HOME SWEET HOME!!

After six weeks of being on the road, we are finally home.  :)

We hit 20 states plus Washington DC, two countries (US and Cananda), slept in 19 different campgrounds, drove almost 6,000 miles, and used a little over 500 gallons of diesel in the truck.

(Our official statistics are 5859.7 miles, 510.7 gallons of diesel, 11. 5 average miles per gallon, and the truck ran for 160:29 hours.)

What a TRIP!!!

We pulled in last night about 8:45 pm. We drove from Marseilles, Illinois and our original plan was to stop in Des Moines, but Matt was anxious to get home, so we kept on truckin'!

It is amazing how big your house looks when you live out of a camper for six weeks.

These are some differences we noticed right away:

1. We don't have to light our stove or oven to cook anything.
2. The woodwork in our house is so much lighter than our camper. Our kitchen almost glowed with the white appliances!
3. We had cobwebs in my bedroom and bathroom, plus little spiders making some new homes on my counter tops.
4.  We actually have room to walk around!! There is so much floor space in my house!
5. What? I don't need to worry about the water. I have endless water?? Seriously?
6.  A Real toilet!!
7.  My children all slept back in their own beds last night and in their OWN rooms (except the girls because they share). I made them all change their sheets before they went to bed. Who knows what critters had taken up residence in our beds!
8.  Is that a washing machine and dryer right in my house?? I don't have to pay $2.25 a load?? and I can walk away and not worry about somebody stealing my clothes, my soap, or my money?
9.  What a huge fridge I have!
10.  Ah, a couch for us all to fit that actually FACES the TV. What a luxury!
11. Is that a dishwasher? I don't have to handwash my dishes everyday (and worry about running out of water.)
12. Hmmm. That empty house smell. It actually was giving me a headache last night.
13.  The ceilings are so high!
14.  The children act like they haven't seen their toys in forever! We are having NO behavior problems with Christian because he is so busy playing with his legos  and his knex that he hasn't had in 6 weeks!
15. I don't need to worry about wifi anymore. It comes on automatically!

Taking a trip really makes you appreciate what you have at home!!

(PS- I must apologize for my lack of blogging. I started out strong and then I couldn't blog while online because I was using up very precious bandwidth. We were also in some places that we couldn't get internet, so I had to give it up. I did keep going though on a word document on Matt's computer. At the end of the day and after everyone was in bed, I would take about an hour and write up what we did that day. I did this until we hit New York City.  Once we got there, we spent about 12 hours in the city and by the time we got back to our campground, it was nearly 11 pm. This was too late to stay up and blog plus I was tired!! I always told myself I would go back and catch up, but I never did. I should have and maybe someday I will regret it. I may post the days that I did blog, but I don't have anything at all after NYC. You know it's hard to go back once you quit something. We do have plenty of pictures.)