*****I was just playing in the admin section and found this! For whatever reason, I never posted it. So… I’m going to post it WITHOUT editing. Please forgive all errors and nonsensical sentences. Is that how you spell nonsensical and is nonsensical a word *****

We had a great head start. Scott got off of work early and was home before noon. We had the van mostly packed the night before and I was able to add most of the last-minute items before he got home. We quickly fed the kids lunch and were on the road by 1pm. The kids were great. As I anticipated, leaving this time of day guaranteed a good nap for Elisabeth, but as usual, Benjamin didn’t sleep a wink. He sat there playing with his Magna Doodle most of the time and when he got restless, we turned the DVD player on. He loved it! Around 5pm we were all starving, but of course there was NOTHING around us. There’s really not much in southern Illinois and we thought that we were going to pass the Cracker Barrel in Springfield. Turns out, it was about 2 miles before our entrance onto the highway. Unfortunately, by the time we realized that we had missed it, it was too late. We expected a McDonald’s or something else to be around the bend, but boy, were we wrong. The next place to have anything was about 40 minutes away. I ended up climbing in the back seat to feed the kids Teddy Grahams and keep them happy until we could find a place to stop. Fortunately, there was a Cracker Barrel so we were able to eat at a place that had lots available for the kids to eat. I like to go there because we can avoid ordering from the kids menu due to their huge portions and the large variety of side dishes. Plus, it’s the kinds of food that my kids really devour! In fact, I think that Elisabeth ended up eating more of my meal than I did! The best part was that the kids could play on the rockers after dinner, which helped immensely in getting their wiggles out.

We were able to make it to Rantoul, IL, which was another hour or more down the road before stopping for the night. The kids thought that the hotel was a blast and didn’t seem to care much that Scott and I were exhausted. Once we put them down to go to sleep, they chatted back and forth with each other for nearly an hour before finally going to sleep. I ended up having to nurse Elisabeth just so that she couldn’t talk. We figured if ONE of them would go to sleep, then the other wouldn’t have as much fun with the talking (shouting across the room, really) game. After breakfast (a special thanks to whoever came up with the idea of serving FREE continental breakfast at hotels) we were back on the road.

After spending a good portion of the previous day on the road, the kids were wise to the fact that they weren’t going to be getting out of their car seats any time soon and started fussing pretty quickly. We ended up stopping after only an hour on the road - we didn’t even make it to Indiana! Once back on the road, they calmed some. We ended up stopping at a nice rest stop in Indiana and then once again at the Valparaiso exit for lunch at Wendy’s. Scott was convinced that we could make it to his dad’s without stopping again, but apparently he forgot that he was traveling with a one year old, a two year old, and a wife with a tiny bladder! We made our official last stop at a very nice rest area about 10-15 miles from his dad’s house. The kids just couldn’t make it! After nursing Elisabeth and letting both kids run around for a while, we were back on the road. Benjamin started complaining that he needed to potty right as we got into town, but fortunately, he was able to wait until we made it to Grandpa’s.

We pulled in just about 3pm Michigan time Thursday afternoon.