Thanksgiving Roadtrip!

Thanksgiving weekend Paul and I was a great time! Lots of driving and adventuring. Not your traditional gotograndmasandeattoomuchpie Thanksgiving... but really great fun with my best friend Paul seeing some new things!

First up was Pittsburgh! Hooray! We joined Paul's sister's family for a delicious Thanksgiving meal in a new city.

Pittsburgh is right on the Ohio River. Industrial architecture for sure. Does it scream Batman to anyone else?

The restaurant where we ate our Thanksgiving dinner was on the other side of the river, looking at the great skyline. In addition, the restaurant is a converted train station which pleased the heck out of Reuben - train-lover-extrodonaire because trains were all over the place.

The Grand Concourse was pretty spiffy! I went straight for the food. Mashed potatoes for five please!

 Luckily it was a buffet and my worries of not having seconds on Thanksgiving soon melted away.

There were chandeliers in the bathroom! And great mirrors! Why is it that bathrooms are always so photogenic, and yet so inappropriate to take pictures in? (I definitely do it anyway...).

The main concourse was pretty darn fabulous with lots of stain glass and a great archy ceiling.

This fancy guy was making a weird ice cream/banana dessert. Paul got some. It had Rum in it. :)

 I helped hungover Paul (just kidding, the Rum was cooked out and he only ate the ice cream anyway) to our downtown Pitts hotel. Reuben thought the view was pretty great, but liked the free chocolate chip cookies even better.

And look at our great view! Occupy Pittsburgh right beneath my window. Please check out the fancy buildings and pretty trees too!

Of course we watched some fooooootball. All day. And took naps, and all things Thanksgiving.

Then we went on a little stroll and I saw these great churches! Next door neighbors. I wanted to go see the old cemetery because I think those are great and Paul thinks I'm weird for that, but across the street was the best I got.

And hello huge nativity! I took the kids down to check out it while.... (this part is sad) Paul tried to figure how to retrieve our towed car... dumb Pittsburgh - tricking us with Holiday parking regulations then towing the crap out of us anyway. How rude.

 So, while the boys figured out the parking incident, Valerie and I took the kids to the Children's museum in Pittsburgh. These neon streamers were really magical and if my house had tall ceilings and a push over husband I would probably try to replicate. However, my house has neither of those.

This is the best news! Children's Museum of Pittsburgh is home to these guys!

Do you recognize their friendly and slightly creepy faces? Queen Sara is the best one!

That's right folks, Mr. Rodgers puppets! So great to see in person! I miss that friendly neighbor!

Reuben found trains and could not be swayed to leave them for quite some time.

Not even the giant lite bright could persuade the little dude.

Me on the other hand...

I finally coerced Reu away from his choo friends with this great sand art. Basically it was sand on top of different color lights, but I found it quite magical. 

Audrey and I explored another section of the museum, which featured lots of mirrors.

Which resulted in lots of self portraits!

And the weirdest room that was a little bit tippy and made me crazy dizzy.

And there were some great bugs randomly framed in this section! Paul would have loved these giant guys if he hadn't been trying to get our car back from the Pittsburgh rudies.

This giant Kalediscope projection was probably not meant for children's faces, but being the excellent Aunt that I am - I encouraged it. Haha! Marian's face is so great times 10!

We (Paul) finally got the car back (after walking 3 miles uphill). And we decided to make our way to our next destination.

Kirtland! It was really magically driving into the town and on top of the hill, peaking over the trees was this guy:

The green doors were really what color they were originally. What a great color!

The Church of Christ did a great job with the temple and I really enjoyed my experience there. Unfortunately no inside pictures. I've never had a harder time not whipping on the iPhone to take a sneaky shot. The inside was amazing and white and really beautiful!

Then we headed down the hill to the LDS Visitor's Center. They had a bunch of nativities on the display and this one made me so excited. I must have some distant relatives in the town!

We hurried outside pre-tour to snap some pictures before the sun went down. The grounds were perfectly rustic and beautiful. A lot of the early saints were baptized in that little river!

The Newel K Whitney store was a real treat to see, and even better to tour the inside later. 

The best news of all was that our tour guide just happened to be this lovely sister missionary - who happens to be a good friend from my Freshman year at BYU! What a great surprise! And, I caught her just in time! She was going home in just two weeks!

 

Then we ate dinner in Mentor (pronounced Menner) and Mama Roberto's! Paul really likes me when he takes me out to Italian food.

The next day we drove a few hundred miles to Indianapolis! The highlight along the way was Bob Evan's and the nicest Mid-West server who even finagled her way into getting us from free cookies since we told her how much we were liking our first Bob Evan's experience!

We stayed an a fancy pants hotel, and since we were on the 10th floor, we often had to wait a bit for the elevator. And fortunately there was a mirror there to keep me entertained!

A couple of times!

Remember how Paul bought be tickets to the Colts for my birthday? The time had finally come!

Maybe he bought them before PMan was out of the season. Maybe we tried to sell them? Maybe nobody would buy them because the Colts haven't won a game this year but MAYBE we are just die hard fans anyway! I'm so glad we ended up going, it was a great time!

During this part said Paul "That flag is kind of small."
hahaha! What a loon.

Hi Collie, Garcon, Wayne, Freeny, Mathis! I'm glad we're all best friends now!

What a lucky lady I am.

Post-game: A few more self-photos at the hotel... when there are so many great mirrors all around, I just can't resist! My dad always accused me of loving mirrors - aka loving to look at myself in mirrors, and I guess this post is evidence thereof.

Then here I sat for a few hours (30 minutes) in this winged back chair while Paul downloaded the 8th book of the Hunger Games (free wifi in the lobby :)! )

We then took a tour around the fancy lobby and loved all the Christmas decoration so much that right before we went to sleep that night Paul said,"Let's go down to the Mezzanine and look at Christmas decorations again." I was all in.

Oh and we can't forgot the Christmasy shake we had at Steak and Shake.

The next morning we woke up early, got in the car and hit the road. Our GPS told us the news:

689 miles until your destination.
YYIIIIIKKESSSSSS.

The Hunger Games on tape pretty much saved our lives, as well as the occasional border crossing. I thinking crossing a border is such a great event! It's a little bit like time travel or something to me.

 We made sure to sing John Denver's "Country Roads" as we drove through the skinniest part of West Virginia.

Then a final fast food stop at Taco Bell to fuel us for the last couple hours on the road...
and that my friends was a SPICY weekend. :)