Thursday, July 19, 2012

444 miles


And so begins the first leg of our 10-day marathon road trip.

Google maps says from our house to the hotel in Merriam, KS is 444 miles and it should take 7 hours and 7 minutes. It sure felt like 444 miles, maybe even more. But I'm happy to say that even with the two kiddos, we made the trip in just under 9 hours. That's only 1 extra hour per kid!

The trip started out great! They were thrilled with sitting forward in their carseats!


But about an hour north of Des Moines (our planned stopping place for lunch), all went to crap.

In all fairness, they were hungry. I'm not proud of the snack I gave them (duplex cookies), but it did the trick and held them over until we could stop for lunch.

At Dairy Queen in Ames, Ben was his normal flirty self and made friends with all the "grandpa" looking men in the restaurant. We've been talking all week about how he gets to see his grandpa this week, so I don't know if that sunk in or what. Nonetheless, he had a great time chatting everyone up. Hannah had fun drinking her milk out of a straw.

After lunch, we had hoped they'd fall right asleep. Of course, they didn't think that was the greatest idea. So we had to get out the big guns: Elmo. Yes, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that we bought a DVD player for the car, but it proved to be a success. They watched about 20 minutes, then zonked out for about an hour and half. Then when it got hairy again after they snoozed, Elmo calmed them down again for the rest of the trip. 
Overall, the trip has been uneventful so far. We spent the whole day today driving. We did get to meet Jon, Anne & Will for dinner, though!! The cousins eyed each other up and down. I'm sure tomorrow the shyness will pass and they'll play like crazy!

Oh, and it's hot here. See?

 





1 comment:

  1. are you able to get together this time?? would love to see you.

    ReplyDelete