I'm pretty sure little Missy has never been on a road trip. We have lots of them planned this summer. (I've learned how quickly airfare adds up when you start multiplying by two.) I decided to start with a short trip to see how she did. (I had no back up plan if she didn't travel well.) I finished working on Friday so we packed up and headed out on Saturday morning for a 2 and a half hour drive to see Tia Anna. We had plans to spend a couple of days with Jamie after our visit with Anna.
A snack and a DVD player. She's all set.
We got about an hour and a half from home when I got a text from my mom that my grandmother was in the hospital. After talking to my mom, we decided to head east to her house instead of south to see our friends. (We turned around in the Fair Oaks Farm parking lot which made me kind of sad. I love that place and can't wait to take Sara there.) My GPS insisted the only way to get there was to go an hour back north on the highway we had just come down. BOO! Since I don't have a map in my car, I listened to it and headed back the way we came with the clothes we had for four days and no idea how long we'd be gone or how far we were going.
Sara was an absolute trooper. She only slept for about 45 minutes which really surprised me. She was perfectly content to watch her movies and eat the occasional snacks I passed back to her. She had no problem running in for pit stops and coming right back to the car. I was shocked that she never resisted getting back into her car seat. Thank goodness I had 4 movies with us!
Silly girl went into a rest stop this way.
The drive was very uneventful but LONG. Because of all the back tracking and pit stops, it took us almost 12 hours to get there. I spent most of the afternoon regretting staying up so late the night before and wishing I had an audiobook to pass the time.
Sara got her 3rd, 4th, and 5th US state on this trip. She'll have quite a few more by the end of summer. (I have 40!)
For a variety of reasons, we didn't end up making the 12 hour drive to my grandmother's house. So, we spent a few days hanging out with my family. I feel like we are always busy there but we don't really seem to do a ton of monumental things. Sometimes, it's nice not to!
Sara LOVES to trace people's hands.
Getting read to Face Time with her grandpa who was with his mom. (And looking very grown up!)
She and Uncle Rob played very well together the first couple of days.
She loves Grandpa's cows but Tom is not a fan of her!
She made her first trip to the Charcoal Corral. (Pretty much the only thing to do in the town I grew up in.)
She was sitting with me until Nana gave her a piece of her salad shell. Then she moved to the other side of the booth for better access.
The drive home was miserable. I kept hearing about these terrible storms that were coming to Chicago. We were on track to get home just before they hit. Then, about 80 miles from home, we hit a stand still on the highway. We sat and crawled for an hour and a half. It was horrible. (I love my GPS but watching the arrival time grow later and later probably wasn't healthy for me.)
I hadn't planned to stop for dinner. So I started passing Sara all the snacks I had.
Sara didn't seem to notice that we weren't moving but I was starting to panic. From everything I heard, the coming storms were going to be horrible and we weren't going to make it home in time.
Well, they were pretty bad. At one point, I tried to wait it out under an overpass but I was very nervous that someone would slide off the road and hit us. I just felt like a sitting duck under there. Once the car in front of us moved, I got back on the road. I did not like being under there at all. (I'm not a big believer in premonitions but I had a really bad feeling about sitting there.) I spent about half an hour driving through pouring rain, thunder, lightening, and hail with a four year old in the back seat yelling, "Mom! Agua!" Poor girl was convinced I should turn around and see the rain out her window. As if I couldn't see it out the windshield!
We made it home and unloaded all of our stuff in between two storm fronts. About ten minutes after we got into the house, it started pouring again and our street started flooding. I don't think I've ever been so glad to be safely home.
Just another ridiculous travel story in a long line of ridiculousness.
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