Arizona Here We Come . . .

- July 28, 2011

Let the 1,833 miles drive begin!

Friday night after the moving truck left we drove to Cookeville, TN (about and hour and a half away), and the "real" drive began Saturday morning, July 2. We decided that we wanted to "enjoy" this drive as much as possible so we broke it up into 4 days driving between 7-8 hours each day. Given the amount of time in the van the kids really did quite well and if we had to we could have driven for another day.

They were kept happy with toys, books, snacks, music, listening to audio books, marking license plates on their US maps and looking for things to complete their scavenger hunt bingo paper. Rachel began to write a story while we were driving. Sarah enjoyed her color wonder paper & markers on her new clip board. I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to discover the use of a clip board for the kids while we travel. Elizabeth began reading Harry Potter book 1 before we left, and I would often look back to see her with her ear muffs on reading her book. John mostly enjoyed looking out the window.

Now that I have painted a bit of an idealic picture for you about our traveling in the van, rest assured we all had our moments. When I heard too much laughter and/or screaming from the back two rows I did my best not to turn around and just pretended I didn't hear a thing. I believe at one point John emptied his whole backpack. It wasn't that he just emptied it it is that he threw each object one by one at his sisters in the back seat. At one of our visits to a rest stop to go potty I stepped in dog poop in my nice flip flops with a good amount of tread. Yuck! At one point very early in the trip I got car sick, thank goodness for the trash can I keep by my feet. Poor John was traumatized by the hand dryers and loud unpredictable flushing of toilets in public restrooms and "held it" until we got to the hotel at night on most days. Rachel lost her shoe in the dark abyss of the back seat. It was finally found in the ice chest?? Sarah always seemed to finally fall asleep about10 minutes before we needed to make a stop.

The best part of our travels is that because that we did not have a DVD player for the kids in the van, when we got to the hotel at night they were glued to the TV. They even enjoyed watching HGTV when we couldn't find anything good on the Disney Channel.