Road Trip Wrap-Up

Well, I was right about Faith being excited to see her crib. She was in it for 15 hours last night. She didn't wake up until 10:20 this morning. We kept checking on her to be sure she was still breathing. Poor little thing was obviously just worn out!!!! She woke up happy as a clam, however, ready to face the day. The boys were exhausted, too, but they woke up pretty early. We only got 11 hours out of them -and they probably could have both used the 15 that Faith got!

It is (mostly) good to be home. Whenever I am on vacation and return after a short absence I am reminded of how much I love where we live. Our house, the hills, the Merc, the people... But, I am sad that our vacation is over. It was so much more fun than I had even anticipated. The kids were such good sports about the driving- in fact both Faith and Tanner insisted on climbing back in the car and playing in it last night after baths. Very funny considering we had just finished driving 3000 miles in it! I wouldn't hesitate to do a similar trip again-maybe to the Southwest next time- a repeat of the National Park tour I took on my own in a rented little Ford Focus when I was single. But that will have to wait until 2010. Next year's vacations are already spoken for: Clear Lake for a family reunion with Brian's Dad's side of the family in August, and the Delta with my family in July.

So... what did we learn from our first road trip with the three kids? Let's see....

1. Crocs are really the only shoes you need
2. Even five year olds get sick of fast food
3. There are very few Starbucks between Boise and Minnesota, but every little one horse town has some sort of espresso shack
4. Bringing lots of car toys is a good idea- only if you want to be continually up out of your seat, crawling around in the back seat, picking said toys up from the car floor and handing them back to various children
5. Bikers are good traveling companions
6. Car Bingo is a lifesaver
7. Sometimes you need to be smarter than the GPS
8. High brow political commentary is like heroin- we kept wanting to listen to more and only narrowly stopped short of drugging the children so we could actually HEAR it
9. Honeycomb cereal rocks as a car snack
10. A loaded iPod (and children that like to sing along/rock out) is essential to sanity