The Drive

The kids did REALLY well this trip--better than ever. I'm hoping that as they get older they'll continue to do better and better in the car. We broke it up into two days on the way up and stopped in St. Louis for the night--that's such an easy way to do the 13-hour drive!

Friday morning we got up and went to Grant's Farm in St. Louis-it's free and has lots of animals, a train ride, and other fun stuff.

Here we are boarding the train...


Crossing the bridge into the park

My camera stopped working for an hour during the morning--so I didn't get pictures of some things--but get this--OLLIE RODE THE CAROUSEL! If you know how incredibly cautious my son is, you'll realize what an amazing feat that is.

Later we stopped at a park to eat lunch..


We had a friendly competition on the road between Joel and I--we were guessing how many license plates we could see from the 50 states and the Canadian provinces. Joel guessed 33, I guessed 47. (States, that is. The provinces were in ADDITION to that)
Amazingly, we saw 44 states! Isn't that crazy?


Once we got into Ohio, we stopped at a little ice cream shop for some yummy ice cream. It was a beautiful evening and so much fun! Oh, and these pictures illustrate the interesting new poses Ollie is using when we say 'say cheese!' to take his picture. I have no idea where the odd gestures come from...but whatever.

(sorry, they're not the best quality!)


Oh, and stickers are an AMAZING way to keep the kids happy on a trip. It doesn't take long to go through a sticker page--but they really love them!

That's it. On our way down, we left at 4am Indiana time (3am our time) and the kids slept a lot. It really helps! We are realizing that as the kids get older, we have to stop more and feed them often. But it certainly makes for a more relaxed drive!