Wow, so a whole month has gone by and man has it been busy. On Friday, April 9th Rene and I began our road trip from Indianapolis to Alaska. On our way out of Indiana into Illinois we saw a sign for Yogi Bear's Jellystone so we went to check it out and guess what.... We found Yogi!!
Here's Rene and Indy with Yogi himself :)
And then Yogi took Indy for a little walk.
While Indy was doing his thing, Rene and I took a walk down memory lane and played on the teeter-toter.
After Jellystone, we went to Nauvoo, IL - a historical site for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Here is the beautiful temple
And again at sundown
We left Nauvoo pretty late and continued to drive for some time before stopping at a truck stop for some sleep. The following morning we made our way to Colorado Springs, CO to see my older sister and her family. Silly me didn't take many pics, I was enjoying my time with them to be bothered with a camera :) However, we did take some time to tour the Olympic Training Center there with Jessica and Kaitlyn (2 of my beautiful nieces, the 3rd was at play practice). Here we are with the Olympic rings
This statue is out front and Rene, Jess, and Katie are trying to jump up like them. This is just one of the many takes
And Rene, the first 'Strong Man' ;D Look how he holds the entire world with just one little finger
Katie, a natural ballerina
My nieces are so very spectacular, with no training at all they jump into the bobsled and make it look so easy.
Outside again, Katie shows her superior Taekwondo skills and kicks Jess in the head (no one was actually hurt in this picture). lol
We were in CO for an additional day, but again no more pics were taken. We then headed out for Salt Lake City to see Rene's brother Ammon and his family. They were so wonderful to let us stay in their new home. We had a lot of fun with them all, it was a lot of fun to see our nephew Kai and new little niece (or not so little anymore) Mia. They are dolls. While in Utah I went to Ikea for the first time and fell in LOVE with the store. Rene on the other hand changed his first diaper, oh the milestones we reached! And again, I'm so sorry that I did not get any pics while we were there. :(
This was the sign I wrote on the rear window, 'Alaska Bound.' I wrote another one on the side of the car that I never got a picture of, it said "Caution, Slow Turns, Puppy on Board."
After Salt Lake our next destination was Yellowstone National Park. We went through Idaho where I saw a sign advertising the Potato Museum. Really? Seriously, a potato museum?!! How could I pass on a gem like this so I persuaded Rene to stop here. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there but we were able to get a pic of Rene and Indy with their HUGE baked potato.
In Northern Idaho, on the outskirts of Yellowstone, we stopped at a Ranger's station to make sure we were on the right track to get to the Park. However, sad news was awaiting us... Yellowstone was closed for the season and would be reopening in just
3 days!! Just our luck, eh? Oh well, we did make a stop at a local place to have some lunch and let Indy play in the snow. He loves snow, he's an Alaskan dog at heart.
Since Yellowstone was out of the picture and put us an entire day ahead of schedule, we really took our time and made some stops in small towns. We drove for 16 hours that day and around 8pm we got into a small town called Coer D'Alene, ID and decided to stop. I thought we'd sleep in the car or something but Rene had other plans. We went down to the water where there was this beautiful hotel. Rene took me in under the impression we were only going to look around, but he worked his magic and got us the Honeymoon suite for a mere $125 (the room normally goes for $350!!). My hubby, the silver tongued devil ;) Here's a pic of our room
And the view from our balcony, what a way to wake up!
We then stayed overnight in Seattle, WA with Troy Green and his beautiful family. For the third time, I neglected to take any pics with them but again Thank You to them for having us in their home. Oh, and while we were at Troy's place Rene ended up getting a pretty had bite on his nose. He was playing with Indy and ended up taking a bite to the nose, a pretty bad bite that needed stitches. However, there are NO 24 hour Urgent Cares in the Seattle area. How absurd is that??!! I ended up cleaning it for him and putting a band-aid on it so he could sleep the night and we'd go to the doctor in the morning. After the doctor's we headed North to Vancouver, BC (Rene's mission).
About 1 hour away he received a call from a friend in Vancouver who advised him the new Vancouver Temple was currently having an open house so we changed our plans and went straight to the temple. Again, a beautiful temple.
