The trip to NC

Traveling 1300 miles each direction with four kids can make for an interesting trip. I have to say we have great travelers! They all did a great job.

It is bad where you know where every fast food restaurant with a indoor play scape is located on I-20. And where the one coveted Pizza Hut with a play scape is. It is even worse when you are excited that you will be in that city at a meal time because the thought of one more fast food burger or chicken sandwich is just nauseating. Side note here: I do NOT eat iceberg lettuce so 99% of fast food salads are out.

Of course we had our share of "I've gotta go potty! Bad! Bad! BAD!" exclamations. Only to find a place to stop and then the child not potty! And we did a few potty breaks on the side of the road because, well sometimes you just have to.

I noticed that Louisiana had the most unidentifiable road kill. And some of it was definitely not neutrino (whatever they are).

Did you know that there are now armadillos in GA? Well, at least there are dead armadillos in GA but I have this theory that some bored Louisianans are just taking their road kill and tossing it out in other states to confuse people. Seriously though, I didn't think armadillos lived that far east/north.

South Carolina has the worst roads. They need to do some major repaving.

Atlanta has the worst traffic! We got stuck in major traffic jams both times we came through Atlanta. It doesn't seem to matter what highway we take or what time of day we travel the traffic is crazy.

The traffic in Atlanta was the culprit of my husband yelling at me, which never happens. We had been stuck for over an hour and both had to go to the restroom. We finally got to an exit but needed to make a u-turn to get to a place to stop. There was so much traffic it was taking forever. Michael was getting more and more antsy and I found it extremely funny. My laughing of course did not help Michael's situation. Finally he yelled, "Stop laughing!" Of course that was very effective and I started laughing harder. Charlotte piped up from the back seat with "Daddy, we don't yell in the car!" Luckily we are now all able to laugh about it.

When we leave our house I always have all these fun activities planned to do with the kids. The first day we do a decent job of balancing screen time with other things. By the time we are headed home, I'm bribing them to get them to watch more TV! And tell me why the second they are done with anything in the van they immediately throw it in the floor? And why they unzip and dump the contents of their very carefully packed backpacks?

Then there are the hotels. It is amazing how much stuff you have to unload for a single night in a hotel with six people. Part of the issue is the two pack-n-plays we still have to take along. Once we got everyone settled for the night the twins would start a luvie war where they would try their best to hit each other with their luvies and then laugh hysterically! After a while the whole family was cracking up, which of course didn't help anyone get to sleep.

Overall, we really did have a great trip and the driving always proves to be a fun adventure.