Ode to the Summer Road Trip

O.k., so our summer road trip just happened to coincide with a move--kill two birds, right?
Anyway, so the drive was pretty brutal, I'm not going to lie to you. Thankfully, there weren't any problems and the kids were AMAZING considering how long we spent in the car. Thank you Bach's Rescue Remedy for Kids, I will never travel without you!

This pretty much was my view for the entire trip. Sometimes, after hours of driving and my eyes wouldn't really focus and I just wanted to be anywhere else I would look up and wonder why I was behind this slow moving truck. I would snap out of it just in time before I changed lanes and sped around.

Let's see, some highlights would be...

Kate unbuckling her seat belt because she just didn't like being buckled anymore. This happened several times.

Kelly discussing, "car hopping" with me. The act in which you change lanes and pass a car, then change lanes again to return to the right lane.

The miles upon miles of road construction. I understand the need to do this during the summer. However, I did not figure that in while planning the hours of driving. So our first day ended up somewhere around 14 hours in the car, not 11 or 12. Brutal. That's all I can say.

Finally arriving to our hotel in Amarillo around midnight local time after Kenzie had been crying for close to three hours and I was at the point where having someone shove bamboo shoots under my fingernails was beginning to sound better than spending one more minute in the car, just to find out that it was the OTHER Hampton Inn that had our reservation and when asked for directions was told to go west instead of east and ended up driving around Amarillo for 20 extra minutes. It was great, you should have been there.

Kelly telling me that I needed some Rescue Remedy Too. I can't wait until she's a mom.

There are some very interesting bill boards out there. Who pays for these? Who decides which ones will really be the best? And then who makes them and actually pays for someone to put them up? And while we're at it, when do they put up new billboards because we've driven at all hours and I've never seen anyone in the process of putting up a new sign. O.k., enough about that. My two favorite billboards were, "Erick Astrada delivers baby with a seatbelt!" That one came with a picture. The other favorite was, "Jesus Christ is the Lord (not a swear word) Travel Center with free Wi-Fi"--Oh, Texas how I've missed you. I wish I could have taken a picture of those.

I did get a picture of this however, The Largest Cross in the Western U.S. I think it was in Oklahoma.

You gotta wonder how much that cost.

Let's not forget the good things. Exposing my children to some great musical soundtracks--yes we did the whole trip with not one movie and no DS's. Plus all the many wonderful moments I was able to tell my children I loved them, and how proud I was of them; to see where we were and to have accomplished what we accomplished.

Thankfully it's over! I wonder what next summer will bring (no, it better not involve moving!)