The LONG trip home

Generally any drive under 12 hours is no sweat for us. The kids included can manage without too much fuss. And this one was more or less no exception to the rule. We had a few little out of the ordinary events on this trip. We got going at our usual 5am. However, I was pretty sick all night long and didn't sleep hardly at all. Consequently, I kept Brent up quite a bit so he didn't sleep as well as he normally does. That is bad news--he is the ONLY one who drives. You know that I can't make it further than Fort Worth before I am ready for a nap! So I slept restlessly for the first three hours of our trip. After that I noticed that Brent was eating a lot more than normal. He was trying to stay awake! I decided that it might be time to break out of the mold and lend my hand at the driving for once. I actually made it for 1.5 hours and could have gone longer except that driving is incredibly boring, and I had had enough!

Our next out of the ordinary event was that Dryden's third tooth broke through on our drive home. Consequently we had all kinds of stinky diapers to change. He went through all kinds of outfits and it seems like he spent more time out of his clothes than in them! He was pretty good natured considering that he was teething.












He also LOVES to drink out of a water bottle. He thinks that he is just as big as everyone else.

All of the kids were very good. They only watched one movie the whole trip. They had a good time just reading their books and talking to each other. We didn't even do any school work on the trip!

The best part of the whole trip was that we stopped about two hours from home at Turner Falls. We have driven past it innumerable times and always wondered if it were worth stopping. This time we stopped. It was a nice little resting place. It wasn't very well maintained. Whomever is in charge of it maintains it at the bare minimum. We didn't do as many hikes as we probably would have liked to simply because it was a little cool and windy. We didn't want Dryden getting sick and he would have been the one most prone to it. It was a pretty place, but it isn't likely that we will be stopping again. It must be privately owned because their rates go significantly up during the summer. It would have been outrageous! Thankfully they were still charging the winter rates! The best part of all was that only two kids got soaking wet--Camden and Allison!

All in all it was a pleasant trip home as far as long drives are concerned!