Travelling

We are officially home from vacation. It was a fabulous trip!! We had so much fun and really got some great bonding time in. I really did have grand plans about posting each evening about all our day's events, but honestly, by the end of each day all I could manage was dropping into bed and falling fast asleep. We packed our trip full of activities!! I did upload each days photo's to facebook. Does that count for anything?

Day 1 was our travel day. We had initially planned on dividing the trip up into 2 days but things were going so great that we just kept right on driving until we got there. The kids were fantastic!! No fighting at all!! Seriously, that is a feat with 3 children in one car for 12 straight hours. I was so proud. And here is the best part...we spent all 12 of those hours talking to each other. And playing games!! Even though we brought along the portable DVD player and lots of movies the kids chose to not get them out. Instead we told jokes and riddles and played all the classic long car ride games. It was an awesome trip!!

Aunt Jackie packed each kid a bag with treats, games, books, activities, DVD's, crayons and paper....etc. These bags were packed full and kept the kids very busy. Plus we kept track of who found the most license plates from other states. Isaac was VERY into this game as the prize was 5 bucks for finding the most. Maia said she didn't need the 5 bucks because she already had 5 bucks. Andy and I quickly decided that she would need to be introduced to a financial planner as soon as she was making her own money!! God love her.

Andy was thrilled that the speed limit through West Virginia was 70mph. We stopped at a nasty IHOP and the kids thought it was super funny that they stuck me with the duct taped seat!! My little businessman Isaac talked of how bad the IHOP was managed the entire trip!! Seriously, on his own he picked up that it was bad management to be out of the 3 things we wanted, the rude waitress and how dirty the relatively new restaurant seemed to be. He did think they picked an excellent location off the side of the highway though.

The kids were completely awed by the mountains and hills through West Virginia and Virginia. Truth be told Andy and I were too. Even though we both had seen these sights before it was totally different seeing them through the eyes of our children. And what a testament to the wonders of God's imagination!!

We did have a scary moment in West Virginia. A car swerved over into our lane and we were inches from being hit head on. It was so close that I almost threw up afterwards. I'm sure you wanted to know that right?

Our original goal was to get halfway to our destination but like I said everything was going so great that we thought maybe we could make it clear to Richmond. We pulled into a rest stop right as it was starting to get dark. We were the only ones there other than all the trucker's sleeping in their trucks on the other side of the stop. Just an FYI here...Virginia rest stops were fantastic. By far the cleanest that we saw on the trip. And believe you me...we stopped at A LOT of rest stops!! So I am an expert on this subject. So Andy parks just a bit away from the front of the rest stop. I think he was trying to get close to the trash can because he was obsessed with cleaning out the car at each stop. The car was far enough away from the entrance and it was just dark enough that it made me a bit nervous. We let the kids run around in the grass for a bit to get their energy out and to give Andy time to clean out the car. In the meantime a couple of cars pulled up to the left of us. Closer to the entrance of the building. I was getting the kids gathered up and settled back into the car when I heard Andy talking to someone on the right side of the car. Right away I got a sick feeling in my stomach. Something was definitely wrong here. The area was too isolated for someone to just pull up there for no reason. I hear the guy asking Andy for money and giving him some sort of story about being lost and out of gas. Andy tells the guy that he doesn't have any money on him but that he would be happy to call someone for him. Andy even suggested the police or highway patrol would probably be happy to help him out. The guy definitely didn't want Andy to call anyone for him. Says he is lost and far from home but his license plate tells another story. He was a local to the area. Well the guy's posture is not right at all. He is covering something up and leaning forward just enough so that Andy could not see his gas gauge. Isaac managed to sneak out of the car and made it to Andy before I realized what he was doing. Andy was already stressed that this guy is going to pull a weapon on him and having Isaac standing there next to him just made the situation 1000x worse!! Andy again apologized to the guy for not having any money to give him, pointed out the other cars and suggested he ask another traveller if they had any spare change. He quickly brought Isaac back around to the other side of the car and got situated to make a hasty exit. Except the guy had blocked us in!! Talk about scary. We felt really trapped. Finally the guy pulled up enough that we thought we were in the clear. But he still had us trapped in. He seemed like he really wasn't sure what he was gonna do. He waved us around him but had us blocked so we had nowhere to go. I could tell Andy was really nervous. It looked the guy was gonna approach one of the other cars and he finally pulled up just enough so that we could get out. At that point Andy very quickly exited the parking lot and the guy gunned it to follow us. He never talked to any of the other motorists. Andy was fast enough to lose the guy fairly quickly. Isaac was a nervous wreck the whole rest of the night. He kept checking behind us because he was scared the guy had found us again. I think God definitely gives us instincts and gut feelings for a reason. This guy was up to no good and we were very thankful to have gotten away safe.

After that little incident Andy decided that we would just travel all the way to Newport News. Our hotel reservation wasn't until the following night and we had no idea if we could get in a night early but we decided to give it a try. The last 2 hours all you could hear in our car was the sound of very tired children asking if we were there yet. We pulled into our hotel almost exactly 12 hours after we left our driveway. The kids did not sleep one wink the entire trip!!