the davenport trail – day 4

Sweet P spent a little time in her FF (future friend)’s jungle gym (or play mat or activity center or whatever those things are called) before we got on the road.  She loved it!  I can’t wait to get in the new house and have our things delivered so that we set up Miss P’s since she clearly enjoyed it!

 
 

We left Madison and counter intuitively headed south.  Hey, I never said that our route was going to totally make sense in our efforts to see friends along the way to Denver.

First stop, UD!

My nursing view – the very empty lobby of Marian Hall.

Can’t go to UD without hitting up the bookstore. 

The Science Center – comprised of Sherman Hall and Wolhaben Hall. 

There is now a clear view from KU all the way up to Marycrest!  It’s weird but looks so nice.  Though I do wonder where they moved the darkroom, if they even have one anymore.  It was a really nice darkroom that I really enjoyed one summer. 

“Showing” P where Mama spent a great portion of her collegiate career, Sherman, which housed the Math Department and where I worked.

Fancified Kettering Labs where I spent the majority of my time in class all 4 years and out of class my last year.

I didn’t know that the School of Engineering was 100 years old this year. 

They finally repainted the old ZTA house.  It’s the same color but you can no longer see the shadows of the letters on the house like the last time we were at UD.

Our house next door on L Street.  It still looks exactly the same!

We continued just a bit farther south to see Carolyn and Andy and the kids and stay the night.  


With her bib at a jaunty angle, P says “why don’t we have a super comfy ottoman to lie on and stare up at the ceiling fan at our house?”
Miss A is 12 days older than P and is a cutie pie little chunker! 

The girls enjoy a little bouncy chair confab in the kitchen. 

Proud dads look on… 

Accommodations for the night.

the davenport trail – day 3

We didn’t make any forward progress on Day 3 as it was Independence Day and we stayed put for the holiday and a few of our other friends came to Madison to visit for the afternoon.  It was so great to visit with everyone and meet all the babies.

Stroller brigade on the way to the park.







Will was trying his darnedest to find a cache in the park.


Miss M must be a good baby for Tara to play with her so long ;-)

the davenport trail – day 2

We had originally thought that we had another 5 hours (and that’s sans baby time) left to get to our first official stop in Madison, Ohio but it turned out that it was more along the lines of 3 to 3.5 hours.  Yay!

I think she likes having the extra room – that is not how she was laid down in the hotel pack and play.

 

Well, that meant that we didn’t have to really push ourselves.  We were able to lollygag a bit getting out of the hotel and stop along the way.  Such a nice leisurely way to start the trip.

our talented driver


Just about over the Ohio River

It’s road construction season in the midwest.

My view from the front seat.


Kinder Happy Hippos from Kate

We arrived at our destination about 3:30.  It was so nice to see my friend Shelley again since we have seen her since our wedding about 2.5 years ago when she was pregnant with her first girl and now she has two!

 
The first.

And her second, our glimpse into the future as she is about 3 months older than our Miss P.

We all headed over to Shelley’s parents’ house for a lovely cookout with the whole family

The doggies were fascinated.


She wasn’t really in a cage.  Cork is afraid of the gates so there was one on either side of her to keep him from bothering her while we ate dinner.

Finn and the new puppy, Bran.  So cute!

the davenport trail – day 1 or maybe 0…

I can’t decide if we should really count yesterday as the first day of our road trip since we didn’t actually leave town until nearly 5 o’clock. We had a few last ends that needed tying up around town plus a few things that we wanted to do before we left town.

We got an early start to the day due to Sweet P’s habit lately of wanting to eat between 5:30 and 6:30.  So after she fell asleep again, we spent a good half hour repacking both cars to get everything to fit so that everything in the 6 was in the trunk and everything in the 9 fit in the way back (I was making sure that there would be room if one of us needed to sit in the back with the baby).  It took a bit of shuffling and we did jettison a few things at Kate’s but in the end it all worked.  Ok, except for the random few things that I now realize are in the car that we are not driving.  der.

After, Will dropped P and me off at Nail Sculpture so that I could get my nails done.  Sounds dumb, I know, but it was nice to relax a bit and start to feel like a normal human being instead of a crazy person with crappy chipped nail polish.  It was also nice to see the lady who has been doing my nails for 8 years again before we left town – she even came in early to see me.  The ladies in the shop really enjoyed seeing Miss P.  While we were doing that, Will took our bits and pieces back to the cable company and got the cashier’s check we need for closing from the bank.

Next up, we ran into Kate who had to run into work to get something so we killed the time before meeting up with her again for brunch by going to Sears to buy a fridge.  Oh yes, buying a fridge in about 20 min is awesome.  I might have liked to have more time to look around and get the best deal but really, we need a fridge right when we get there and trying to buy one on the internet while we were on the road didn’t seem like a good idea.  We may have stopped at District Taco for a bit of a snack before going to Sears…

Then we were finally able to get to brunch.  Le Pain Quotiediene… yum!

All the while we were figuring out how to have our other car shipped to Colorado.  That was a process!  Very much aided by Kate.  So another chore down.  Even if it did involve a stop at Office Depot to print and fax a form.

waiting for Daddy to come back from Office Depot.

And then…

And then… I sound like a broken record…  we went to National Harbor to pick up some cupcakes from Cake Love to contribute to the cookout in Ohio.  And may have gotten 2 for the road for us to eat.

Then it was off to our final stop – Tyson’s Corner.  Yet another silly sounding stop just for me.  I desperately needed to get my eyebrows done.  But we were also able to get a last good late lunch/early dinner at Coastal Flats, one of our favorite Northern Virginia restaurants.

Finally around 4:45, we finally got on the road officially.  We made it all the way to Morgantown, WV without stopping which was amazing.  Of course, the minute we got off the highway Miss P woke up and realized that she was a mighty hungry little girl.  We quickly found our Hampton Inn for the night and got checked in so she could eat. 

All in all it was a slightly stressful yet wildly productive Day 1 or maybe Day 0.  We’ll call it Day 1.