Our whole family took a 550-mile road trip to Pennsylvania and back!
It was long planned that Chris would take the girls to Pennsylvania to see our friend's daughter make her temporary profession of vows as a Carmelite nun. She has lived cloistered there for two years and these vows are for three years before (I think) she would take permanent vows.
However, only three days ahead of time, in a late-night discussion, Chris and I decided to try taking the entire family. We do quite poorly on road trips, even four hours to Atlanta, so this was a real leap of faith and hope.
I moved rapidly into Planning Mode. I consulted with friends who do road trips with their large families, and I used their tips and tricks to plan to stop every two hours, to fill our time in the van with structure, just like we have a structured routine at home. This was revolutionary (for me) and ended up working quite well!
I made color-coded lists and charts of packing items, and I got to work!
The night before we departed, Chris stood behind me at the computer and informed me as gently as he could that my entire road trip plan was using the wrong route. We wouldn't be driving that way. I had spent hours planning every road stop . . . using Yelp to determine the best, cleanest Welcome Centers, the best playgrounds, fast-food joints at the right locations with play places attached. All of my planning, gone in a flash, and at ten at night when I simply had to go to bed for our early morning departure.
I cried a little.
Our goal was to leave Thursday at 7:00 a.m. and we were only 40 minutes behind schedule.
Everyone was happy and excited, and we launched into our planned activities, starting with printed-out car games.
The drive was mostly pastoral, with wide vistas of farmland and woods: peaceful and beautiful.
The nine-hour drive took us thirteen hours, which really is about what we had planned. It was mostly quite pleasant and it helped me (who really dislikes road time) to shift my mindset to thinking about "this is just a normal day for us in a different location, but we still have structure and a plan."
Our first stop was at the Virginia Welcome Center, where the children played freeze tag.
We stopped again for lunch and playing at the fast food play place, and then we stopped in mid-afternoon at a playground in Fort Royal, VA. After mid-morning and mid-afternoon stops, I would lure the kids happily back into the van with it being Snack Time.
On the first day, I don't think we turned on movies (downloaded to iPads while on Wi-Fi at home) until the scheduled time after mid-afternoon stop. For the rest of the trip, we ended up being more liberal with movies.
We couldn't quite make it to our final destination without also stopping for dinner, and we tumbled into our two hotel rooms--no longer fitting in one--a little after bedtime. (Ten-month-old David was confused because he is accustomed and very happy to be laid down awake in his crib to fall sleep, so here I was laying with him on a bed and with his two sisters in the room. He was exhausted, but didn't fall asleep for an hour because he was flummoxed as to What On Earth Is Going On.)
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