Road Trip Legs 1 and 2

This is a photo of Mackenna on her actual second birthday. She doesn't seem to mind spending six hours of it in the car, does she?

OK, here we are on the biggest road trip of my life. I must say that I have impressed many, especially myself, with how lightly I packed for my whole family to be on the road for a month. My trunk is only half full! I even had room to bring the oldest three kids' scooters. With food treats and tons of activities in the cabin and suitcases and scooters in the trunk, we headed out Thursday afternoon.

The trip to Ohio was uneventful. The kids were all super excited to finally get the treat bags they'd been hearing so much about. Between their activities, a couple of DVD's and a book on tape, they were well entertained for the duration of the journey.

After a short night's sleep, we awoke to some cousin fun. Maia and her "favorite second cousin" Hannah busily wrote and illustrated books while flapping their fairy wings and jumping around. Mason and Logan wielded light sabers and ran around the yard. Marlee divided her time between her cousin Collin and tailing the big girls. Mackenna reveled in squeezing her adorable four-month old cousin, Ella. OK, I enjoyed that activity as well. That baby is a chunk and absolutely adorable! Michael had some nice chat time with Sean and I visited with Jessica for the morning.

We didn't stay very long with our cousins because we will be with them when we get to the family reunion. At about 11:30 we threw our bags in the car and made way for Iowa.

Our children were fabulous! I don't mean to brag and I am sure that all legs of this trip will not go as smoothly, but our kids were picture perfect (except for one low point, but at that time we were completely stopped I-80 for an entire hour in the heat of they day; even I was losing it). No one even asked to go to the bathroom until 7:00 p.m. Can you believe that? I sure couldn't. We had, of course, stopped for lunch at about 2:00, but still. We cruised right here to Iowa without a hitch (not including said highway closing, of course).

It was so fun to reunite with our old friends. We stayed up late last night visiting and let the kids run around outside to get their wiggles out and catch lightning bugs. We went to bed feeling great about our arrival and looking forward to our visit.

Enter the vomit. That's right. In the middle of the night I heard this moaning and found it was Maia. She said her tummy hurt. I took her to the bathroom hoping she just needed to go. Oh, boy. That poor girl had it coming out both ends in a matter of seconds. I gave her a bath and got her back to bed where she slept peacefully for another three hours. Then she and Mackenna woke up vomiting. Yep, we've got TWO kids vomiting now. See how lucky we are? And "You're welcome, Jessica and Hugh, that we brought you our special virus all the way from Maryland!" Here's to hoping that it's like an eight hour thing and the other kids escape its clutches. I just don't need this on my big road trip!