This is hardly the important highlights of our journey but, I wanted to cover some of the mundane details nobody but me seems to care about.
We were away from home for 25 days (24 nights).
We bought 237.8 gallons of gas at a cost of $708.20.
We paid $56.22 in tolls.
We drove 4,531 miles.
We travelled through 13 states and 1 district (not counting Minnesota).
We slept in 8 of them
… in 9 different locations.
We did something other than eat or buy gas in 13. Sorry West Virginia!
We averaged 19.8 mpg.
The hottest temperature was 105°F (according to the car) in Virginia.
We only travelled East and South of Rochester, MN
The furthest south we travelled was the Outer Banks (intersection of US 64 and NC 345 in Dare County, North Carolina on Roanoke Island) on our way to Manteo.
The furthest east we travelled was the Boston Children’s Museum in Massachusetts.
It rained briefly 3 or 4 times, never long enough to significantly change our plans.
We collectively watched less than 6 hours of television, movies and video games.
Oskar has been taking Taekwondo lessons at the RAC on Monday nights and working very hard to learn the correct form. Last night it all paid off as he earned his Orange belt. For those unfamiliar with the sport, belt progression goes from white to black as in the picture seen to the right here. You can learn all about the meaning of the different colors on the ATA site. In the higher belts, students learn to do increasingly harder forms and other feats including breaking boards. I also posted some photos from the event on Flickr.
Oskar is now an Webelos scout, the last stop before becoming a Boy Scout!
This last weekend marked the end of the 2009-2010 pack year with the annual graduation. This year, cub master Carl mixed it up a little and organized a great pack overnighter in a state park near Spring Valley, MN not far from the root river. A good time was had by all.
Kathy sent us this link about Dark Eyed Juncos. We did let him out after I shot this video. Oskar tried to get video of the release, but the camera was set to stills.
Yes, I know this looks a little different than what we had before… WordPress, the software I use to manage this site had an excellent default theme called Kubrick that I had been using. I assume it was last night when the software did it’s daily update that the page stopped loading correctly. The root problem was some custom tracking stuff I had put in place caused the update to not fully delete the old default theme and replace it with the new default theme. Well, enough on what happened, this is the new theme for a while until I get around to updating it – all the old content is still here.
For Xavier’s 5th birthday he wanted to go to the Kalahari, so we’re here in the Wisconsin Dells for a 3 day mini-vacation. Here’s a photo for everyone of the not quite 5 year old taken yesterday. Oskar has been really interested in the new indoor amusement park they’ve opened and has discovered rock climbing. He spent close to an hour on the wall yesterday. Xavier gave it his best trying to keep up with his big brother…
After much discussion and consideration we have decided we do not want material gifts for Christmas this year. We want to make Christmas about something more. We want to make it about spending time with the people we love. So now would be a great time to make a plan to do something fun with all of The Alyn Family, or you could make a plan with one or both of our kids, and give Egg and I some time together.
Please watch this video.
You may send a gift to Oskar and Xavier if you feel the need to, but please nothing for Egg or I. If you feel you need to do something for us, please donate to a charity in our name.
Yesterday, the Alyn Family all went Geocaching with the Cub Scout pack at Quarry Hill. I had never been before and I found it to be a lot of fun. Oskar wants to create his own cache – but first we’re going to see if we can find some of the coins and tags and move those around first. I found a nice application called BlackStar for my BlackBerry just now that turns it into a useful geocaching tool. I’m not sure how much exploration we’ll be doing, but you can keep up with our explorations on geocaching.com for now.
This doesn’t cover all we’ve done this summer, but it does cover what we’ve been doing for the last two weeks. Not included: vbs, multiple bike rides, winery, playgrounds, swimming and so so much more.
Oskar has been taking 
