We Made It!

It's official, we made it home alive! After living from our car for 2 and a half weeks, we arrived home in Bloomington, MN at about 11:15pm. We had originally planned to be home by about 8pm, but we had a little set back, which I'll get to later in this post.

So on Saturday night we were heading to Jay and Kendall's house in Fort Collins, CO. It was dark and pouring rain when we approached their driveway, where we were greeted with a gate. So Dave called Kendall and sure enough they did not have a gate in their driveway. Somehow we had their old address from over a year and a half ago. We ended up driving another half hour backwards to their place and were welcomed by all of the kids! We didn't expect that because it was quite late for them to be up, around 10pm. But we had fun visiting for a little while!

The next morning, the kids showed us all around the house and outside. We met their new kittens (born last Monday-ish), their horses and their dogs! We did take pictures but I don't have the camera cable with me at the moment.. I will post those next time! We also were treated to a delicious breakfast with the fam! Then we hit the road for aunt Mary Ann & uncle Art's place in Neuvelle, NE. Yes, a quick stay with the Fleischman's, but we had to make the 7 hour drive (which was about the longest time we had to drive on our entire trip by the way).

We arrived at the Newman's house around 6:30pm just in time for dinner. And man were we spoiled -- ribs, steak, and a spread of sides. I got Art's rib rub recipe, too. Definitely trying that soon! Absolutely scrumptious! It was amazing to see how much Ryan and Kyle have grown in the past year since we last saw them. But we could tell as Kyle inhaled two plates of food in the time it took us to finish half of one. Almost a teenager...! That evening Dave and I were both dominated at Mario Go Kart on the Wii. Then we played Trival Pursuit..and were dominated by team Mary Ann-Art. Team Ryan-Dave came in a close 2nd. We were served a perfect strawberry shortcake for dessert and hit the sack early after a full day of driving.

Monday morning we headed out to Lincoln, NE to visit Dr. Dan Sullivan's office. We were pretty excited to visit with Dr. Dan because he is a graduate of Northwestern (Dave's school). He had a lot of great insight for Dave as far as classes, boards and school in general goes. He also gave some great practice advice and gave us each an incedible, much needed adjustment!

We headed back toward Omaha then to meet Art and Mary Ann for lunch while the boys were in school. It was then that we noticed our rear driver's tire was looking low. Dave checked it -- 20psi. *Crap* we said. Even after refilling and rechecking later, it was right down to 20 in a matter of hours. So we got a recommendation from Art and headed to the tire place hoping to get our tire patched in an hour or less. Well, after waiting almost an hour and a half, the guy came out with bad news. Before we purchased the Matrix back in July '08, apparently the tire had been previously patched. But, it was a tire that was unpatchable because of steal belts lining the treads. So this past owner had patched that tire anyway, which over time wears away due to the treading pattern, so our tire was unrepairable. We ended up waiting another half hour for them to put on a new tire. So we were delayed about 3 hours, which is way we got home soooo late on Monday night.

Poor Dave started school at 7am today, officially a T6 and about half way through with school. I didn't have work until about noon today, so it was nice to sleep in a couple extra hours after Dave left. I start full time tomorrow though, so I suppose it's time to hit the sack! We hope you've enjoyed following along on our adventure across the mid-west!


- Elise