Road Trip 2014-Bonus Day 1 (July 2, 2014)

(click here for today's pictures)
Starting off a bit early...time for a Classic!



The day started out with Anderson being the first one up.  He was already asking about when we were going to leave.  We told him that we had a whole day before we left but he was going to Grannymom’s house for the morning and that seemed to appease him.  Soon the bed was full of kids and I hopped up to start getting everyone ready.  Once everyone was ready, Robby and the kids headed out.


While they were gone, I packed the van and then started cleaning the house.  I thought I had done a good job cleaning until this afternoon when I looked around and saw that the house already looked like it needed to be swept and vacuumed again-hmm, I wonder if it could have been those kids that I brought home did all of that.


The kids were having a big time with Grannymom and Grandpa-they all went to Rock Creek to play.  Everyone played hard even our Whitman.  And Whitman not only played hard, he fought hard.  Grannymom saw another little guy hit Whitman so Whitman hit him back.  Now Grannymom didn’t see what happened before but she did believe that Whitman got in the best punch!  Campbell has taught him something at least!


I ran a few errands and then I came to pick up the kids.  They were all sitting getting ready for a snack.  Reagan was a little put out that the boys had eaten an extra snack-that girl likes to have everything exactly the same.  She soon forgot about it when Grannymom gave them all a bit of candy for the ride home.


Once at home, I had to carry sleeping Whitman out of the car and then haul Keaton, who was also asleep, all the way from the back of the van and out.  I debated just leaving the car running for her so she could nap in the cool van but I decided that might use up too much of my freshly bought gas.  


The kids helped me finish a few things in the house-putting up laundry, cleaning the toy room and emptying the trash cans.  And then it was movie time.  I had forgotten that I had 2 last library books about our trip to read to the kids (Buffalo Bill and one about the Model T) so I stopped them during their movie to read those and then they finished their movies.


By this time, I had packed almost everything that I could think of and had even packed my clothes. So I sat down on the couch with Keaton and Graham while they were playing their kindles.  In a few minutes, Robby came home and as we all went to greet him, he said “you ready to go?”  He was kind of kidding but kind of not-I told him that we were ready to go.  And before I knew it, we had a hotel for tonight and we were scurrying around finishing up the last few things.


We probably could have left earlier but we both needed clothes from the wash that we had started when Robby came home.  I kept having the kids tell me how much time was left on the washer and then how much time was left on the dryer.  Someone told me we had 48 minutes and then the next thing I knew, Anderson reported that there were 7 minutes left.  I couldn’t believe that but I did because it was from Anderson-he is my time man.  He greatly enjoys reporting on the time and telling me how many minutes things took.  


Robby had thought that we could leave an hour earlier than we did but we were on vacation so there was no rush.  After the kids had all loaded up, Robby and I decided that we needed to switch out our ice chests so we did that.  Soon though we were on the road-about 10 hours earlier than planned.  The kids were so excited to be leaving early-we were a bit excited too.  Actually, Robby and I are just as excited-if not more excited about our trip than the kids.


Usually, when we have a drive to make we press on and don’t stop long to eat-but tonight we enjoyed a meal at Whatta-burger.  That is the last stop that we made coming home from last years road trip so it was the first stop that we made on this road trip.  The boys were hungry tonight-their half of hamburgers wouldn’t have filled them up if not for the fries and shake.  The kids all but Whitman sat around the table passing around their milkshakes until they were empty.  At our table, Whitman ate well until he started pointing at something-we thought he wanted our fries but no, it was our milkshake.  That boy sucked and sucked on the straw until he drank more of our shake than we did.  


We pottied before leaving the restaurant and then we were back on the road.  When we loaded up, I did tell everyone that Graham’s row one the award for the cleanest row.  Graham is sitting with Whitman so their neat row was very impressive.  Reagan and Keaton’s row was also immaculate but we could only give out one winner award (why? I have no idea since we are just making things up as we go).  Anderson and Campbell’s row looked like a tornado came through it!  Robby did give Graham an extra lemonhead so this greatly disturbed Reagan who only had 4 instead of 5 pieces of candy.


We are getting ready for our Little House stop the best we can-we listened to some of one Little House book on CD and then started watching the tv show.  The kids had not seen it before and they are absolutely loving it and since we do have all 140ish episodes with us, we are good to go!


The next big and exciting thing that happened was driving through the tunnel on our way to Bentonville.  Graham kept asking how we would know we were in the tunnel since it was dark outside.  Campbell told him that we could just look at the moon and if we couldn’t see it then we were in the tunnel.  They were both surprised to see that the tunnel had plenty of lights.

By the time we made it to the hotel, everyone but Reagan and Anderson were asleep.  It took us awhile to wake the others up enough to get them into the hotel.  We quickly and I think quietly found our room.  Robby put Whitman in the bathtub for a few minutes while we brushed and found sleeping spots for everyone.  Whitman’s pack n play fits nicely in the bathroom so that is a win and along with Robby’s fan blowing in there, he should hopefully sleep well...and if he sleeps well, then we all sleep well!  Everyone else was asleep minutes after their heads hit their pillows!  This bonus night should be our latest night of the trip.

No comments: