1000 Miles

As we packed up the car, for our 1000 mile road trip to St. Louis, my stomach was in knots.  Having never attempted to drive back to STL with the kids... I imagined the worst.  Stopping every 45 minutes, fighting, whining, "are we there yet?" a thousand times.  I, obviously, had no idea what to expect and quite frankly... I calmed myself by packing the car full of a bunch of "just in cases".  It's better to be over prepared than underprepared, right?!  Needless to say, I was beyond over prepared with a bag full of snacks (from the healthy cashews to bubble gum and chocolate covered pretzels).  Lots of games and more movies than I care to admit.

Usually, the kids have to take a bathroom break 20 minutes into the trip... but this time... we made it all the way past Raleigh (over 2 hours) before the kids even mentioned it!!  The kids were absolutely AMAZING!  We only watched 2 movies (Cats & Dogs and Transformers 2), and we played lots of games, including Road Trip Bingo.  Another game we played was Rubberneckers.  To play the game... there are cards with things you have to do to get points, such as: find someone picking their nose, find a bus, etc. And then there were others called "share the road" with things like give someone the peace sign or get a trucker to blow his horn.  We chose "wave to someone and see if they'll wave back."  When I was a kid, this would've been easy.... but it really was hard to do.  We found SO many people to be on their cell phones.  Chase was absolutely embarrassed, Claire gave up... and Henri and I... with perseverance.... finally waved at a guy AND he waved back.  I was 100% reminded how much fun road trips can be.

After about 15 1/2 hours in the car, kids sound asleep in their sleeping bags... we arrived in STL at 4:30am  CST.  It was such a LONG drive and I'm horribly tired... but I am SO happy that we didn't fly.  We had such a great time... saw things-- mountains, tunnels, firework stands, you name it-- that we would've never seen had we flown.  So now that I'm over the fear... I know the trip home will be even more fun.