I know you're totally stoked about reading someone else's travelogue about driving 1500 miles across a lot of nothingness. So get ready. (Sarcasm is fun.)
I knew that the only way we would survive this trip was to be really prepared as far as keeping the kids entertained was concerned. Grandpa and Grandma Roper helped by sending us several new DVDs. I did a lot of research on Pinterest and asking friends for their suggestions. The kids told me they wanted to bring the Wii and have lots of new games. Unfortunately for them, the whole reason we were driving was because we wanted to save a bunch of money, not because we thought it would be a great bonding experience.
First, I made the boys lap trays out of dollar store cookie sheets, scrap fabric, old pillow stuffing, and dried beans. It probably cost me $5 for all three. Oh sure, I could show you a picture of how awesome they turned out, but that would require actually taking a picture of them. And since I'm in a rather comfortable recliner, that's not gonna happen. Maybe later.
Anywho, for these trays I made a lot of activities that included printing things on cardstock, laminating them, and then gluing magnets on the back. This included "Analog Angry Birds" (as opposed to the digital version), Super Mario Bros. Brawl characters, a train set for Cole, and goofy family pictures. The kids loved them.
Then I made Spencer and Josh binders full of laminated games and mazes, tic-tac-toe boards, etc. I also included lots of free worksheets I found online that I thought they would like. (They did.) At the front of the binders I put a laminated copy of a map that showed where we were going. I also included Crayola washable dry-erase markers with little fuzzy pom-poms on top as erasers so they could chart our progress. (Thanks, Pinterest!)
We left Lafayette around 6am Saturday morning. The kids were all pretty excited, but I think that's because they really had no idea just how long we were going to be in the car. A few days before I had worked for a couple of hours in boiling hot weather to clean the minivan. Within an hour of leaving Lafayette Cole had thrown his bag of cereal all over the back seat. Awesome, Cole. Thanks.
Tess liked the slinkies, as you can see.
We drove. We drove and drove and drove. We drove through some of Indiana. Then we drove through Illinois. We stopped for a break in Hannibal, Missouri, birth place of a certain Mr. Mark Twain. I had always wanted to go there. The museum and other sites were a bit pricey and would have taken a bit too much time, but we drove through the touristy areas and that satisfied me. :)
Then we drove some more. And more. I had wrapped each of the toys for the boys, and every once in a while I would let them open a new one. They liked them all, but the definite favorites were the Pokemon cards and the mini Pokemon figurines. The best things about these were 1) I had gotten them for ridiculously cheap on eBay, and 2) I had bought them in bulk and used them as rewards for good behavior during the entire trip. These worked really well to keep the whineys away.
We drove and drove some more. We stopped in a random town named Chillicothe for lunch, which will forever be known as the home of the "Bootery" to Lance and I. (It's a good place to buy boots, according to the sign we saw on the freeway.) We found a rather hot and non-shaded school park to have a picnic.
And then we drove.
We drove through Missouri, spent about 5 minutes in Iowa, and then finally entered Iowa. And then we drove some more. We watched lots of movies. We ate some snacks. A few of us even took naps, albeit too short.
Good heavens, Nebraska took forever. We were sure excited when we drove through Lincoln, just because it gave us something to look at. (Christy, I totally thought of you! I even sent you a message on Facebook, only to discover later that my phone doesn't like Facebook right now and never sent it. Stupid phone.)
We drove and drove. We yelled at the seemingly pointless construction projects that slowed us down. Stupid construction projects!!!
I thought about taking some pictures of the scenery, but really, who wants to see pictures of endless fields and rolling hills? The one random thing was that everything was a golden brown instead of green because of the drought. It was kind of like driving through parts of California.
We finally made it to Kearney, Nebraska, where we were staying for the night. I chose Kearney because it's basically in the middle of our trip and it's cheaper than staying somewhere bigger, like Grand Island.
It was around 7pm Indiana time. The kids were getting really antsy to get out of the car and were getting hungry. Lance and I decided that we didn't want fast food, but we didn't want to deal with the kids in a nice steak house or anything like that. What we needed was a Denney's or IHOP. (I know, we're so cool.) But we couldn't find a Denney's or IHOP, at least not along the main strip of restaurants just off of the freeway. So we decided to try a place call Perkin's Restaurant.
This was a mistake.
