And We're OFF!

In more ways than one! :)

We planned to leave around 2 or 3am so the kids could sleep through most of the 12 hour trip. I ended up working OUTSIDE the house last week and nothing, I mean nothing worked out the way I wanted it to.

Friday noon, Ethan's school called because he was sick, so I had to go get him. The first thing he asked was were still gonna go to Kentucky, because he knew if he was sick, really sick, there might be a chance that we were would leave a few days later or stay home altogether. I called his doctor and they said to watch him and it appeared things would pass, so we decided to leave that night.

We were gonna leave Friday night, early Saturday morning , but we were dead dog tired, so we decided to sleep in and get some rest, better awake than sorry... ya know? So we set a new departure time of 6am. Needless to say, D fell asleep around 11 and I followed him to sleep around midnight..... unplanned .. I wanted to stay up until 2, 3 or so to wash and pack clothes, clean out the fridge and clean the house up a bit. I hate coming home after a long, relaxing vacation to a dirty house and dirty clothes. (I wash clothes while on vacation to avoid that task at home).

The answer is no, we did not put a dent in the list of things we needed to do to be able to leave in the wee hours of the morning. Not even a scratch .....

We WOKE up around 6am .... yeah woke up at 6am .... and finished washing, packing and loading the van and finally rolled out of here around 10am. Yeah, I know 4 hours later ...

We prayed and drove off headed for the highway and then it hit me. Life was so busy last week, I didn't go by the library to get some Cosby Show DVDs for the trip. We ALWAYS have these for our road trips .. so I dropped my lip and blinked me eyes, so hubby would turn the car in the direction of the library and could just run in ..... He caved and we headed that direction. And no, I wasn't able to make a quick run. Turns out the library was EMPTY and the librarian who never wants to talk struck up a 15 minute conversation about Days of our Lives, DVRs and new HDTV televisions sets. I didn't have the heart to cut her off and say "hey lady, we've been trying to get on the road for the last 5 hours!"

I got the DVDs and we headed off into the sunset ...ok the sunrise. Then we needed to stop for ice for the cooler. We drove through Sonic ... time in line 15 minutes .. we drove for another 20 minutes and stopped for breakfast .. time in line 10 minutes .... then it seemed we were set for at least another two hours, but then 15 minutes after the stop for breakfast, we needed a bathroom break.

So we stopped at Love's and proceeded to unlock, unlatch, reshoe and remove all the blankets and pillows so at least 4 of us could potty.

Now do we see why we like leaving in the middle of the night? Had we left at 3am we could have driven 4 hours before we would have had to stop to gas up and have a potty break.

Needless to say, we had potty break almost every 2 hours AND ran into ugly traffic with an 1 hour delay ... thank Goodness we got gas before we ran into that mess .... and arrived at my-inlaws 15 hours from when we started ... a trip that normally takes 11 to 12 hours.

Oh yeah, we stopped for dinner at a place I have been dying to for at least a year now and boy howdy .... that is another story ENTIRELY that I may never share, but I do plan to write a letter to the owners. Hint, hint ... the owner is on FoodNetwork.