Road trip

As I mentioned in my last post we made a quick trip to our new hometown this past weekend. We left early Saturday and came home late Monday. It is about a 7 hour drive and we spent a lot of time driving around in Wisconsin so the kids were in the car a lot, and all things considered they did very well. They are pretty good travelers. There was a lot of silliness in the back row:

and a lot of cute-ness from the middle section.

We got in to Madison around 2ish on Saturday and one of the first things we saw was this:
A fun little deli/ice cream parlour with a carousel in front! And since it was a vacation how could we pass it by? We had lunch there and rode the carousel. The food was so-so but the atmosphere made up for it. And Nora's life was made complete when daddy let her get this fancy drink:
(lest you think they were neglected Miles and Sophie chose to get an ice cream instead, there just aren't any pictures of the ice cream.)
It was a very cute place and had tons of random stuff all over.

The tables were so cool - they were clear on top and each table had a different scene. It definitely helped keep the kids happy. In fact, I would like one of my very own for dinner at our house! maybe one that had a removable top so I could change the scene each week? Hmmm..Then we just drove around seeing the sights and later got pizza and went back to our hotel to swim and watch a movie. I forgot how hard it is to stay in a hotel with kids, and especially a baby. No one goes to sleep until the last person is asleep and everyone wakes up when the first person wakes up. The second night Brian just drove Wes around in the car until he fell asleep, which worked well. But the kids loved the pool and we all loved the continental breakfast. It was a good reminder for me to pack some games and activities along on our much longer road trip coming next month.

The next morning we went to church in what we thought would most likely be our new ward. It was really small and somewhat quirky (but then I'm pretty certain most wards are quirky). We had a nice time and the people were very friendly. Then we went up to the UW-Madison campus and met one of Brian's colleagues, Dr. Bervin, to get some UW-Madison ice cream and see Brian's brand-new-state-of-the-art building. From what we saw of the campus it is very beautiful. It is nestled (crammed?) between two large lakes and seems very big. Dr. Bervin was very nice and even bought each of the kids their own "Bucky the Badger" UW-Madison stuffed animal mascot. Which they love. Then we drove around some more trying to get a feel for the area and where we'd like to be, and how far Brian was willing to commute to the school. Wisconsin is very beautiful. Lots of pretty farmland, trees, fields and dairies. We are excited to see more of it!
Sophie thought it was a bit chilly.We stopped at a place to see bald eagles but didn't see any. Still pretty.
Sunday afternoon ALL the kids fell asleep at the same time. Awesome.
Monday morning the girls swam once more with Brian while I packed up and the boys slept in (yay!) We had three appointments to see some places I had looked at on-line. The first two were duplexes and both of them were icky. Our last appointment was a small house for rent and we really liked it. It seemed like just what we were looking for. A short drive to Brian's school and within walking distance to the girls school, the library, a park and a swimming pool. There were 5 other people coming to look at it so we filled out the application and crossed our fingers and left for home. Here is the little park/lake area that is a few blocks from the house we looked at.

After looking at the 2nd duplex Nora had The Meltdown of all meltdowns. It will go down in Phillips family history as The Meltdown (at least I really hope we don't have one that tops it!) And it all started with a rock. Sophie found a small blue rock and Nora didn't want her to keep it because she didn't have one and that wouldn't be fair. When I told Sophie she could keep the rock Nora seriously lost it. There was much kicking, screaming, wailing and gnashing of teeth. I alternately wanted to laugh, cry and spank her. We were in the van and she was kicking Wesley's seat (which made him cry) and banging her head on her seat and anytime I would turn around to talk to her she would lean forward and hiss at me! It was impressive. We're blaming it on the fact that she was really tired. We pulled up to a Wendy's for lunch and I took Sophie and Miles and went and got our food while Brian sat with Nora and Wesley on the grass (it was next to a park) until she could calm down. I was worried the cops would show up thinking we had abducted her with how she was acting. Yikes. Anyway, we ate lunch and after a while she was fine.

On our way home we made the mistake of going through Chicago. It is really hard to avoid on the way from Lansing to Madison but from now on we'll go down below Chicago and steer clear from it altogether. We were in traffic for about an hour and a half. Miles fell asleep before we got to Chicago and in the middle of the city he woke up needing to go potty. And when he wakes up from sleeping to go potty he is not happy! He was crying immediately and there was nowhere to get out of the traffic. So for the next 30 minutes he screamed and sobbed and kicked my seat. I even took him out of his seat - since we were going so darn slow - and tried to get him to pee in a bottle! I thought boys liked doing that kind of stuff - but Miles refused. I thought if I pulled off his pants an undies he would go, but nope. When we finally got through the traffic we got to a Mcdonald's and Brian ran Miles in there and he made it to the potty. Whew! After that it was luckily uneventful and we got home around 10:45pm.
And we found out we will be renting the house we looked at. Hooray! It feels good to have that taken care of. Now on to the packing!