farewell to jersey

our last jersey outing was to liberty science center in jersey city.  we watched an imax movie on polar bears as soon as we got there, the girls' first.  sister the younger found it a bit disorienting and even scary, but I think c enjoyed it.  we followed it up with a visit to the kids area, where c spent most of her time recording a message on a computer and printing out a ticket to look up her picture online, and her sister scooped and poured and dug and mixed a giant table full of rice =p  somehow I didn't get pictures of either of those though.

build your own roller car

c just launched that little green ball into the basket

a climbin' girl

I can't seem to resist taking these pictures =p

making goop in the activity corner

exploring some of the exhibits

another thing I didn't get a picture of was the touch tunnel.  it was a pitch-black maze of tunnels that you had to crawl through, keeping one hand on the right-hand wall.  i would guess it took three or four minutes to get to the exit.  the girls wanted to try it, so I went through first with c, not at all sure that she wasn't going to want out after we'd gone three feet.  as it turned out, she not only didn't panic, she went through three or four more times with nai nai while I fed s!  I took little buddy through, and she was a bit nervous the first time, but she wanted to do it again and again too.  whaddya know! 

one mean looking fish

I used to love these coin tables

she just can't help it =)

sunday was spent at church, then packing up, and monday after lunch, we hit the road.  I was so thankful to have my dad driving with us, not just for the company, but because it was one less goodbye. 

last shot in holmdel

all packed up!

c made whole sets of pictures for all her friends

and did a little snoozing

fruit snacks for the fledglings

dinner in wisconsin

the 23 hour drive, spread over a day and a half, was amazingly uneventful.  the kiddos are champion travelers!  we stopped every 3 or 4 hours, no more often than we might have had it only been adults.  we spent the night in richfield, ohio, half an hour from our shaker heights home.  ben had left cleveland that morning, after supervising the loading of our storage unit, and made it all the way in one day.  so on the next day, june 25, 11 days after our belongings were loaded in md, the family was reunited in byron, mn.  thanks be to God for keeping us and sustaining us through hundreds of boxes and thousands of miles!!