We just returned from a wonderful trip halfway across the country and back over the course of a week! I am not going to bore with an insanely long post, so I am breaking it up over the next few days. We were gone from Tuesday to Tuesday, for reference. The posts will be along the lines of:
Volume 1 - Let's Get the Hard Stuff Over First
Volume 2 - Iowa Family Time
Volume 3 - St Louis
Volume 1 - Let's Get the Hard Stuff Over First
The reality is that we just put 1,748 miles on our beloved Pontiac Vibe, and rode an additional 950 or so miles in the Grand Minivan! This is by far the longest road trip that Anny and I have taken together, by about 2,500 miles!
The decision to start with the Hard Stuff is mine and mine alone. I tend to look at the bad before getting to the good so that in the end the focus is the good. With that in mind...
About two hours into our drive our car broke! Unbelievable, right? We were driving through the mountains in Western Maryland when we heard a very loud POP! Assuming that something had fallen off of the trucks around us we kind of ignored the noise. Moments later we heard a very loud and low pitched "whooooooo" sound that was not going away. We pulled over and checked under the hood, around the whole car and even on top. We found that the rubber seal that the drivers window fits into had come undone from the car. Completely bizarre, but also too loud to ignore for the whole trip!
I went completely ghetto/rednecky and "fixed" it by tying a grocery bag around the door frame to hold the weatherstripping as closely as it would to where it actually belonged. Lucky for us, it lasted the whole trip, but I will admit that I found it to be ominous, as we had not left our own state and we had a long journey. I'm glad it was not ominous, but funny in the end.
On Tuesday night we made it to our goal destination of Columbus, Ohio! The hotel we stayed in, though, had an out-of-order hot tub and their "heated" pool was chilly. Our goal of playing until Abby was close to crashing to sleep failed because the water woke more than it soothed!
Abby's cousin Ada was (jokingly) bad influence. They were incredibly great together with a very few exceptions. The bad part is that Abby has picked up some nuances from Ada, like declaring her toys to herself (again, which had dissipated since school ended) and, more cutely, claims her stuffed sheep is named Baa, just like Ada's. I assume it will pass, but it's humorous.
That's it. That's all of the bad, out of the whole trip! I'm looking forward to sharing some of the other fun stuff from our travels, but that will have to wait until tomorrow or the weekend...
Oh, dear. And I thought that Ada was pretty much over the "Mine!" phase (except when she's very tired). Perhaps not . . . maybe she just hides it from me.
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