Car Trip

We started off on our road trip bright and early this morning with Brad waking us all up at 5 am. We were all in the car and on the road at 5:25. Jonathan was so excited that he talked for 15 minutes straight, just long enough to prohibit any falling back to sleep for anyone. Diana had her first melt down around 6:20 and signed "all done". Boy, if she only knew how long she would be in the car and were we in trouble!!! At the same time, Jonathan asked, are we in Minnesota yet? After I told him that we wouldn't be there until after breakfast, lunch and dinner, his eyes got huge and said "that's a really long time!". At 7:30 I discovered that Diana had got another tooth, top front right! Might explain why I was up with her at 1 am last night. 8:00 o'clock we were at the windmills in Indiana. The kids thought the windmills were pretty cool, Diana even was entertained by them for awhile. 8:30 was our first stop of the day at mcdonalds for breakfast and a potty break for the little guy. Diana fussed a little bit but fell asleep at 9 am and slept until 10, which was perfect timing for us to get through Chicago without her screaming. The kids did well for almost another 2 hours, we stopped for gas and think it was a break we all needed, well maybe need Brad. The traffic outside of chicago and in wisconsin was heavy, think a lot of people heading to cabins for the holiday weekend. We ate the lunch I packed in the car and by 1:30 both kids were zonked out. Jonathan had drool coming down his face and Diana was snoring. I was loving watching my kids sleep, they were so peaceful. Until it was too good to be true...Jonathan woke up with a leg cramp screaming, which of course woke up Diana. At least they got 45 minutes of sleep. Periodically I would let Jonathan open "presents" which were new toys for him, so this entertained him. Diana started to become more of a challenge as she never fell back to sleep so now she was shy about 3 extra hours of sleep she normally gets. Luckily we made it through, lots of toys were being used but we survived. Once we hit MN things started going down hill...we ran into road construction and then heavy cabin traffic. We were averaging about 70 mph which was unbelievable. Finally around 5 o'clock we met up with Grandpa Gordy in st cloud and he took Jonathan. This allowed Diana to fall asleep which was a very good thing. We pulled into the cabin at 6:20 (eastern time)...so about a 13 hour car ride. Not bad considering I thought it was going to take us 15 hours. I believe brad said it was 850 miles. The kids were wonderful and Brad did an excellent job driving! Now for vacation!