We had an amazing turnout for our massage seat give away.  Over 90 entrees.  The winner picked on random.org is Lyndsey Rullman.  Congratulations Lyndsey!

It was quite funny to see all the tips for where to go for our anniversary.  I could tell a lot of people don’t follow us regularly because they were suggesting places we just went to.  I really want to go to Door County now.  Unfortunately, I think we are in line for a shorter trip.  Cedar Falls, IA, if I remember to make my hotel reservation tomorrow.  But maybe we will make it out to Door County if we go see the health expo that Joy and Chris are in a couple of weeks.  After starting to get tips about Minnesota, I realized I probably meant Duluth, but it was too late to change it.

I am thinking of changing the blog up a little bit.  You might notice I have new tabs.  I want to make it a little less journalistic and more informative.  I want more of my posts to be like my review of the Louisville Slugger Museum and tips of traveling with a baby, etc.  I have a lot of work to do to get there though.  Especially in learning programming stuff.  I wish this came easier to me.  And Bryce would have to give up more time editing my stuff as I never remember the rules to where to put the comma.

Our August and September ran rather dry as far as traveling goes.  We did have a lot of excitement come to us, however.  Bryce’s parents visited (his mom twice) and stayed with us.  October looks more entertaining, if I still have any readers out there.  ;S

In the meantime, check out the journey our friends Heidi and Reuben are one with their two little ones.  The original plan was to bike around Lake Michigan.  Seems like they are having a little bit of bad weather.  www.pedalpoweredfamily.com

I stopped using Flickr while traveling since I was uploading photos to Facebook and didn’t have time to do both.  However, during the summer Flickr did some updates that are awesome for traveling souls like us.  My favorite feature is that you can not put where you took a photo on a map and see others photos of the same area around you.  It might take me a while to calculate exactly where we were again, but I plan on marking some territory with some of our great Lincoln photos.  Try to find some.

Wow!  August did not bring our groove back.  What a roller coaster of highs and lows and everything in between.  We were offered jobs, then had them passed over us.  We had losses and gains, illnesses and an overwhelming amount of things to do.  We had great times with friends and we had hard times.  Now let’s see what September brings.  I know one thing for sure.  We are looking forward to a 5 year wedding anniversary in October.  We are having trouble deciding on Bemidji, MN or Door County, WI.  What do you recommend?  Any tips for places to do, things to do, dishes to eat?

I’m really interested in genuine opinions so I am going to make this a giveaway post.  Let me know where we should go and why and I will pick one winner for Dr. Scholl’s Heated Massage Chair.  The deadline will be September 30.

Grandma Durbin carpooled with a friend heading to Iowa for a wedding and spent two days with us.

On Friday night I threw it out into the abyss that I needed a girl’s night out to go see Eat, Pray, Love on opening day.  I had tried not to read the book because I am usually disappointed with books with a lot of hype (i.e. DaVinci Code), but when I saw the audio was read by the author and in first person I bought it while traveling through North Dakota.  I LOVED it.  Since it is about travel I find it appropriate to do a review on this site.
So opening day of Eat, Pray, Love took me to the theater in Decorah, IA with my friend and Lincoln’s midwife, Brenda.  Although I am not writing to review a theater, I do have to say that either the sound systems at Viking 5 were not turned on or they have very poor quality sound because I had trouble hearing the film at points and the older people behind me were having an even harder time.  Their whispers of “What did she say?” could be heard through the room.
Ok, back to the actual movie.  I love Julia Roberts, but I’m not sure Elizabeth Gilbert was the role for her.  She did a good job, but not stellar.  Maybe because I see her as the Erin Brokavitch type girl with tons of pazazz and this role needed more of the Diane Lane personality.  The movie is a little over 2 hours.  They basically break the movie into four half hour sections: beginning, eating, praying, loving.
The beginning was a little long and yet not explored enough.  If I directed it, I might have skipped it all together and did a pre-cap. 5 point.
Eating.  Italy.  This was my favorite part.  They depicted Italy so well, I felt like I was back there again.  The food looked so amazing I was salivating.  The brief encounters with the people she met were spot on.  The things I remember about the chapter were all represented.  10 points for that chapter.
Praying. India.  This was also pretty well represented.  Richard from Texas was good.  Liz’s internal struggle in the cave was absent, but really how are you going to represent that.  Giving up silence for Little Susie Cream Cheese was needed, but I felt not really explained enough for people who didn’t read the book.  And you could hardly tell the break from India to Bali. 7 points.
Loving. Bali. This was definitely not as good as the book.  I realize that since the chapter is about love and people are thinking romantic love, they would need to focus on her relationship with Phillipe, but Wyan and Tutti were so much more of the story in the book than they were in the film.  In fact Wyan is in like one or two scenes only.  It seems like Gilbert is a saint for buying them a house, but there is little explained about why she couldn’t by a house or any of her struggles.  Of all the things I remember about Bali, they mostly represented the ones I did not remember.  3 points.
So what is that 25 out of 40 points.  More than half.  I would recommend listening to the book on audio over watching the movie.  I didn’t think the film was bad, but it didn’t make it into my top 10 list like the book did.