Hotel Life

So after we accepted the new job offer, we packed up the car and drove to Ohio.  I had never been to Ohio before and Brian had only been for a few hours for his interview.  We had no idea where we were going to live but we didn't want to rush into anything out of desperation so we found an extended stay hotel and planned on living there for a month or two while we did the whole home buying process.  We ended up finding our house pretty quickly so we spent 6 weeks in the hotel.  Living in a hotel wasn't too terrible but we did look for excuses to get out so we did a lot of exploring of Columbus during our hotel stay.

We knew there was a temple in Columbus, but we didn't know that we were going to be staying so close to it.  We actually just got lost one day, went to turn around in a parking lot, and ended up at the temple. It was literally two blocks from our hotel! We took several Sunday walks to the temple during our stay.

We went downtown for the Jazz and Rib Festival.  It was HUGE!  There were tons of these stands that came from all over the country selling BBQ.  We got ribs, brisket, and pulled pork.  Despite not being able to finish it all, it was delicious!

This is Brian taking a Sunday nap at our hotel.  One of the things we are looking forward to most when we leave here is a bigger, more comfortable bed!

This is the Scott's Miracle-Gro campus.  On days when I just couldn't stand being in the hotel all day, I went to work with Brian and worked in the cafe that had a window overlooking this.  It was much better than our little, tiny hotel room.

Dublin has one of the biggest Irish Festivals in the world. Brian was pretty stoked about his Reuben!












We have some friends in Utah who organize 5k races all over the country.  They were doing one in Dayton and asked if we could help them out.  It was so much fun!  We are helping them out with another one in Peoria, IL next week.

The only people we know in Ohio are Heather (one of my sorority sisters) and her husband, Lance.  They live in Cleveland which is about 2 hours from Columbus.  They were having a birthday party for their little girl so we made the drive up.  It was really fun to see some familiar faces and their little girl was so cute!

This was one of those nights that Brian was ready to just be home for the night and I wanted to go out. We settled for a quick dessert date in the Short North.

Marysville has an annual hot air balloon festival.  We went to check it out and it was pretty awesome. There was a balloon shaped like a birthday cake and one like Darth Vador.  The balloons took off and then they brought them back and lit them up after it got dark, it was awesome!

Brian and I decided to get season passes to the Zoo! It's a really big zoo and we are really excited about lots of future zoo trips.  We spent a lot of time watching the monkeys this time - they were so funny!  There was also a baby gorilla that was so cute!

We decided to go for a walk by the river one day - mostly just to get out of the hotel.

After closing on our house, we decided to celebrate with another trip to the zoo!  We didn't have a lot of time before the zoo closed, so it was a quick trip, but the monkeys were probably still my favorite!

After the zoo, we went for sushi. Again, Brian got sushi, I got good food! The place we got sushi ended up being a karaoke bar so we hung out for a while and watched people sing, it was pretty entertaining!

This is our new bed! We are so excited to have a little space again after being in the tiny hotel bed for 6 weeks!  Again, we decided to celebrate our new purchase with food.  We went to a sports bar downtown this time and got some calamari, chips, wings, and pizza!

That about sums up our first 6 weeks here in Ohio.  We move into our house tomorrow and we can't wait!  I will post pictures about the house as soon as we have internet set up out there.

Road Trip to Ohio

So, most of you know, but for those who don't - Brian was offered a job at Scott's Miracle-Gro in Marysville, Ohio and we accepted it.  We left Utah on Wednesday morning, July 10.  Brian's first day at his new job wasn't until July 22 but we decided to leave early so we could break up our drive a little bit and so we could do some house shopping once we got there.  On Day 1, we drove to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

At about 9:00 that morning, we stopped for ice cream cones at Little America which is a tradition in Brian's family.  I thought it was a pretty weird thing to be doing so early in the morning, but there were lots of other people doing the same thing.








We got to Mount Rushmore around 5:00 that evening. It was pretty amazing.  You can't see it the whole drive up the mountain.  At one point, you can see some of Washington's profile, but that's all.  Then after you pull into the parking lot, it comes out of nowhere and it's massive! We did the hike around the base and the whole thing was impressive.  It added a few hours onto our trip, but it was definitely worth it!

On Day 2, we drove to Gettysburg, South Dakota where Brian's grandma lives. We stopped at Pierre for lunch and had a picnic on the lawn of the state capital building.

We stayed with Brian's Aunt Laurie in South Dakota for 2 nights which gave us enough time to see the family farm, spend some time with Grandma, and go to the town museum!

Grandma Hepper used to work at the museum so she gave us the grand tour! We weren't really sure how to sign the guest book, but decided Ohio looked cooler since there was already lots of Utah names on there.  We saw lots of cool things at the museum - including this high school photo of Brian's mom!

Us with Grandma Hepper

                  Brian with his Grandma and Aunt Laurie

On Saturday morning, we left South Dakota and headed for Minneapolis. About an hour into our drive and Brian saw a sign for Storybook Land and I swear I have never seen him so excited in my life!  We had to sit in the car for about 10 minutes and wait for the place to open but I think Brian would have waited hours if he had to.

Storybook Land is basically just a big park with storybook scenes scattered throughout it.  It was an awesome park though and the castle was super impressive.

There was a whole part of the park that just Wizard of Oz. This yellow brick road was probably half a mile long and pretty much walked you through the whole movie. We accidentally started on the wrong end though so we went through the movie backwards and we finished our walk in Munchkin Land.

Stopping at Storybook Land put us behind a little bit, but it was a nice place to take a break and Brian was in heaven reliving his childhood!

When we got to Minneapolis, we checked into our hotel downtown and then rode the train to the Mall of America. The Mall was a little overwhelming, it was huge!!! If you spent only 10 minutes in each store there, it would take you more than 3 days to go through the whole thing! We went to the Aquarium, did some shopping, and then grabbed some dinner.

It's hard to tell from this picture how massive these lego displays are, but to put it into perspective the lego people were probably about 4 feet tall.

Sunday was the biggest leg of our drive.  From Minneapolis to Indianapolis was about 10 hours and we went through 4 states!  This day was pretty uneventful, just a lot of driving. We did go through Chicago, but there are just SO many trees out here that we couldn't actually see the city from the freeway.  We got to Indianapolis at about 8 pm that night and really excited to be out of the car after such a long drive. 

On Monday morning, we only had a little over two hour drive for the day so we slept in and didn't hit the road until almost lunch time. It was a short, uneventful ride so this was the only picture I took but we finally made it to OHIO!!!!!