Life is a highway... (repeat song 50 more times)

We woke up at 3am, and were on the road by 3:45am- 3 kids in pajamas, 2 dogs in the way back on a bed on top of boxes, the excargo on the roof, and lots boxes packed every square inch of our minivan! We had a cooler full of snacks, drinks, breakfast, and lunch and we were READY. I innocently thought the kids would go back to sleep once they got in the car, but I was wrong! By the time we were getting on the highway, they were ready for a movie (I had been telling them the whole week we could watch movies on the way to Houston, I just didn't think it would be in the first hour!:). After 2 movies it was time for breakfast, a gas fill-up (terrible gas mileage with such a heavy load!) and a bathroom break. We brought a tub of vanilla yogurt, a cut-up pineapple and a box of Kashi chocolate granola to make parfaits in plastic cups. Yum!!! Who said breakfast on the run had to be unhealthy? The rest of the day included naps, more movies, and using our new car seat tables from grandma to play on the computer:

Color:

Eat markers:

We made it all the way from Chicago to Little Rock, Arkansas by 3:30 pm! It took us a while to find our hotel (sorry Tonio, I made a wrong turn:). At one point we *almost* ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere because I wasn't watching, oops. The light was on, we followed wrong GPS directions that were supposed to lead us to a gas station but instead led us to a farm. I ran across a field and flagged down this huge tractor, who told us the nearest gas station was back on the highway, about 10 miles away. We crossed our fingers and prayed the whole way, as we counted down the miles: "Tonio, you could run the 7 miles to the gas station while we wait here..." "OK, for sure you could do 5 miles if we run out now..." "3 miles, piece of cake!" "1 mile, you could sprint there and back in 10 minutes (haha), "Here it is, phew, we made it!" I told the kids they had to be quiet because it was an emergency and they were all excited to see what type of emergency it was going to be. It was quite disappointing when nothing happened. "Mommy, when's the emergency?" "There's no emergency anymore! We made it." "Oh, man." We found a hotel that accepted dogs AND had free breakfast- nice! For dinner we went to a not-so-good Mexican restaurant, but everyone was happy to be out of the car and stretching out legs. All 5 of the weary travellers were asleep by 7pm, even the drivers- but we made it more than halfway with no meltdowns!!!!! It was a great first day on the road.