Traveling...

Lennon did really well with all the moving around and sleeping in different places. Of course, just like at home, he always ended up in bed with us half way through the night.

Lennon has always traveled really well in the car, but we didn't know how he would do with being contained for hours on end. However, we were amazed at how great he was. The first and last legs of each day, Lennon usually took a nap, so whoever wasn't driving was able to sit up front. The rest of the time, one of us would sit in the back and keep him entertained. We would make stops about every 3 hours and would let him get out and run around. And surprisingly, we didn't have one tantrum when we had to get him back in his carseat!
Our big drama was on our way to Wisconsin. We stopped in Cleveland over night between New York and Wisconsin. My parents were coming home from visiting Leah, Drew and Emery in Philly, so we met up at the hotel to caravan the rest of the way to Wisconsin the next day.

Here's a picture of our much-loved Subaru as it passed over 200,000 miles. It was a very exciting event for us, however that excitement was soon crushed...
Right after we had all stopped for lunch, about an hour outside of Chicago (3 hours away from my parents' house) our poor car started making a horrendous sound--we both looked at each other then looked at the dash where the Check Engine flashed on. We immediately pulled over and my parents followed.

I think both Adam and I knew that it was the end of our car. We called for a tow and while we were waiting we switched the car seat and a few other things to my parent's car. My mom, Lennon and I then set off towards Chicago so that we could beat rush hour.

My dad and Adam waited for the tow and then heard the bad news from the mechanic that our engine was fried and that it would cost at least $3,000 to fix. Obviously the car wasn't worth that, so they started clearing out all of the belongings (and we had a lot of stuff packed in our Outback for our month-long trip) and putting them into a rental car to head to Lake Geneva.

We had to rent a car to get back to Colorado. We are now a one-car family, which will test our family as Adam has started school again. We are hoping to be able to afford a car by the end of this year.

It sounds silly, but there are moments when I grieve the loss of our Subaru--I think it fully hit me when we were dropping off our rental car once we were back home. With all of the stress of our broken car on the side of the interstate, I didn't get to take a picture of it or say goodbye. I really loved that car and Denver is saturated with Subaru's, so I get constant reminders that we don't have it anymore. Needless to say, there's a good chance we will buy another one!