hitting the road

Well, the dreaded last day finally arrived.  And there were many hard goodbyes to be said, for all of us.

I'm thankful for teachers who take pictures of classroom moments that I would otherwise have missed out on!

Oh, and John Paul brought this gem of a recipe (part of a class project to make a recipe book).

And then we went to the Life House one last time.  And hugged Grandma and Grandpa one last time. And we loaded in the loaded van, turned the van south, and started driving.  We had a long way to go and planned to get to the Minneapolis area that night.

Day 2 on the road and we woke up to Julianna's birthday.  It really was a sweet ride, we hung a birthday banner and opened gifts on the road and stopped for dinner too.  (Stopping is a treat when we road trip - we are of the "don't stop often, and only stop briefly" variety.)

The entire drive we were blessed with terrific weather - after years of saying "next time we should avoid Chicago" we did choose an alternate route (mostly prompted by snow and sleet and freezing rain south of Lake Michigan).  So we headed south, and south, and south some more, not turning eastward until we hit St. Louis.

Maybe next time we will stop and visit the Arch?

But this time we were in a hurry.  Late on the 23rd and we were still 9 hours from Raleigh, and due to loose an hour when we entered EST.  argh.  So we slept hard and woke to a Christmas Eve day on the road - with a car top carrier and North Dakota plates we figured everyone we passed realized we were not yet home for Christmas.

Thankfully this day, the one where we tend to loose our marbles, was smooth as silk and we entered the NC mountains and blue skies shone.

a few hundred more miles eastward and and we pulled in the driveway oh so happy to leave the car behind and let the good times roll.  And they did!