Relaxing two weeks at home with friends

Getting ready to visit the Adler Planetarium.

We just finished up a very nice two-week stay back home in the Quad Cities.  The last time we were home was in August, so it was time to take a break from the traveling and visit with friends and family.

Our first stop was my older sister, Nicole’s, house in Sugar Grove, IL.  We went there for Memorial Day weekend.  My mom and dad came up from Tennessee, so we had most of the family together.  The highlight of the weekend was a trip to the Adler Planetarium.  The exhibits were neat, but the best part of any planetarium visit is the star shows!

After our stay with Nicole we drove back to the Quad Cities and stayed with our friends, the Putnam’s.  They have two boys, Jayden and Josiah, and our kids love playing with them.  They bring a different kind of energy and rough housing that Sophie and Sawyer love!

Quick self portrait on the way to the top of The Viper at Six Flags.

One of the fun things we did was an adults only trip to Six Flags Great America.  Amusement parks with kids are fun, but they obviously dictate what rides are going to be ridden.  It was nice to be able to enjoy mostly coasters instead of kiddie rides!

The rest of our time at the Putnam’s was filled with lots of baseball games, playing outside, and late night board games.

We stayed with the Putnam’s for one week and then went to visit the Daniel family for a week.  Sophia and Sawyer were looking forward to playing with Avery and Reese.

Sawyer, Reese, Ben, Sophie, Avery, Reanna, McKenna, and Andy.

Brett and Megan recently moved into a new house in Coal Valley, so it was great to finally see it.  They live near a park, so we enjoyed a lot of time playing tennis and letting the kids run around.  Some more family friends, the Munjoy’s, even came and spent one day with us.

The Daniel’s hosted a great cookout on our last day of the visit.  They invited a lot of Quad City friends and family and we enjoyed lots of food and games.  After a busy two weeks of trying to pack in as much as we can, it was very nice to end the week with a relaxing day hanging out with friends.

Nothing like a little backyard bags tournament.

By far the biggest negative of traveling is missing friends and family.  These little mini-vacations at home are a must.  I am sad that the time has come and gone, but we had a great time.  I wanted to give a special thanks to the Putnam and Daniel families for welcoming us into their home for a week.  Anybody who puts up with the craziness of the Kelley’s should be commended!

Up next is a two day drive East.  We made it as far as Erie, PA on the first day.  Tomorrow we will finish off the drive to Boston.  We are going to spend a quick couple of days at Beth’s parents, then we are headed to our summer camp in Connecticut.  We are very excited for camp to begin.  It should be quite a summer!

Lots of Arches and lots of driving

These national park sign pictures are becoming a tradition for us.

Today we continued our long journey East and did some sightseeing before a long drive.  Last night we stayed in Moab, UT which is just outside of Arches National Park.  We had a little extra time, so we took the kids to a park to burn some of their energy.  After spending the better part of a day in a car, they both need a little running around time!

We started our day off today at Arches.  It was a really beautiful park!  I wish the kids were a little bit older and that we had more time.  There are a lot of things to see and trying to squeeze in a whole national park in a couple of hours is tough.  Some of the more interesting arches are off the main drag, so you have to take a good hike to see them.  But we managed to do quite a bit in our little time.

One of the hikes we did was Balanced Rock.  Plus we saw Delicate Arch, probably the most famous of the arches.  But I think Sand Dune Arch was probably the favorite for the kids.  It was a pretty small arch, but it was surrounded by a huge sand dune.  One thing we have learned during our travels is that our kids love sand!

We finished our time in Arches a little after lunch.  We knew we had yet another long day of driving ahead, so we couldn’t stay too long.  We ended up making it to our goal of Denver, but it took a bit longer than we thought.  The drive through Colorado was beautiful.  Lots of mountains, tunnels, bridges, and snow.

We ran into some unexpected winter driving weather in the mountains.  Winter weather in May was a surprise, but I guess we should have known better!

Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park

We are in the middle of our five day, 1,700 mile journey from Phoenix to the Quad Cities.  When we originally drove to Phoenix, we did the whole drive in three days without really doing any sightseeing.  Since we have a few weeks before we need to be in Connecticut, we figured it would be fun to see some sights on our way East.

Up first was Mesa Verde National Park in Southwest Colorado.  Mesa Verde is huge collection of Pueblo Indian cliff dwellings.  When I say huge, I mean there are over 600 dwellings in the park.  You can only see a handful of the dwellings as you drive along the road, but the ones you can see are pretty spectacular.

We took a guided tour of Cliff Palace.  It was a collection of more than 200 rooms and believe to be kind of a gathering spot for the thousands of Indians who lived in the area.  The Indians lived in these dwellings for about 700 years, between the years of 600-1300.

After our guided tour, we drove around and saw a couple of the small ruin sights.  We knew we had to get in about three hours of driving time after we left, so we didn’t hang around much longer than mid-afternoon.

Sophie stamping her National Parks Passport book.

Right now we are in Moab, Utah and on tap for tomorrow is Arches National Park.  The short drive from Cortez to Moab was really pretty.  I am looking forward to seeing the unique rock formations tomorrow at Arches!

Looking forward to our next adventures

This was taken at camp shortly after Beth and I started dating.

One week from tomorrow we will be leaving Arizona and starting our long drive East.  We are planning on doing some sight seeing in Colorado and Utah on our way to the Quad Cities.  Then we will spend about two weeks having some much needed fun with friends and family.  It will be great for the kids (and us) to be able to see their friends again!

After our time in the Quad Cities, we will be driving to Boston for a couple of days.  Then we will start our next adventure at a summer camp in Connecticut.  Beth and I can’t wait!

Most people already know the story, but Beth and I met at a summer camp called Camp Awosting back in 1998.  We started dating the following summer and then went back for one last time in 2000.  Beth spent a total of six summers at Awosting, spending most of her time as the camp babysitter.  I spent three summers split between being the journalism counselor and working on the ball field.

We had our wedding on the waterfront of Camp Awosting in August of 2004.

Beth and I even returned to camp in 2004 to get married.  We invited our friends and family to spend a whole weekend with us at camp.  We had a softball game, opened the climbing tower, had a bonfire, and enjoyed some of the other normal camp activities.

Needless to say, we have really fond memories of camp.  Without a doubt, the three summers I spent at Awosting were the best summers of my life.  Camp is such a unique experience and we have always dreamed of going back.  Luckily our travel nursing lifestyle has given us an opportunity to do it again.

This time things will be quite a bit different.  Instead of Awosting, we are going to be at their sister camp, Camp Chinqueka.  Plus we won’t be normal counselors.  Beth is going to be the camp nurse and I will be the camp driver.  Instead of being in our early 20′s and just being there to have a good time, this time it’s all about the kids.  Our main reason for going is to let Sophie and Sawyer enjoy the camp life.  Sophia is going to attend a day camp during the week days.  Then she will spend the nights and weekends with the girls at Chinqueka.

Sawyer will be able to explore camp and do all of the activities.  He will have a babysitter follow him around to keep an eye on him.  We actually met Katie, our babysitter, via Skype earlier this week.  We had a great chat and the kids really enjoyed meeting her.  Hopefully our kids didn’t scare her too much, because they tend to get a little crazy during Skype sessions!

I think the two months at camp will be a nice break for all of us.  It will be nice for Beth to get a break from being a staff nurse.  It will be nice for me to get a break  from being with the kids all the time.  And it will be nice for the kids to get a break from me!

Children’s Museum and Mountain drive on Tucson day trip

They had an art studio at the museum, so Sophia felt right at home.

We are getting down to our last couple of weeks here in Phoenix.  In fact, this past weekend was our last free weekend.  Instead of just sitting around the apartment, we figured we had better go and do something that we haven’t done yet.  So we took a day trip to Tucson!