Going in, it looked fine. It was pretty full and smelled alright. We were quickly seated. And then we waited. And waited. And then we waited some more. Seriously, we waited a good 20 minutes before anyone even acknowledged our existence! And it's not like we were off in some far corner - we were right in the middle of the restaurant. FINALLY, a rather odd server (a young, rather flamboyant gentleman with acrylic nails) came to us. He was very apologetic about our wait and promised he'd take care of us. Even though the kids were kinda going crazy (Tess kept throwing things, Cole was crawling under the booth), I decided that it had just been a shift change or something No worries.
This was a mistake.
We gave the server our orders and waited for our food. And waited. And waited. We waited another good 20 minutes before our food came out. We watched several other tables who had been seated after us get their food. We saw our server chatting it up with the other waitresses. We changed diapers and tried to entertain the kids. And we waited.
FINALLY, our food came out. The kids were starving and joyously dug in.
It was gross.
Seriously, it's kinda hard to really, truly mess up pancakes, but they did. The food tasted as if it had been under the heat lamp for the past 20 minutes. It probably had been.
By this point Lance and I were pretty ticked. But we choked down our food, because, really, what were our options. The kids would have had a TOTAL MELTDOWN if we had decided to leave. It was late and we still needed to check into the hotel.
At one point the restaurant's manager came over and asked how we were doing. I gave her a rather chilly "Fine" and then pointedly asked if we could get the bill - quickly - as Cole was trying to climb over the booth walls. I'm sure she didn't know what had been going on, but quite frankly I didn't feel like filling her in on it. I just wanted to get the heck out of there.
To her credit, she quickly came back with the bill. We had it in our hands for about 30 seconds when the server came back, took it out of Lance's hands, and said that it had been taken care of. We were a little taken aback, but then thanked him and got out of dodge. No, we did not leave a tip.
The moral of the story? Is there one? Don't eat at Perkin's Restaurant at Kearney, NE, I guess.
Anywho, we checked into the Fairfield Marriott and Suites, which had wonderful customer service in comparison to other Kearney establishments that will not be named. We got to our room, changed into our swimming suits, and then threw all the kids into the pool. Well, Tess was in her little floaty-boat, but you know what I mean. The kids splashed and swam and played and got out most of their pent up energy. We finished swimming, got into jammies, and tried to get the kids to go to sleep. We were in a large suite with two queen beds, a sofa bed, and a pack and play for Tess. As expected, it took Cole forever to go to sleep, which was pretty frustrating. That night he woke me up several times when he fell out of bed or when he was cold because Josh kept stealing the covers. *sigh*
The next morning came early because Tess is an early riser. We got dressed and packed and headed down to the breakfast buffet. Spencer and Josh were pretty excited about getting choose what they got to eat. Cole just wanted to be naughty and run around. Tess just wanted to throw food. I had put all of the kids in their "Thing 1-4" shirts in the hopes that people would be distracted by this cuteness enough to perhaps overlook some of their naughty behavior. It worked, for the most part.
*Side note: they had Belgian waffle makers and batter, so I decided to make one for myself and Tess. The waffle maker must not have been greased enough, because when I opened it my waffle split in half and I had to shred it out in chunks with a fork, figuring it would taste fine. In fact, it was excellent - a bajillion times better than the dinner I had had the night before! This just goes to show that free meals don't always taste better. (I don't consider the hotel breakfast free, because I'm sure we paid for it in the room rate!)*
An hour later we were finally back on the road. Since it was a Sunday I decided we should have Portable Primary. We sang Primary songs, which Tess LOVED. (She applauded after each song.) We had a lesson about the Mormon Pioneers and talked about what Pioneer children did. I tried to get them to really understand what it would have been like, since we were driving through where the Pioneers went, but I don't know if they really got it. Time will tell.
We drove. And drove and drove and DROVE. Spencer asked if we were out of Nebraska approximately 397 times. No. Nebraska is LONG. Also, Nebraska is odd in that the entire state smells like cattle, but you very rarely see the cows. Odd.
Oh - I forgot to tell you two of the cool things we did in the car. The first was that I tied a string from the front of the car to the back, and put a bow on it for every 100 miles we had to go. I put a laminated picture of our car on a clothespin and every time we went 100 miles we would move it. The kids loved it. I also had clothespins with laminated pictures of the kids on them. (Each child had their face on 2 clothespins.) I put these on my visor. If the kids were naughty, we would pull a clothespin off. This was bad, because if you had a clothespin on the visor when when we stopped for gas then you could choose one treat that was a dollar or less. The boys definitely LOVED this, because we NEVER buy stuff at gas stations. It worked really well.
We finally broke through Nebraska and started our way through Wyoming. (Indian for "nothingness".) (Sorry, