new car + road trip 2of4!!!

we got to raleigh, nc at about 1:30am. at this point we'd been up for like 20 hours. we were staying at my friend jessi's house who i love so much!!!!!!!!!! we met when jon and her boyfriend at the time were in bootcamp and we've keep in touch ever since. she has visited us a few times because she is a flight attendant and can do things like that. i'd never been out to see her, so we planned our trip so that we could stop at her place. when we got there, she had a pilot friend sleeping on the couch and one in her room and had a blow up bed for us on the floor. by the time the pilots left at 6am, jon and i were sleeping on the hard ground with no air left in the mattress. i quickly got into bed with jessi while jon slept on the couch. 

 i know these are horrible out-the-window pictures, but raleigh is so cute!! who knew???? also, how dare you have such green grass in the dead of winter!!

 as you can see, we went to the flying biscuit cafe in the morning. i love being with jessi, she has such a positive outlook on life and she is theeee funniest! she is not lds and she grew up in nauvoo, a mormon town. she very kindly told us that we are her favorite mormon couple (eye roll). she followed up by saying, "no, i know a lot of mormon couples! i see them every once in awhile. when they ask me how i'm doing i say "good. still drinkin' and swearin'."" my goodness does that woman have a mouth on her, but it makes her that much funnier. i really did not want to say goodbye to her, but we had a long day ahead of us...

 here she blows!!! isn't it so cute!!! we stopped to get gas at this teeny tiny gas station where everyone knew each other but us. this is when i started to drive for the first time. it is such a smooth ride and gets up to 83 miles per hour quick! so quick that i didn't even see that cop with his radar! needless to say, that 45 minutes was the only time i drove the whole road trip and yeah. i do have a north carolina speeding ticket i still need to pay off.

our friend aaron is from asheville, NC so we decided to stop in and see his stomping grounds! it reminded me a lot of park city, ut with all the cute little shops and sub zero temperatures. he was so excited to see pictures we sent him. it was fun but would have been much better if he and ashton were there to show us around. we got four little meatballs from the mellow mushroom. (turns out we have one of these in san antonio too!)

 our next stop was the tomato head in knoxville, tn!!!!!! i can not explain to you how cold it was here. it was very difficult for me to pull my pants down (tmi?) to use the restroom and this is why:

ice. along the walls and floor in the bathroom.

knoxville was really cute, i'm glad we stopped there for a couple hours. the square was dead because the weather was so bad. while we were driving, we were getting text messages from family asking how we were doing because that part of the nation was experiencing arctic chills. there were signs all over telling people to stop driving and stay inside. luckily, all was well for us although we were very, very cold.

next stop, nashville!!

guesswhatigotanewcar. 1of4

as much as i loveeeeee my nissan altima, jon has been encouraging me to entertain the thought of replacing it with something a bit newer and more reliable. over thanksgiving, jon was perusing his land cruiser forum and came upon a 2010 toyota camry xle with 28,000 miles located in Virginia. he talked to the owner for a few weeks before we decided that we wanted to fly to va and get that car! (shalon from SNL) while we were in utah, we went to the bank and got everything finalized so that we could make the big purchase. we got back from UT on thursday and left sunday morning at 6am. we flew from san antonio to atlanta then from there to dayton ohio and finally from dayton to baltimore, md. 

 jon thought these m&n's were the funniest.

 the owner picked us up from the airport and drove us to his apartment in virginia. we passed the DC temple on the way! he was a really nice guy with an even nicer car. he had taken very good care of it, it is honestly like new. this is us excited about our new purchase and heading into DC!
(sun roof!)

 DC is my favorite place in america and also where we spent our 'honeymoon' when jon got back from deployment. our capital has a special place in our heart so we were sad to only be passing through. jon dropped me off at the lincoln memorial and drove around (we couldn't find parking and didn't have license plates). it was nice to be there for a few minutes, even in the dreary weather.

we got to go see these two cuties!! they are living the life in alexandria while melanie goes to GW and stephanie is a nanny. they made us an awesome dinner complete with dessert. it was so fun seeing them and catching up, i wish we could have stayed longer. stephanie, being the sweetie that she is, prepared us a road trip bag of goodies. she knew that we didn't bring anything for our road trip since we flew. it was complete with veggies, crackers, fruit, water and sweets. she is so thoughtful and motherly (always).

almost immediately after we left them, we realized that we forgot to get a picture! they sent us the one of the two of them and we sent this. good enough, haha!

we left their place and headed for Quantico, VA to see jon's gunny. it was nice to be on a marine corps base again, it felt like home and quantico is so cute and homey. it was fun seeing him and his family and hearing about what their plans are. their place was not our last stop of the night although it was already 9pm. we left quantico and headed for raleigh, NC!!!!