road trip: entertaining a toddler and a 5-month old in the car for hours = FUN!

DAY ONE

saturday, january 3, 2009: we started our first long road trip with the boys this today. we loaded up the "van-truck" as ethan calls it or and headed on our way to colorado for a week of skiing and winter fun. let me just say, it is a L O N G drive from oklahoma to crested butte, colorado. we split up the drive into two days. day one we went to pueblo, co (about an 11 hour day through mostly flat, windy, tumbleweed-y terrain) and then day two we finished up the drive to crested butte (about 6 hours thanks to a snow storm along the way!) the boys actually did amazingly well and it helped that we had grandmother along in our car for the ride. she was a huge help with driving and also with entertaining the kids. the dvd player and lots of thomas and the wiggles did wonders too. thanks especially to dawn (and zach!) who leant us the good thomas dvds since i had purchased the cheap knock-offs that just weren't cutting it.

ahhh naptime! somewhere around dumas or dalhart, tx.

DAY TWO (note the ever present thomas and sir topham hat on the DVD player)friday, january 9, 2009: our trip back began at 5AM on friday morning since we had to get laura and jeff to the airport. we had packed the night before and actually made it out of the condo by 5:45. that has to be a record for getting 12 bodies (5 of them being under 5!) and way too much luggage into the cars and onto the road. we had to do the trip back in one day because lance had to be at drill late that night. i was dreading the day, but all in all doing it at once is so much better than splitting it up. at least you can push through and know you get to sleep in your own bed by the end of the night. we ended up taking alex grace in our car and she was a huge help! she entertained ethan, helped out with miles and was even doing some dance moves to the thomas dvds by the end of the night. i think we were all overtired and had cabin (van) fever by that time. we made it though and i can't say enough times how great the van was, especially thanks to the dvd player and built-in bottle warmers. oh, in case you want to know, it took 17 hours to drive home...i think it will be a long time before we drive anywhere farther than oklahoma city or dallas with the two kids!

and yes, the novelty of documenting the trip had worn off by this point in time, so unfortunately no pictures of our skittle ridden, jam packed van, but you can imagine it was much worse off than in the traveling out pictures. the novelty of keeping it neat and tidy had also worn off.