The Long Drive Home

3 days and 2 nights, that's how long it took us to drive cross country. Alastair, Emre, and I with our stuff fit into our little Jetta. We re-packed the car and left most of our stuff with my in-laws, and swapped out California gear for Michigan gear. Man, I forgot how cold it gets! Actually, we never experienced a true Michigan winter because last year was so mild. But this year...Jack Frost is nipping!

There's nothing much to say about the drive. The road conditions were great, Emre was awesome, and there was a moment when Alastair and I randomly started belting out Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." We also stopped by a few Cabela's along the way, to entertain Emre. Not my kind of store, but Emre loved all the taxidermy! We showed him all the animals and the fish tank, it was like he was at the real zoo. To this day, he talks about going to see the elk, turkey, and all the other woodland creatures.



Also, New Year's Eve was celebrated by staying in the Marriott somewhere in Iowa and falling asleep before 10. I briefly woke up, looked at the clock and saw that it was one, then fell back asleep. It was actually really great, I love sleep!

The highlight had to be when Alastair planned to stop at the zoo in Omaha. We kept on telling Emre that we were going to the zoo, so that got him looking forward to something along the way. We got there with just a couple hours to spare before it closed, so we carried Emre and ran around! We missed the butterfly exhibit, which I was actually sad about, Emre loves butterflies! But we saw a polar bear, tigers, elephants, those are some of his favorites! Surprisingly, all our favorites were the jaguar, the giraffes, and this dome shaped exhibit that housed desert animals. The jaguar kept on pacing back and forth in front of the window, it was so cool! And such a beautiful animal!




There was also an aquarium that had a glass tunnel to observe all the sea creatures. We admired the sharks, stingrays, turtles, various fish, and penguins. Alastair and I loved the penguins but Emre was kind of afraid of them. Which I get cause he didn't realize that there was a glass barrier and I looked as if the penguins were diving and swimming towards us. There was also a peacock walking around outside and Emre got excited and chased after it, and the peacock ran away. Thanks goodness he didn't attack Emre! So we had to teach him to slowly approach. I love going to the zoo, especially with Emre! It's fun to get excited over things that aren't as significant in the day to day.

New Year's Day, we made it to our apartment, emptied our car, then drove to IKEA to buy a bed and some other comforts. A huge meltdown from Emre in IKEA was the nail in the coffin (I don't blame him. I was over it as well!), but we finally got settled in pretty late at night and fell asleep pretty early that night. Anyways, we're all settled in and we're happy to be back in Michigan! It's so nice to be back in our awesome ward and to have a social life with the amazing friends! It's good to be back in A2!