Amazingly enough....Jesse actually won an all expense paid trip for him and a guest to attend the Loudon New Hampshire Nascar Race. Interstate Batteries sponsors Kyle Bush and the Interstate car. Jesse had put his name in months before and two people from the company get picked to go to every race the Interstate car races in. I was actually really shocked when he called and told me he had been picked. Interstate only pays for his way there, hotel and food..the other party has to purchase their own plane tickets/hotel and food. I definitely wasn't going to pass this trip up. I'm sure Johan would have enjoyed going to the race more than I would have and plus it fell over his birthday weekend but the wife gets first dibs on going...lol...
Interstate arranged all our hotel stay while in Loudon and purchased our plane tickets. I researched and found the best deal on the plane tickets and just gave Andrew (head of marketing) the flight numbers and such. We decided to fly out of Omaha since my sister agreed to watch the boys while we were gone and meeting in Onawa is half way for both of us. Little did I realize that we were only 30 minutes from Sioux City and should have flown out of Sioux City so we wouldn't of had another 1 hour drive back to Omaha. Everything worked out great though with the way it was set up. Jesse and I met my sister and mom in Onawa on Saturday July 13th at 9am. Our flight was suppose to take off around 1 so we wanted to be back on the road no later than 10 to make it to Omaha with enough time. We got all the boys dropped off and all their stuff. I had started telling Easton a week before that he was going to grandma's house and was going to get to ride in the tractor and see the cows..he was super excited and had no problems going with Michelle and Mom.
Jesse and I headed back to Omaha and got our luggage checked and found our gate. Come to find out after sitting there and realizing we should have been boarding/taking off when we figured out our flight was delayed to mechanical issues. Since our first flight was delayed..that means we would miss our connecting flight in MN. We were not happy since we were suppose to be getting into Boston around 7 already and having to get the rental car and another 1 drive to our hotel. With our flight delayed that would put us in Boston even later. Luckily we were able to get on the next flight to Boston out of MN. We had a couple hour layover in MN which wasn't all that bad. The flight itself wasn't horrible. We finally arrived in Boston around 11pm...got our luggage which thankfully didnt' get lost...headed to the rental area...got all that squared away and finally was on our way to our hotel. Little did we know that Boston has several tunnels and such and our GPS wouldn't work. It was not a fun and smooth time trying to find our way out of Boston. Between being super tired and knowing we wouldn't get to our hotel till after 1am and then having to be up at 4am to be ready by 5am...it just wasn't fun. We finally got it figured out and GPS running and actually found the hotel that was set up for us in Bow New Hampshire. Morning was about to come super early.
Sunday July 14th - Going on no sleep and super tired made it for a long morning. We met the crew in the hotel lobby around 5:15...got some instructions and then followed everyone to the actual nascar track. Our duties were to hang banners/posters up in the hospitality tent and then to hand out hats and goodie bags to everyone that was invited to the Interstate tent. I ended up getting to know Jesse's co-worker Dustins girlfriend pretty well. She seemed really nice. We mainly worked together for the most part. The Dallas girls were not that friendly at all it seemed. The morning went by fast. We got everything hung up and looking good. It was around 8:30 when people started to arrive. I had to pump so i chose to pump in the restroom while we were waiting around. It wasn't the cleanest thing to do but it got the job done. Pumping is sure going to be a challenge on this trip. I almost thought about giving up nursing but then decided against it since I still enjoyed that bonding time with Ace....anyways.....back to the race.....It was amazing how many crazy people showed up at the tent. We were thinking to ourselves..how do these people get invited. They are crazy hillbillies..lol...Kyle Bush did end up showing up and talking as well as the owner of the Interstate Car. We never got to meet him or get an autograph but that's ok. Jesse isn't a fan of Kyle Bush anyways. Overall the morning was fun. We got tired and it was kind of hot out. Around 12:30 we finally started cleaning up and taking down the banners/posters. I held on to some pendants since Easton's theme for his birthday party is going to be nascar. Thought they'd look good for his party. Around 1:00 we were done and the race was about to start. We all headed down to the grandstands and found our seats. It was so unbearably hot outside and with sitting on metal bleachers and with the asphalt it was crazy hot. Since we were so tired Jesse and I ended up only staying till lap 75 out of 300. Someone had also told him that if you stay till the end it takes about 3-4 hours of sitting in traffic just to get out. We surely didn't want to endure that since we were both so tired. After we left the race and found our way back to the hotel we ended up taking a 3-4 hour nap and then going to dinner in Concord New Hampshire. The food was really good actually. We got to talking at the table and realized that we were only an hour or so away from Maine. I have always wanted to go to Maine. It's beautiful up there. We got some advise on what towns/beaches to visit and did our research back at the hotel. Thankfully we were looking forward to sleeping in on Monday morning since we didn't get much sleep at all yet.
