This past weekend, I went on an epic 2,000 mile round trip road trip with my grandma, my aunt, and my sister! We went to Rockville, Indiana to visit my mom! I absolutely LOVE visiting my mom. The area where she lives is absolutely gorgeous! There are trees EVERYWHERE and if it wasn't for having found myself the best boyfriend ever, I would totally consider moving there.

So, this post won't have as many photos as I'd like because I forgot my phone everywhere we went because the service is crap around there! The trip started at 5 am on Thursday. My sister and I had to be to my grandma's house by 5:45 to leave by 6. Which was lame. We picked up my aunt around 7 and were finally on the way! 

I made my grandma stop in Walcott, Iowa at The World's Largest Truck Stop because I knew they had Caribou Coffee and I NEEDED it!

The trip there took about 13 hours. We got there around 8 pm. It was so nice to see my mom! It's been like 2 years since I've seen her! She made us homemade pizza that night which was amazing.

The first full day there we basically drove around and didn't do much. We went out for breakfast. We went to look at a mill in Bridgeton. We usually go there every time we visit.

I love looking at the covered bridges! I got my boyfriend some raw honey from there just to get him a souvenir. And some sassafras candy to pass around at work so they don't think I forgot about them.

We also checked out a house that my mom is going to help restore. And then the guy who owns it will let her live there! It's kinda sad looking at the moment, but it's so amazing!!

It has this lovely magnolia tree out front and in the yard there is this LOVELY corner just surrounded by trees! If that was my yard, I'd never leave.

My sister didn't take any pictures of the house, but it's awesome, just trust me on this one.

After all that we went back to our hotel room and relaxed. There's an amazing stream behind it that my mom, my sister, and I walked down! There's a pool at the start of it that was full of curious little fishies.

I wanted to swim in it, but I told my sister she pry didn't need her swimsuit on this trip. Oops. There were also crawdads in the stream, which I had never seen one before.

The stream was probably one of my favorite parts!

We ate dinner at Rock Run Cafe which is my favorite restaurant there. They have awesome cheesecake, which they never have on days where I'm there of course.

The next day we picked up my mom's boyfriend's mom and went to Terra Haute to eat lunch and shop a bit. We had Japanese buffet which was delicious and I got my mom to take me to the bookstore! :) I went on the trip with two books and I left with the following stack:

So that was a successful day. On the way up there we stumbled upon the coolest geocache ever.

On the way back we checked out an old abandoned church on the side of the road.

So neat. I also decided we had to check out the bar in Rockville since everyone in our party was 21 for the first time!

We ALSO checked out a winery called The Drunk Tank. It is in the basement of a 150 year old jail. It was neat.

They had a (not real) electric chair in there. They said they had some people from Florida visit who worked on Death Row and told stories. And what I thought was interesting is that Death Row is basically like apartment living. They are sentenced to die, not to jail so they can't be treated like prisoners so apparently Death Row is a lot more chill than regular jail. 

We didn't do much else past that. We've seen most of what Rockville offers so that left more time to just hang out. Which was super nice. I saw an Amish buggy which made me happy. I like when I see the Amish when I go there. Don't know why.

The ride home took two days and I felt myself losing the will to live. But that was only the ride back to where my grandma and sister live. I had a 4 hour drive beyond that back to my house. But I made it through and my sister and I are planning our first solo trip to see my mom! I'm already super excited! Hopefully by the time we get around to it, my mom will be in her sweet house!! 

So that was basically my trip in a nutshell. Can't wait to see my mom again!!

Blogger in Real Life (#1)

I saw a feature something like this on someone's blog once, but I can't remember who it was and I can't seem to find it again. It had a list of prompts to talk about in your real life, but that's not really what I want to do, I just wanted to talk about something from my real life for a change! So if you're only here for the books, scroll on my friends. This is probably a fairly boring post anyway!

So, one year ago today I went to the Minnesota State Fair to a Fall Out Boy concert! 

I was thinking about this today and wishing I still had it to look forward to! It was so much fun! I couldn't believe it when I saw that Fall Out Boy was actually going to be somewhere relatively close to me! If you call a 5+ hour drive close... Five hours to get to my relatives house in Edina and like two more hours through horrible traffic for her to drive my cousin and I to the fair. That was so nice of her.

Anyway, so we got to the fair and had some time to kill and I had heard that the MN State Fair was like THE place to find fried anything on a stick... Well, I guess they were hiding all the fried stuff on a stick because all I found in that category was pizza and it wasn't even very good. So that was a bit disappointing. But they had a booth with fresh, warm chocolate chip cookies that totally made up for the lack of fried goodness.

We went on some rides. Only a few because in my old age, I have kind of started to suffer from motion sickness and I can't go on ALL THE RIDES anymore (but I can totally read in the car). I was severely disappointed when I learned that about myself a few years ago. We played like one game because after all the rides we each had enough tickets for one game. It was even one where its easy to get a prize!

After all that we went to the stadium because it was getting close to showtime! So exciting! I always buy a tshirt when I go to concerts so I stood in line for forever and a half waiting to get one and we missed the first opener. Which was fine because I'd never heard of them and don't even remember who they were.

Then we went to stand in the crowd for Paramore! They were fantastic!

And then we got to get a whole lot closer for Fall Out Boy because a lot of people must have taken off to get drinks or something, but it was awesome. Except my cousin didn't want to be in the crowd because she spent all summer at music festivals, but I told her TOUGH!!

Oh my word, and they were so amazing. I would go see them again in a HEARTBEAT! This takes over first place for my favorite concert ever. Kicking Rascal Flatts out of the first place spot!

What was your favorite concert that you've ever seen? :)