Road trip to Idaho

On Wednesday, Katie and I embarked on our Grand Fall Adventure: 19 hours in the car with kids. We broke up our travel in to two days: 13 hours to Boise on day one and 6 hours to Lewiston on day two. Katie was very worried that this prolonged exposure to her and her kids would cause "a falling out." Dave was also worried about this - in a joking manner - but gave the sound advise, "If you have a falling out on the way there, you will be there long enough to patch it up in time for the return trip." Well, sorry to disappoint, but there has been no falling out. The kids were great. And I mean GREAT. No crying, screaming, hissy fits, nothing. They were hella tired by the time we got to "the Ridge" - Katie's parent's house - but were such troopers in the car. In the following photos, play the game "Find the Lollipop" - some are more challenging than others.

Maya's lolly.



Caleb's lolly.



Katie, taking a break from looking at the road, with lolly.

Atop the Cascade Mountains, I think... Eitherway, a great look out.

We arrived at the Wittman Ranch in time for dinner on Thursday. A great meal - wholely organic and home grown, including the beef!!! Dawn had the most amazing garden. I have never slept so hard as I did Friday night - traveling is so tiring, which is so counter-intuitive - one would think that sitting all day is easy, but I was exhausted, so were the kids.

Friday was a great planning day, but no time was wasted: there's always something to be done on the farm, I've learned, so Katie and I were put to work. I am rather proud to say I have helped to paint a 100-year-old barn, all original (except the paint). Painting the barn was rather time sensative as it was scheduled to start raining on Sunday. With most of the barn done, but lots of trim to finish, it got rainy and misty here today, so no further painting has happened. Maybe sometime in the next two weeks Katie and I will get to finish the windows on the other side of the barn....

RtoL: Dick (Katie's dad), Jamie (farm hand), and C

Which side is newly painted? Hard to tell.

Today Katie, Dick and I went to the University of Idaho's homecoming football game. It was a great time. We attended Erin - a sorority sister of Katie's - tailgate and got to meet this year's homecoming queen, who just happens to be a Gamma Phi Beta like Katie! Fun. We stayed for the fist half of the game, leaving when the Vandals were winning 31 to 7. Katie took me on a short tour of campus, which reminded me a lot of JMU. We got to see Tom's fraternity house, which was disgusting, ew, men are pigs, and Katie's soroity house which was much much cleaner.

Tomorrow brings church and maybe horse backriding if the weather holds...