Monday, July 15th
Jesse and I actually got to sleep in this morning. It felt so nice. Even though we didn't sleep in long since we had planned to travel to Maine for the day we still got a little extra sleep. Driving to Maine was a breeze. It only took us an hour to get to where we had planned to go. Our waiter at the restraurant gave us several options on the best beaches in Maine to go and see. We finally chose York Beach in Maine. It had an actual beach and it had the worlds most photographed light house. Maine and New Hampshire have so many toll roads it's unbelievable. We ended up missing a toll road on the way there so i'm sure we'll end up getting a ticket in the mail sometime soon. HOpefully not. Maine was absolutely gorgeous. The light house was breath taking. The beaches were awesome. The sand was so different. YOu didn't sink when you walked on the sand..it was hard but still sand. There were so many people there it was crazy. I could have stayed on the beach forever but we had an agenda for the day so we could only visit for a couple of hours. I would so go back again and have always wanted to go to Maine so I was thankful that Jesse agreed to driving an hour and going and visiting Maine at least. At least we can say we have been to Maine. We decided to leave around noon. Our afternoon was packed with other places to visit in Boston.We toured the USS Constitution which was neat, walked some of the Freedom Trail, climbed 300 stairs up the Bunker Hill Monument. I barely made it up that since we had been going all morning and we hadn't eaten anything. It did have a magnificent view though. Too bad we couldn't stay up there longer..it was just too hot and way too many people. The climb back down was better. After doing all that we proceeded to get on the fairy and head downtown. Once we were downtown we got stopped by the street performers. Crazy enough Jesse and I both got picked to be part of their street forming acts and even got it on video. Pretty cool stuff. They definitely are some pretty talented individuals. Around dinner time we decided to head back to our hotel. Billy was picking us up after he got off work to take us to his house wo we could see Julie and the kids. We had a fun time getting together for a couple of hours. We didn't end up leaving till around 11 which put us back at the hotel around 11:30. Thankfully we have another full day here in Boston and we get to sleep in again
Tuesday, July 16th.
Billy took some of the day off so he could show us around Boston alittle. Basically the day was spent was walking around and going to different pubs and having a beer at each one. I of course didn't have a beer at each pub. The boys took a picture every time we visited a new pub and sent it to Johan to make him jealous. It actually was pretty funny. Billy took us around Harvard, we got to experience the sub way system, visited the CHEERS bar and got to walk around downtown Boston. After touring Boston Billy took us to their favorite sushi spot where we had some amazing sushi..so much better than Iowa's any day. I was in heaven. We had a great day but it was really exhausting after we were done. We ended up basically relaxing the rest of the night. It ended up raining so there wasn't much to do anyways and the fairy shuts down at 8 so we wouldn't of been able to get back to our hotel even if we had wanted to go out and do something.
Wednesday, July 17th.
Had to get up around 2:30 to make it to the airport since our flight was leaving around 6:00am. Tiring day forsure. I was so excited to get back to the boys. Apparently the boys did great at Aunt Michelle's and grandmas house. Ace even slept all through the night all nights he was there...man..wish he'd do that for us when we're home. I'm glad the boys were well behaved and had fun. When we got into Omaha we drove back to Onawa and met them. Easton of course didn't want to leave at first. Cried even because he wanted to go back home with Miley. Poor guy..he just loves the farm so much. The drive back was aweful. We were both so exhausted. Luckily we got home in one piece and the boys did great on the travels back. It was so good to see them both. I actually did pretty well being away from Ace the whole time. I definitely slacked on my pumping and hopefully that didn't hinder my production in any ways.
Overall the trip was well worth every penny. It was good to get away with just Jesse and enjoy getting to see new things we haven't seen before.
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