  Xiang made meat pies.  Meat pies have hamburger, onion, and some pork on the inside and she puts a bread dough mixture on the outside and forms it into a pattie.  They tasted really good. 

So a little about our travels from yesterday.  Chris drove most of the way.  We drove through Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and then to Virginia.  West Virginia and Virgina are absolutely beautiful states to drive through.  We went through the Allegheny mountain region and the Appalacian mountain region and the Shenandoah Valley.  I can't imagine how beautiful it would be to drive here in the Fall when the leaves are changing.  We went up and down so many hills, some of them steep.  Good thing Chris replaced his brakes before the trip.  I took some pictures along the way and I will try to post some of them when we get a break.  Most of us are showered for the day and Paula and Wes are at church this morning.  We are planning to go to Colonial Williamsburg today and tour the city.  We might be going to Washington DC tomorrow.  If that is the case, we will stay overnight there.  That is all for now.  I will try to update pictures when I get a chance.

Michelle

We made it to Cincinnati!

We have now traveled from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.  Five states in one day is pretty good.  We didn't have to stop too many times today.  I think we stopped a total of 4 times.  The kids were getting restless at the end of the trip.  We have stopped for the night at a Hyatt in Cincinnati to rest up for the 2nd half of our trip.  We have traveled 600 miles today.  We are hoping to leave by 8am tomorrow morning.  We should arrive in Virginia by 7:30pm!  Nothing too noteworthy from our adventure today.  For some reason we like to not listen to the GPS directions and ad hoc with the atlas.  This decision has cost us an extra hour or two to the trip.  We do have concensus to (on the way home) follow the GPS advice/directions.  This decision created a little bit of tension in the car due to the fact that we were stopped on the highway in single lane traffic for...oh...about 1 hour:)  All is well now though because we get to rest for the night.  Nice hotel with an outdoor pool.  Too bad it is pretty late because I would love to jump in the hot tub.

Michelle

On our way to VIRGINIA!

We are planning to leave at 8:30am this morning.  Paula and Wes are looking at the atlas to verify our route.  It is an interesting process because you have to turn from page to page when you cross state borders.  I told them we can rely on the GPS unit to take us to our destination.  She insisted on having our route mapped, just in case.  Paula is a little nervous about having to drive the truck.  Chris and I plan to pair up with one of his parents, so we will have one of us either driving or navigating.  We might get lost if we have 2 seniors driving and navigating :)  Wes, as usual, has his bags packed and waiting outside on the driveway.  Chris is about 1 hour away (he had to work last night and pick up Calvin at Connie's house).  I suppose I will cut him some slack and drive the first leg of the trip.

Last night I arrived in Eau Claire at 10:30pm.  We drove here from Chicago.  Actually, the trip went pretty fast.  We stopped in Wisconsin Dells to eat at Buffalo Phil's.  This was a funny place because they bring your food to you by train.  We sat at the bar because the restaurant was so busy. 

We found out from other seminar goers that all of the flights out of Chicago were cancelled and they had to arrange for a new flight to fly out after 9pm.  Obama was visiting Chicago, so all air traffic was ceased.  We were pretty happy to be driving home instead of rearranging our flight schedule.  Who could have predicted that was going to happen.

I don't know how much I will be able to update this during our drive, but we plan on stopping somewhere tonight, so I will try to give you an update then.

Love,
Michelle

We made it to Chicago!

We left for Chicago at 8:30am.  Weather was great, sunny all day!  We stopped in Lodi, Wisconsin to have lunch.  We ate at the Dolphin Bar and Grill.  I finished driving from Lodi to Deerfield, Illinois.  We went through 5 toll ways.  That was an interesting process.  We don't have toll ways in Minnesota.  We didn't run into traffic until the last few miles to our hotel.  Dan, one of the guys that came with us is sick.  He was up all night last night.  He is hoping to feel better tomorrow.

The hotel we are staying at is beautiful.  It is the Hyatt Regency Deerfield.  My room is huge.  Our UL conference is held at our hotel for the next 2 days, so that makes it convenient. 

We ate at a Chicago style pizzaria tonight call Lou Malinati's.  The salad was awesome. 

Here are the lessons/thoughts for the day:

• Billboards announcing Fuddruckers take exit 171, start showing up 60 miles before the exit.
• If you have to stop at the rest area to throw-up, it is okay to use the bushes instead of messing up the bathroom (according to Dan)
• When you look up restaurants on the GPS, pay attention to the arrow direction because you don't want to go backwards to find a place to eat.
• In Illinois, they have signs along the highway that tell you if you hit a construction worker in a construction zone it will cost you $10,000 and you will spend 14 years in jail. 
• Dan asks "How much longer?" every 5-7 minutes (I have 3 kids, and they don't even ask that question that often).  At one point he accused us of lying to him and saying we told him 1 more hour 20 minutes before that.  We just chalked it up to him being out of sorts because he was sick.
• When you throw money in the toll way bucket, make sure all the coins make it in the bucket.  When you don't, the line up of 14 cars and semi's will honk at you for your retarded move.
• When they end up giving your deep dish pizza to another table, they don't charge you for the pizza.
• The locust are so loud outside, it is hard to have a conversation and hear the other person.
• There were 40 people waiting to get into the restaurant we had dinner at. I asked a couple a question about the loud noise (the locusts) and inevitably, they couldn't speak English.  Oh well.
• Here's one you probably didn't know.  When you drive in Lodi, Wisconsin the big sign says "Home of Susie the Duck."  Who is Susie the Duck???

I am just winding down and plan to get to bed early.  Have a great week and enjoy the sunshine!