"Well, I guess now we are in the middle of nowhere."

That is what Elijah pronounced tonight when he saw a stop sign with a flashing light on top of it.  Earlier in the week he had asked Marty what these were all about and that was Marty's answer.

Also, when we landed at the airport.... Elijah asked (very loudly I might add) "Daddy, are we in the middle of nowhere now?"  Daddy said "No, we have to drive an hour and a half and then we will be in the middle of nowhere."  Hope we didn't offend any rural Iowa residents.

We got a nice tour of the Iowa scenery this evening when we drove to the airport to learn our flight was going to be delayed by 2 hours.... which meant we couldn't make our connection to get back to Oregon. Oh well, we have new tickets for Sunday and hopefully we'll have better luck then.  :)

The only bad news.... our "manna from heaven" seems to have nearly disappeared.  That is what Marty has named the cookie supply.  We go to bed every night to nearly empty trays of cookies (I think there were initially 7 or 8 varieties) and when we wake up in the mornings they are all filled up again.  It is probably for the best just in regards to the intense number of calories I have consumed since being here.

This is all that is left of the cookie supply (I think someone stole the head off of the green, sprinkled cookie.  Looks like he was originally Santa):

Happy New Year all and best wishes in 2011!!!!!