Our journey driving half-way across the country began Monday afternoon. To my surprise, we had all our packing and cleaning done on time. And to my even GREATER surprise… all of our junk actually fit back in our van, along with ourselves. AND we still could (kinda) see out of the back window.
There is a God.
As we drove east out of Colorado, we soon became aware of some caa-raazy winds. Why hadn’t we checked the forecast I can’t tell you.
We stopped for gas before Kansas and it was so windy I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Toto blow overhead. I took H in my arms to run into the gas station for a potty break. He was a bit freaked out and I can’t blame him. It was so windy I actually thought that my dangly earrings had blown straight out of my ears. Weird, I know. I love wind and I have experienced a lot of it (especially when I spent a semester of college studying at a university on the coast of England) but I have never been compelled to check on the status of my earrings before. That was a new one for me.
Apparently my daughter inherited whatever genes I have that make me enjoy the wind.
Cause she thought it was pretty fun.
This guy didn’t seem to mind the wind either. He just leaned his motorcycle right into it and kept on driving, crooked, down I-70.
Oh, really?!
Thank you for the tip.
We repeatedly would hear really loud ‘thuds’ on the side of the van and I’d look at Mikey with much concern in my eyes. “It’s just a tumbleweed hitting the van” he’d say. As if scrawny tumbleweeds are supposed to go ‘THUD’ with such force that the passengers become concerned. But he must have been right. Silly tumbleweed.
Orange cones were blown over all over the place. I was surprised that the wind could even knock down something so ergonomically designed.
Then there was this freak dust-storm, caused by some road construction. Dirt digging + high winds = freak dust storm.
Nighttime rolled around and I handed my kiddos these amazing little finger lights that my genius friend Elle bought for them.
They played with them for at least a whole 30 minutes, which is equivalent to about 30 days if you convert it to adult time. Yeah… they loved them! I think I may order a whole case for the future.
By 10:30 they were zonked enough to sleep right through a gas station stop.
Usually any slowing in the velocity of the van is enough to rouse my children from their peaceful sleeps and thereby make me curse, but they must have been really pooped. And so didn’t have to curse. Yay!
Look! We could have fit more stuff! It’s not that full at all, plenty of room for more junk…
Are you rolling your eyes?
I am.
Mike drove most of the night. Except for the hour and a half parked at a truck stop. My shift didn’t start till 4:30am. I got to watch the sun rise over Missouri (I think) and that was nice. Taylor Swift was there with me (again).
And then Mikey took over. And here the pictures stop. Wanna know why?
I’ll tell ya why.
The Hunger Games.
I started the book the night before, but by morning it was getting really good. So if I wasn’t driving, digging around in the backseat to give the kids snacks, or napping, I was reading The Hunger Games. Or maybe I was reading The Hunger Games while digging around in the backseat. I’m a multi-tasker after all and I couldn’t put it down.
And so I no longer snapped photos of this or that during our car trip. I kinda regret it now, but at the time there was literally no prying that book out of my hands and handing me my camera. I HAD to know what was gonna happen to Peeta and Katniss!
We arrived home in Ohio in the middle of the afternoon (with 15 pages to go! Aaaaah!!!). We made the trip in a total of 23.5 hours… which is a pretty good time if I do say so myself. Our best time ever is 19 hours, but that was in our pre-kids era. An extra 4 hours to account for a 2 year old and a 4 year old riding along doesn’t seem too bad to me at all!
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