Tucson is about two hours south of Phoenix.  I went on the trusty Trip Advisor website and looked up some of the good places to visit with kids.  The Tucson Children’s Museum was one of the top choices, so we decided to check it out.  You can’t really go wrong with a children’s museum!

Most children’s museums are pretty similar, and this one fell in line with the rest of them.  It was a good mix of educational stuff combined with lots of button pressing, sand, and other things that kids like.  Sophie and Sawyer aren’t quite old enough to really grasp the educational stuff, but they always have a good time at these museums.

After the museum we had lunch at a nice Mexican restaurant.  It was Cinco de Mayo afterall!

We managed to walk around a few of the rocks before Sawyer fell asleep in the car.

We finished our quick day trip with a drive up a mountain.  One of the top tourist thing to do in Tucson is visit a place called Mount Lemmon.  It was a very scenic drive to the top.  Unfortunately about half way up, Sawyer fell asleep.  So that limited our ability to get out and do any actual hiking.  But it was a very pretty couple of hour drive to the top and back down.

Sawyer woke up when were driving home and said, “Aw man.  Where is the mountain?”  He was disappointed he missed most of the trip.

 

Reflecting on one year of traveling

One year ago our lives took a pretty drastic turn.

On April 30, 2012 we saw the ABF trailer pull away from our house in Davenport.  Then we got in the cars and headed East toward Boston and eventually Durham, North Carolina.  Beth and I traveled for two years in the past, but we didn’t really know what to expect or how long this would last.

Travel nursing with two kids has certainly been different.  The draw for doing this is exploring new areas and being able to do things that we wouldn’t normally be able to do.  But having two young children affects the things you do and how much time you can spend doing them.  That being said, we have still been able to accomplish what we wanted.

At first I was keeping track of the miles we drove, but that turned out to be harder than I thought.  I lost count at roughly 17,300 miles, and that’s not counting the normal driving around town.  We have driven through 26 states and have touched the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.  We have hiked through the mountains, played on the beach, hiked in the Grand Canyon, took a boat ride at Niagara Falls, and even met Mickey Mouse and his friends.  It’s been quite a year!

It hasn’t always been easy.  And there are certainly some drawbacks to our current life style.  It would be interesting to see what Sophia said if somebody asked her, “Where do you live?”  The kids often say how they miss their “really, really, really old home” and sometimes ask when the next time they will see their friends.  But Beth and I both agree that the chance to travel and see things they wouldn’t normally get to see outweighs the negatives.

We have a limited window on when we can do this.  Our original plan was to do this until Sophie started kindergarten.  Since she has a Fall birthday, she won’t be able to start until Fall of 2014.  That means we have at least another year and a half of potential travels ahead.  Will we travel that whole time?  I have no idea.  There are many days when Beth and I wonder if its worth all the hassle.  Packing up and moving every three months is fun, but it’s also a huge chore.

As of now we are still enjoying the lifestyle and plan to keep traveling.  When that changes, we will eventually “settle down” and adopt a normal life.  But until that happens, we will continue to see the country and have more adventures!

 

 

It’s potty time!

Potty seat?  Check.  Lots of juice?  Check.  Spot Shot Stain Cleaner?  Check.  It must be potty time!

I can’t say I’ve really been looking forward to this task.  Sure, the positive of not having to change any more diapers would be nice.  Plus there is the whole cost savings aspect of it.  But potty training can be tough, and I hear it can be especially tough for boys.

There are all sorts of potty training methods out there.  We are currently using the naked time method with a potty seat in the living room.  Sophie is very into it, so that’s good.  She made a sticker chart for Sawyer and every time he gets up from his potty seat, she reminds him to sit back down.

We don’t have a whole lot going on the next few days, so we probably won’t stray too far from the house.  My goal was to have him potty trained before summer camp in June.  But I also know that sometimes it takes a couple of attempts before kids get it, so we’ll see how it goes.  Wish us luck!