Epic Road Trip- Day 1

For spring break this year, we decided to go visit Grandma and Grandpa on their mission!  So we packed up Marshmallow and for the first time in a long time, turned right on I-80 instead of left.  It was very exciting!

This is the first time we've ever done a roadtrip like this, with stops in multiple states and no more than 4 nights in any one place, and I wasn't really sure how it would go.  On the one hand, our kids are older and more capable of sitting in the car and entertaining themselves, but on the other hand, carsickness is a thing, and so is too much screen time and too much time in the car- and bigger kids mean the van is looking smaller these days- but we were all willing to give it a go!

I gathered up all of the snacks and activities and movies and books I thought we would need, and Emma especially was so excited about these wrapped surprises.  "You're the best mom ever.  When I'm a mom I'm going to make road trips this exciting for my kids." Each one had a code name written on it, and everyone fixated on the one that said "Schlond Poofa" (it was a classic Barbie sticker book). Guessing what was inside each package- Aviation, A Buncha Fun, Feeling Twisted Up?, Stick With It!, Are Your Gears Spinning? Wanna Dance? and lots more- was almost as fun as the surprise itself. 

We left around 1:00 for what we officially dubbed Winter Break 2.0.  There is never much sign of spring when our spring break hits, and this year we knew it only had the potential of getting worse as we traveled toward New England. 

Spoiler alert- it did get worse.  We made it to our first hotel just outside of Cleveland, Ohio after about 11 hours of driving rather than the scheduled 9 because of the snow and wind, and we were all happy to have the longest leg of the journey east behind us and to be out of the car for the night.  Throughout the whole trip we all shouted goodbye to each state as we left it and hello to the next one as we drove in, and it was fun to say hellos and goodbyes to Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio in our first day!