While in Vancouver, we were blessed to stay with a family Rene knew while on his mission. There were many sites Rene wanted me to see and here are a few of them:
The Vancouver Aquarium - a pic of some Jellyfish
On the road we saw this beauty - A Viper.... enough said :)
Now, has anyone ever seen one of these?? It's a spider spruce tree... really, that's what it's called (according to Rene). It was pretty neat so I had to get a picture of it.
Here we are at the Lynn Valley Suspension Bridge (it's just like the Cappilano -as seen during the Winter Olympics 2010 - but FREE). As much as I wanted to see this and as cool as it was, I did not expect to get weak knees while crossing. The bridge moves a ton while you walk across, especially with others on the bridge at the same time.
There were other trails around the bridge and while perusing around I found this spectacular picture worthy site :)
We did quite a bit more while in Vancouver, but this entry is already too long so I'm keeping it brief. After Vancouver, Rene and I decided we wanted to just drive right on through Canada and get home as soon as we could. I had to get in and get some paperwork done for my new job and we had a lot of things to set up. It took us about 52 hours to get from Vancouver to my parents home in Eagle River, AK. Here's one of our 3 hour nap stops... Indy is attacking Rene's face :)
We also saw a little too much wildlife, although nice it was a little scary late at night when we'd see them on the highway crossing right in front of the car. We had to slam on the breaks once to miss hitting some Caribou.
This is a Big Horn Sheep
Caribou... one of the many
And Wood Bison!! We were super excited to find them. The road sides were littered with bison poop... I must say the Bison are a lot nicer to look at! lol
And finally, we're Home!!!!
Our mountains!! :)
So that was our Road trip in a nutshell. Once we got home (it was last Tuesday night) we were constantly on the go. On of our first priorities were to pick out paint colors for our condo. Here are the before and after pics.
The entry/living room...
From white to 'antique silver' with a red accent wall.
The backside of the living room with part of the kitchen (Rene helped paint the first two walls and taped this one for me)
Now the finished product, again the antique silver with our olive green kitchen (from here on out I did all the painting. It took me 4 days to do all this)
The kitchen before... plain white
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and now, a pretty green (my original plan was to restain the cabinets mahogany but that wasn't going to happen - not enough time. Perhaps I'll get to it in the future)
The view as you walk into the condo
Do you like the colors picked? We think they go well together.
The half bath downstairs
We did a two tone wall, yellow on top and a light blue on the bottom. Again, we'd like to later get some crown molding to make more of a distinct line and make it cleaner as well.
(no before pics for the bedrooms, they were all plain white) Now, the master is this grayish color
The office is 'kiwi kissed' which I think is more minty
And the bright yellow workout room :) This is my favorite room because it's so happy and bright!
So that was our month of April, we stayed super busy and it will continue throughout the summer. I'm working for the cruise company again so I don't know when I'll have time to post anything but I'll try if there's anything interesting to share :) Rene however, will be working hard to memorize all of the new maps and begin his training all over again.
And here is my brother-in-law, Brad. I love this guy, he can always make you laugh!! It was such a treat to see him as he's been off in Egypt for the last year. Luckily, he was able to come home for a few weeks around the girls' graduation. Love you Brad!!
In the year leading up to this day I would talk to my sister Tammy about the girls graduating and it would make me cry. I've watched them grow from babies into young girls and now young women. Here's Jessica, sorry I didn't get a better picture of her but you can still see how wonderful she is :) 
And at the end of the ceremony everyone looks to the stands at their family and friends.... these two girls had a large cheering section, man you should've heard us screaming for them.... or did you?!! lol 
They were awesome!! It brought back so many wonderful memories from High School and all of our friends. I still remember getting calls from Troy, Austin, Pat or Colby and they'd start singing me a song and many times it would be a classic Boys II Men hit. :) 
Towards the very end of the summer we drove to Whittier with our friends Spencer F. and Anya W. It was pretty neat, none of us had been there before. The neat thing is that the only way to drive to Whittier is through a one-way tunnel through the mountain! I took a video to see how long it took and I believe it was around 12 mins or so, I can't remember right now. I didn't add the video but here's the Welcome to Whittier sign to prove we did go there. 
And last but not least, fishing!!!!! I really wanted to some fishing this summer but we never really had the opportunity or the $$. We were also hoping to coordinate with my parents and that didn't happen till the end of the summer, but we did get out. Here's Indy on the boat for the first time. He spent a good deal of the time in my lap or trying to get into things. He was super restless and totally intrigued by the water and fish. 
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