Trip is almost over and we have to return the RV and get on the road by 4pm at the latest. We are on the home stretch to Denver after traveling through plains, deserts, along the coast, and up and down many mountains. Coming up the last mountain in the Rockies the RV slows and stops. Eventually we got going but it put us back an hour and a half. Then the person who is supposed to meet us at at 6pm can't get there until 730. We play football in the parking lot and ghost ride the RV to keep us occupied. Finally we are on our way at 8pm but wait!!! the window won't go back up we can't ride 1500 miles home with the passenger side window open the whole way!! Stop at home depot for plexi glass. (Of course we already have duct tape on hand that we used to keep the RV side view mirror attached). We got the "replacement" window in and were on our way by 9:30 sharp. Sounds like the beginning of the trip doesn't it? Paulson did an excellent job of driving through Colorado and much of Nebraska until 3:30am while I kept holding the window from blowing out every time we passed a truck. We had to keep pulling over so put more duct tape on the window. What a pain!!! Then Emily kept us going until we got close to Chicago while Paul baby sat the window Great job! Now we are on our way to Valpo where I went to school and I get to bust my brain trying to remember way back then and where everything is sure to drive everyone else crazy!!!!! Later Bev

Coming Home.

Woke up this morning at 3:30 when one of my favorite siblings opened up the car door and started poking me. So I crawled to the passengers seat, half asleep, as Mom drove through Nebraska, only to stop at a truck stop 15 minutes later to find more tape for the window (the passenger's window rolled all the way down but not back up 2 minutes after getting it back from the RV guys...fishy...so it is temporarily covered with a sheet of plastic and loads of duct tape.) And from there, I took over the wheel and drove through Nebraska and Iowa, powered by Mountain Dew and Peanut M&Ms. 10 hours later, Dad takes over the wheel and drives us into his old hometown and then into Chicago. It brought back memories of our highschool band and orchestra trip senior year and reminded me how much I love Chicago, and that I actually miss band and highschool..loser? maybe. Bucket List Addition: Live in an apartment in Chicago for a year. -Emily

Elmhurst, 60126

So we knew for a while before leaving on vacation that on the return trip we would try to shoot through Chicago on the way. I spent some time online researching the neighborhood that we lived in till the age of nine, and was pretty sure that not much would be left after 40 years. One thing that I wanted to do was to go to Q's pizza in Hillside Ill, which was the favorite takeout place back in the day. It was still there and still as it was then, although the pizza was not as amazing as I remembered....local neighborhood shop has raised the bar.

KInd of by accident, we wound up in the vicinity of the boyhood home, so on a whim I decided to try to find it. We went around the block a few times and then at the last moment found the right area , the right street and YES! the right house. I was wired like a fool and kinda charged the place with camera in hand. It turns out that I met the guy whose parents bought the house from my folks. Thay are refurbing the little place instead of ripping it down and putting up a rich-people house like a lot of the houses on the block. We got to go in and explore the place....the kids got to crawl through tha attic passage from one bedroom to the other just like we did when we were kiddos. How crazy. Sometimes you can go home.....and home is like it should be.-Paul

A Sad Day..

I bought one thing this year that I really really REALLY wanted. Something that would make my life 13 times better than it previously had been. Nike Shocks. White, silver, and baby blue. I loved these shoes so so much. Mostly because they wiped out a paycheck, and I felt obligated to love them. But also, because these shoes were my motivation to go to the gym. Go to the gym, and get to wear the new kicks. Well, I may have gone to the gym 2 times wearing these shoes. Anyways, I took every opportunity to wear them and pretend to look semi-athletic, even though everyone and their brother knows that it is a lie. Well, today, Those shiny white Nikes bit the dust. Literally. Zion National Park in Utah owned my shoes today. So I tried cleaning them off by walking through the river. Probably equally as bad of an idea as hiking miles of sandy, rocky, muddy trails. But all that set aside, I had a really good time! ***Emily

things that go bump in the night

Well as you can tell we haven't anything really funny happen on our trip but there have been a couple interesting things in the middle of the night.

The night we got back from the zoo and bragged about drinking about 10 zoo cups of every kind of soda they have someone wet the bed drenched more like........fortunately the bed had lots of blankets to soak up the filtered pop substance

Allison has been up wandering in her sleep a couple times the night we got into Las Vegas she had been sleeping in the bedroom of the rv and then came up front when she woke up crawled into Paul's lap in the passengers seat but she didn't stop there she kept going and climbed right up onto the dash board( its a mighty big dash board so she could really get up into the windshield) she never woke up

Last night Audrey reported that she got up and sat on the end of their bed for a long time again in her sleep

Paul reports that Paulson said "Dude! You can't go down there" probably dreaming about cliffs of Zion Canyon and Emily reports that the night before he said Duuuude!!! Its good for you!" and then twisted to crack his back again in his sleep.

so I had better go line the dashboard with pillows and lock the door tight nighty night I am becoming sad that our wanderings will soon come to an end. We had such a great day at Zion today We met a couple from Birmingham in the parking lot and hung out with them all day. We had fun together, but they split as soon as we decided it was time to go swimming in the river. That was such a blast. We are going to try to meet up in Bryce Canyon tomorrow. Bev

Intimidating

One of the amazing places we went in Las Vegas was the Louis Vitton store. The interior design was so awesome. Honestly, I am not so terribly impressed with his line but I really tried to look interested for Emily's sake so we could have a mother/daughter bonding moment. I also felt pressured to seem seriously intent for the sales clerks who were stationed at every turn. Of course sales clerks is totally the wrong choice of words but when it comes right down to it that's what they are. Anyways, it seemed like there was one for each item in the store. They were impeccably dressed and poised and they glared with that look in their eye like oh geek as if these low lifes could afford our Louis's Why are they wasting our time. I really tried for a while ....until I looked down at my feet and saw my dirty tennis shoes and knew that I didn't even have to try to pretend they knew they knew So I gave up and just blatantly ogled over the design of the store and pranced outta there!!! If my batteries werent shot I would have whipped out my camera and taken pictures

at Walmart

We went into Walmart. We went to subway and we got some sandwiches and after I asked my mom if I could get new shoes she said "I'm gonna go tell Dad" Then we went to the shoe isle. We looked at some tennis shoes. Mom said that some of the shoes were too heavy. Mom said that we should get $3.oo shoes I got shoes like Mr Rogers i got shoes that are blue. the first time I wore them the bottoms got very dirty. THEYRE DISGUSTING! but I like them they're disgusting but I like them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Vegas was amazing and I touched palm trees ummm We went to a hotel The hotel had 6 pools but 4 of them were regular pools and two were hot tubs one I couldnt really stand in so I had to stand on my tip toes. It was hard to swim. They had a water slide I went down about 50 times.also my dad went down with me a couple times. Sometimes I went down backwards and sometimes I went down forwards The hotel was like a giant mansion but looks like a castle We saw a white lady of liberty I call it lady of liberty's cousin We also saw Eiffel tower there's an elevator inside so you can get up top. We saw the Bellagio fountain it did crazy things....... before that my dad got 2 bottles of ice cold water for only 2 dollars When we got back to the hotel area it was good because there was a flat escalator that went up for a while and then went flat. In our room was a lamp 2 beds a giant tv a safe that was in a dresser, a bathroom a shower a chair that had a foot rest on it, a shelf a window that you look at the pool, one of the pools had 3 big water falls and 20 little tiny water falls in it,,,,,,, allison (as told to mom)