Our House...

Someday we'll love it! And someday I'll post some photos. Maybe even tomorrow. Stay tuned...
Oh, I need a new title for our blog. Any suggestions?

Highlights from our LONG, LONG drive

So I uploaded in the wrong order. Oh well. Mammoth Caves in KY was our first stop. Fortunately or unfortunately the only tour left in a time we could attend was just of the very beginning of the dry cave. Where they collected bat guano during WWI. Somewhat neat. We didn't get a chance to go into the "wet" caves to see stalactites and stalagmites. Connor was pretty disappointed about that. Fortunately, the tour we went on was pretty short. No baby backpack are allowed so Reed and I had to carry Greydon and Fienna. So the wet tour would have been MISERABLE. It was 2 or more hours. The weather outside of the cave was beautiful so we took a short walk and crunched lots of leaves. Even stepped off the path - gasp! The next couple of days we just drove, drove, drove. Tennessee was pretty. Arkansas and Oklahoma, not so much. But New Mexico? We loved it. We'd love to go back and spend a few days w/o kids. Santa Fe is not a city for children. Ours were the only ones visible. And we did get at least one rude comment. Not really a comment, just a sound of disgust under some artsy-fartsy young beatnik's breath. I guess we were taking up too much of the sidewalk. We just wanted to see the floating staircase. Got there after the church closed though. There's a carved statue of the man who built the staircase and then disappeared before anyone could get his name or pay him. Fienna saw the statue and yelled, "Jesus!" Then the top photos are at the cliff dwellings.

OK, I can't figure out how to use this thing! I thought that the Arches photos would be after that first paragraph. I don't know how to put my journaling where I want it! Oh well, the words and photos are all here. So the top, top pictures are at Arches. The kids had the best time climbing the rocks. Even Fienna yelled that she loves rocks. I just let them go. The kids wriggled and climbed into spots that others weren't going. Some mothers were telling their kids to come down, now. That was high enough. Benign neglect, I'm telling you, it's the way to go. Everyone in the Jones family was happy.

But not always in the car. There were some tense moments but all in all pretty smooth. Traveling with 2 babies isn't highly recommended but what could we do? And the big kids are just as happy to fight with each other as they are to play. Thank goodness for the portable DVD player.

Trees Across the Country

So the first gigantic tree is at a rest stop in WV. The next kind of ugly one is in Arkansas, or maybe Oklahoma. Those 2 states kind of blurred together. Neither of them was very pretty. At least the parts we drove through. Reed did like the Ozarks though. We did have some stops other than rest area but the funny thing is, the kids will probably remember climbing trees along the way as well as they remember anything. The "rock tree" was just so neat I had to take a picture. It's in Baldelier National Monument in New Mexico. It was a GREAT stop. Ancient cliff dweller ruins. We spent several hours and hiked 3 miles. Climbed a gazillion steps up a very steep cliff to a religious site. Great way to start our day. The last 2 photos are trees in Arches National Park. Another great morning. We could have spent all day here. And it was the perfect time of year. Cool and sunny.