The Drive to Minnesota

I got up on Thursday morning at about 4 am, noting that I wanted to be out the door and on the road by 4:30 am. I washed up, packed up, and woke kids up and they did pretty well getting up and going that early. It was definitely a first for Junior. We gave hugs and kisses to Dad and said see you in 12 days and we were off! I had decided that we would stop every 3 hours, so our first stop would be at 7:30am and we would get out and stretch our legs and have some breakfast, potty break, diaper change, and gas up the car. This went well. The kids watched a Disney movie and we stopped at a McDonald's and all went well. Next stop at 10:30am, no problems again and the kids were doing really good in the car. After that they decided after 2 more hours they wanted out, I decided that it was lunch time and saw an exit with a Perkins so I figured we'd take a nice lunch and run around a little. Lunch ended up lasting an hour long and we got back into the car. Junior started to get a little irritated after an hour and wanted out again - ahhhh - it had only been an hour and we were already behind schedule. I stretched it out as long as I could and finally pulled over at a rest area and let them run around in the grass for awhile. We stopped after another couple of hours because Junior started to scream and was not content at all. The poor kid did not want to sleep in the car at this point (keep in mind he got up at 4:30am) he had taken a 40 minute nap and a 30 minute nap and it was now pushing around 4pm. We stopped for supper at a Burger King at around 6:30pm. At this point I was still a way from home and I had really thought my plan and time line would have me home by supper time, that was definitely not going to happen. Junior eventually did fall asleep and Katelynn and I trudged on while it started raining bugs outside. She thought that it was pretty cool to see both the sunrise and the sunset in the same day. As we drove along we were chatting and then something came flying at my window and SMACK! in the upper right hand corner of my windshield, it scared the crap out of me. I thought it was a bird and then as I thought about it awhile I realized that I hadn't seen a bird in like six hours, so what the hell was that thing?! (Later my brother said it was probably a bat, duh!). So I drove freaked out for awhile and then about a half hour later right in the middle of the lane was a dead deer and it was dark, by the time I saw it, it was too late to do anything and I ended up straddling this deer. I was so lucky. I can't believe that it didn't bottom out my car or if it had been a buck with horns one of my tires would have been toast. At this point I could do nothing but keep driving along. Katelynn eventually fell asleep as well. We finally made it to my parents house at around 11pm (we lose an hour on the way). How did my 12 to 14 hour drive turn into 17 hours in my car?! Whew, at least we made it safe and sound.