Road Trip Part I

You're probably asking yourself about the ROAD TRIP.  Well, that is, if you have nothing better to do than keep up with my life and my blog and the promises I've made on said blog. 

It all began with a message on Jen's answering machine, a tinny, mechanized voice:  "Wut time shoood I be read-ee to go?"  My brother Mikey successfully sent a text to Jen's land line, which resulted in the funniest joke of our entire trip, Jen repeating the text in her best Midwestern robot voice at all hours so we could get a good laugh.  It got even better when my brother continued to text the answering machine while we were on the trip, leaving such gems as, "My bottom is covered in flax-seed," and "My Jen-et-als (see earlier post on Jen's new nickname) are swollen" for Jen's husband.  I can't remember the last time I was so delighted with technology, and poor Mike Dant just wanted to know why he was being prank called by all of us.

Looooooong story short (and it was a very long, 2-day story), our road trip up involved 1 caravan of 6 adults, 2 kids (3 months and 3 years old), 2 cars, one two-hour stop at Bob Evans, and a hotel stay in West Memphis completely devoid of any hot water (Jen worked it and got us our room for free).  It also involved endless streams of tears and countless burts of hysterical laughter, at least 100 window-cracks for my farting younger siblings, and at least three times that I thought Ann might hit Mikey for reclining his front passenger seat so much he was practically sitting in the back. 

It also involved one very cranky seven-months pregnant woman (oh wait, that was me) shifting around and around, trying desperately to get comfortable after 9 hours in the car.  Jen overheard a hilarious phone conversation between Nate and me. I'll describe it the way she heard it, with only my voice.  "Oh, the car ride is okay.  I'm just uncomfortable.  You know how I get itchy when I'm tired."  (long pause)  "No, baby, I said itchy."  I'll leave you to fill in the blanks.  Needless to say, I might have gotten my feelings hurt had Jen not been laughing so hard...

We drove from 6 p.m. on Monday to 3 a.m. Tuesday, stopped, and drove from 9 a.m. Tuesday to 9 p.m. Tuesday, when we finally arrived in Rockford, IL.  Tell me how an 18-hour trip managed to take us all that time?  Besides the Bob Evans stop?  We had originally intended to make it for Grandma's visitation from 5-8 p.m. on Tuesday (which at least a thousand people attended).  Definitely didn't go quite as planned, though, which I'm understanding more and more is how life in general works.  But when we finally arrived, we were greeted by our delighted cousins, warm beds, cool weather, and one happy dog named Gus.  It was good to be "home" in Rockford (Jen and I promptly begged our husbands to let us move back, to which they both replied, "If we're moving anywhere, it's NOT going to be to Rockford.").

More on the trip to come...