Read part 1 of this list here.
4. Picnicking on peaches
Googling on the road led us to a fantastic u-pick peach orchard in South Carolina. Their prices made us feel like highway robbers. We paid them double what they asked and still counted ourselves lucky. Scott ate the best peach of his life. Err… 9 of them while we were there for lunch. The man loves peaches so this was an historic day.
We also hit up a roadside stand for boiled peanuts (pronounced “boled”) and amazing honeydew melon.
And a special treat on the way out? Watermelon buses we passed on the road.
That’s something I don’t see every day.
We headed to the laser light show that night at Stone Mountain in Georgia. We laid there on our picnic blanket shelling peanuts, slurping peach juice off our chins, and soaking in a little Southern culture.
5. Time in the car = solidifying friendships
The driving itself wasn’t really so bad. With a larger family, it’s easier to take turns.
We drove 7,894 miles with three young children in the backseat. There isn’t one moment I can pinpoint that captures the feeling of spending that much time together as a family in such close quarters… but honestly most of the time this is how it felt:
Happy.
Scott had a long seven years getting trained as a doctor and this time together was just what our family needed to feel totally whole again.
Although we had many adventures out of the car along the way, our time in the car was just as well spent on this trip.
Scott and I had the chance to talk. And talk. And talk… until our talkers were sore. Except, they didn’t really get sore. It was blissful. We reminisced and made big plans for the future. We talked about our hopes and dreams for our family, for our marriage and for ourselves as individuals. He cracked me up many times a day, several times to the point of tears. We enjoyed a few phenomenal audiobooks together. We sang songs every night as a family before “bedtime” on the road.
The girls were silly in the backseat:
Daniel was a trooper and had a good seatmate in Mackenzie:
We stayed away from “screens” and just stuck to books, car games, a healthy amount of boredom, singing and talking. Every relationship in our family was strengthened by this trip. Shared experience and pure quantity of time together in close quarters bonded us. My kids are truly each others best friends and I love it.
(See the toothbrush in a holder by Daniel’s seat? We had a few go-to toys for him like that one and Mackenzie was in charge of doling them out. Invariably they’d end up trapped between the door and the carseat. They spilled out into the parking lot at every stop. Amazingly, all of them made it to Oregon, though!)
6. Revisiting the place where Scott and I met
I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about how my husband and I fell in love. We met while standing in a ticket line during our years at Brigham Young University. We talked for quite a while, and eventually Scott asked me for my phone number… and then never called. A year later we were given a second chance on a silver platter – 3 classes together in one semester in a university with 30,000 undergraduates.
We’ll celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary later this year. Woop!
Twelve years have passed since that day at the ticket counter and we revisited the spot with three children in our arms.
I could never have predicted what those years would bring, but I’m so glad I’ve had the right person by my side to share them with.
… we also goofed off in the chemistry lab corridor. We spent so many hours in those hallways, studying and talking. It made me tingly just to stand there again.
(Is Scott giving me a zurbit on my cheek in that picture or what?)
To be continued…
wendeerosella
Aw, I love it all! Such fun!