Home Sweet Home

Yes we arrived back home safe and sound on Monday afternoon - thanks for your prayers for safe travels!

Kayla's reaction to being home? Joe took her out of the van, set her down in the carport and asked her, "Kayla where are we?" She looked around like she was in a daze. We tried again, "Kayla look...where are we?" She triumphantly threw her arms in the air and said, "home!" Yes she was glad to be back home!

Some observations from our trip:

- Drury Hotels are awesome! Starting around 3:00 you can go to the lobby and help yourself to freshly popped popcorn and the soda machine. From 5:30-7 there is a "happy hour" - each adult guest in the room gets a card for 3 free drinks. We enjoyed some margaritas (me) and beer (Joe) and Shirley Temples (Kayla). Plus they had different chips/pretzels out as well. Nice, hot, free breakfast in the morning (eggs, sausage, biscuits & gravy, french toast, waffles etc). 1 free hour of long-distance every day. Microwave and fridge in every room. Ok that's my plug!

- It's funny the things that became "routine" for Kayla while we were traveling. She seemed to sense when we were pulling off the highway/slowing down as she would say "Daddy gas" in reference to Joe filling up the van, not that he was full of gas himself! Or she would ask "out? walk?" and we would say "almost" or "in a few minutes" and she would respond with "daddy gas!" She knew that when Joe pulled in to get gas we would get out and walk for a few minutes.

- She loved taking the elevators in the hotels. As soon as we were checked in the room she would take our hands saying "elevator" in her cute little voice and leading us to the door. She got pretty good at pushing the right buttons too.

- Kayla will pretty much boycott naps while we're driving. She still takes a nap at home, usually 1- 1.5 hrs, but the whole time we were on the road she refused to fall asleep. Ok she fell asleep a few times. The first time was when we left the Science Museum in St Louis to go back to our hotel (she fell asleep almost immediately, and it was only about 15 min back to our hotel). So she can fall asleep then, but not on the 9.5 hr drive to St Louis? She fell asleep for about 40 min from StL to Columbus. She did fall asleep when we left Baltimore (Port Discovery) and went back to my mom's house. (Notice the pattern? Falling asleep after visiting Children's "hands-on" places! Now if only we could find those all along our route!) She fell asleep after we left OKC and heading back to Joe's parents' house - and she slept for 1.5 hrs that time! But yeah, pretty much the whole drive she stayed awake.

- No matter what toys I brought for her on this trip, it hardly kept her occupied. I even had some new things for her that she hadn't seen before hoping that would keep her attention - no such luck. She has such a short attention span. Everything I handed her she would fling in the seat behind her, in front, or on the side, within a matter of minutes. On good days she would be nice and say, "Mommy away" or "all done" so I could actually put it away and not have to search the van all over for everything.

- So she watched a lot of videos. I don't like her to watch so many for hours straight, but it was the only thing to help pass the time. Which reminds me - how come the mom always seems to die in kids' movies? Seriously! Bambi, The Land Before Time, Finding Nemo, Brother Bear, Ice Age - see what I mean? The mom always dies! I find that a little morbid.

- We did listen to some music - ok it was mostly Kindermusik and nursery rhyme songs, but at least it was music and not always videos. I think Joe and I had about 2 hrs total where we listened to "adult" CDs!

- Kayla thinks as soon as she's in her car seat she needs to be eating something. I think she wanted to eat more out of boredom than anything. We would have a nice big breakfast at the hotel, bring our luggage to the van and head out. Within minutes of leaving I would hear a voice from the backseat, "mommy cereal please?" Kayla! You just ate a big bowl for breakfast! You can't possibly be hungry! After about an hour I would hand her a baggie full of cheerios and it was devoured before I knew it. Then she would ask for crackers. I think she could eat cereal 24 hrs a day if I let her.

- Lots of dead deer on the side of the road. I think we saw about 20 on our trip.

- It's virtually impossible to find a license plate from Hawaii. Yes to keep ourselves occupied Joe and I tried to find plates from all 50 states. We found all of them, including Alaska, but no Hawaii. We even saw Ontario, Quebec and a plate from Chihuahua, Mexico (which is close to where we live).

- To borrow those famous last words from Dorothy, "There's no place like home!"