Fact: Day Eight (updated)

I am currently in our hotel at 2am on the night of Day Nine (really, the start of Day Ten). And this is how much I love you all--I'm still going to update this blog. We had such a super fun day on Day Eight. We started off the day in North Carolina. We made it to Virginia to our friends' house and then drove to Maryland to another friends' house. I'm going to let the pictures do most of the narrating and I'll just clarify where I need to...

WARNING! This post contains graphic pictures of an accident that MAY BE TRAUMATIC. Brace yourselves, breathe in, breathe out. Relax. It's all going to work out fine in the end. SERIOUSLY--DON'T FREAK OUT (Jimmy).

I love this picture. The end of Day Seven was the first time on our trip that we have been cold enough to need jackets. Will has always loved Jim's jackets. I woke up this morning and found him curled up asleep using it as his blanket. Probably his best night's sleep on this whole trip!
I tried to get Dwight balanced on my arm to be like the bird...but he was too top heavy (or I'm just a terrible balancer).

This is at the Woodburys house. We knew the Woodburys at Edwards Air Force Base in California 4 years ago. They were in our ward and Jamie is the friend that helped set up our preschool co-op. In my preschool now, I still use the curriculum she set up way back then.

At my request, Rachel took Dwight and gave him a tour of the Woodbury's yard. And a zillionth of a second after this pictures was snapped, Will came running over to the swing not knowing that Dwight was already ON the swing...and a horrible accident occurred.
Creed: He was drunk as a skunk, he was flying down Route 6. He slides under an 18 wheeler. Pop. It snaps right off.
Dwight: That is the way to go. Instant death. Very smart.
Creed: You know a human can go on living for several hours after being decapitated.
Dwight: You're thinking of a chicken.
Creed: What did I say?
This is the graphic picture (obviously) to which I was referring at the beginning of the post. Rachel about had heart palpitations, Will felt awful.
His cappa was detated from his head.

If my head ever comes off, I would like you to put it on ice.
When I die, I wanna be frozen. And if they have to freeze me in pieces, so be it. I will wake up stronger than ever because I will have used that time to figure out exactly why I died and what moves I could have used to defend myself better now that I know what hold he had me in.
Luckily we had Jim the nurse with us. He performed a re-attachment with Crazy Glue and a choke hold (at least 45 seconds according to the package). And Dwight continues on our journey relatively unscathed (the biggest change for Dwight is that he doesn't get to go back and live with Jimmy after our trip--a new Dwight will be moving from nbc.com to Provo to hang out with Jimmy and seam-around-the-neck Dwight will now live in Show Low with us).

Here's Jamie and me together. It was so fun to spend an hour catching up on old times. I asked Spencer, her 4 year-old boy to take our picture. I gave him a quick tutorial on how to use my camera and we got this cute one out of his photo shoot.
We also got this...
...and this. Awesome job, Spencer!
Will & Spencer posing together (Matt was too busy playing with the t-ball set out back).
Dwight on the map at the Welcome Center in Maryland.
Jourdan and Dwight feel welcomed...
Driving through Maryland to Leonardtown, we saw this sewage truck. The declaration "Sewage Only" makes perfect sense. The end of the slogan "We Take it All" makes perfect sense. The middle line is utterly baffling "Every Body's Gottta Take a Little".
Seriously, what were they thinking? At the very least, shouldn't it be "Everybody"??? If it's "Every Body", what is the little they've gotta take? And of all the slogans in the entire world, WHY WAS THIS THE PERFECT ONE???

We made it in the early afternoon to the Martines' house. They are also friends from Edwards Air Force Base back in the day. Colleen was one of the first people I met in our ward. And Tara and her family live about an hour from Colleen so she drove down and met us so we could have a little reunion together! This is the three of us old friends. Also, it's the ONLY PICTURE I TOOK!! All our kids got along like houses on fire, they sort-of-remember-each-other and they had a really super time together (Will asked if Colleen's boy Eric was available for adoption and went to cub scouts with Eric, teaching him the cub scout promise on the way)...and we never took their picture together.


Tara had to leave in the early evening to get to a meeting, but it was so fun to see her. It's like we were never apart! We spent a lovely evening with Colleen, Mike, and their kids (and Colleen's parents whom we have met before and love--so it was a blast to see them, too). Jim changed the oil in our van in the front driveway, Will helped Eric get through his first cub scout experience, Colleen and I schemed on how we can get our families to be neighbors (or maybe even share a house to help cut down on expenses), Matt played the Wii (typical), and Rachel played with Chelsea (who has grown into such an adorable girl!).

We also got some supplies we need for a super-exciting event we plan to be part of on Saturday in New York City.

Then we stayed up talking until it was way too late to post these pictures. And the day was perfect.

Fact: Day Seven

Today was another travel day.

We left Orlando this morning at 5:30 (that was EARLY, by the way!) and Jim drove through pouring rain for a long time. I cannot precisely verify how LONG of a time since I was dead asleep for most of the morning. As was everyone under the age of 21.

We slept.

The whole day.

And Jim drove.

Now, we have a very strict get-out-every-100-miles policy. So of course we stopped and everyone got out (see pictures below). But then we were back in the car and snuggled in our blankets quickly.

The early day of driving turned out to be awesome for us non-drivers. We got to our hotel here in Wilson, NC before 6pm and Jim and I even went out to a movie tonight. We saw "Angels & Demons" in case you're dying to know everything that's going on around here...we thought it was a great movie--true to the book's tone, improved some of the less-believeable parts of the book, and generally respectful to the Catholic Church. But are there REALLY one billion members of the Catholic Church in the world? That seems like a lot. They kept repeating that statistic.

Anyways, tomorrow will be the first time Dwight gets to meet some of our actual friends. We've met some nice people on our trip and now we get to see some folks that we already know are nice...can't wait!

Leaving Florida (poured rain the whole time) and arriving in Georgia. When we pulled up for this picture, Will read this sign out loud in a somewhat-questioning manner. I explained that it's a song and Matt pipes up from the back seat "Yeah, it's a song by John Mayer!" Which means he was thinking of "Why, Georgia, Why" which is one of Jim & Matt's favorite songs of all time. Good call, Matt!
This stop was the first time all trip that we have been cold. I have a stash of jackets, tennis shoes, long pants, etc thinking we'd need them for going up into Canada...and we might need them a bit earlier (or else Will is going to have to dress as Obi Wan the entire rest of the trip).
Matt freezing. He was hiding under a picnic table to get away from the breeze.
I think that Matt took this picture and somehow managed to get his own head
and Jourdan in the shot.
Our lunch stop was halfway through South Carolina. We had stopped earlier at a convenience store and I bought this to share for lunch. If Dwight had found it in Meredith's van, he definitely would have downed the whole thing.
Except it's just cider...peach cider!
It tasted so amazing--totally like fresh peaches.
It was really concentrated and thick--so we diluted it with ice. And loved it.
At our picnic table there was a charcoal grill with this podium stand next to it. Jim put the atlas on the podium and started giving us a sermon like this "Let's read from the Book of Maps" and we got to giggling about the sermon of our trip...and it ended up like this:
Let's read from the Book of Maps, the South Carolina Chapter, the 95th verse (because we're on I-95 of course). We had a lovely sermon, said Amen and moved on with our day.
Arriving in North Carolina. We chattedvisited with a woman in the van next to ours and she shared her olives with us. She was traveling alone to her daughter's vet school graduation--and we had a lovely visit.
Dwight checking out the area from his high up vantage point.