The Tangrens

We should really have been taking pictures of the positions we find the boys in every morning because it is hilarious! One day Hyrum woke up to Noah’s legs literally draped across his head.

Our first stop was to see a coworker, client and friend of Derek’s who live in an old schoolhouse. They still have a rope pull school bell in the house, although it doesn't really look like a school outside, at least to me. They were nice enough to serve us a authentic Wisconsin BBQ lunch, with hamburgers and brats and a lot of cheese, of course.

Well truth be told the first stop was to Carters to get a baby gift for them. They had had a baby boy last month and we had to outfit that little man. We got him an outfit that said “Roadtrips are awesome!” Thought it was appropriate considering the conditions of our passing through. :) They also have a little girl that is 4 years old that the boys had fun with.

Of course the little ones bonded a bit too.

They went for a walk to see some fire engines on the neighbor’s property.

She seemed to really like Hyrum.

They were playing one time and we heard her say something about playing doctor, which perked up all of our ears but I went around the corner to see Hyrum in bed and her with a stethoscope around her neck sweetly putting a blood pressure cuff on him. Cute. I wanted to get a picture but he must have heard our alarm and was embarrassed to play "doctor" after that.

We headed off toward Escanaba, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula when I asked Derek about the idea to take the car ferry across Lake Michigan like we had discussed previously. We were torn, we both were excited to see the amazing scenic byways in the U.P. ( as we Michiganders call it ) but we thought the boys would enjoy traveling without being in the car. On the boat they could run around. They even had a play room, TV rooms, tables to put together puzzles and play card games. We were going to get a picture of the “Welcome to Michigan” sign and the boys were excited to see the Mackinac Bridge, but we decided to save that for another trip and have an adventure.

So we set our sails instead for Green Bay and got ready to look for cheese heads! I was telling Hyrum that in Green Bay people put triangle shaped cheese on their heads. The look on his face was CLASSIC! He looked at me with a face somewhere between disbelief and confusion and a touch of disgust.

We had some navigational problems and I was helping Derek get around so the boys were getting impatient. Noah, in particular, wanted attention so he was screaming. So he was put in time out. How do you put a child in time out while in the car you ask? That was Derek’s brain child. Noah had to close his eyes and fold his arms and no one could talk to him. He had a hard time with folding his arms but he did manage to close his eyes a bit. And at the end of the day it worked too. He never wanted to be put in time out.

That one is suffering from lack of attention to be sure. He sure is filling his roll as a middle child and a two year old to boot. He's just too cute to stay mad too long though.

You've seen this

They are on every hotel room across the country. And it has been absolutely essential to our sanity on this trip. Noah is a very independent, and would regularly open hotel doors and take off running, giggling all the way. The only way we could keep him from running off into the night in some strange city was to use the slide lock.

Don't be fooled by the innocent smile, he's getting ready to open the door and bolt.

We rolled into Green Bay with enough time for the boys to venture into the pool again. It was an outdoor pool. Hyrum got so nervous about the mosquitoes and made us ask them if they sprayed to kill them. Guess he was paying attention when we read the books about bloodsucking mosquitoes. We're in for a long week in Michigan.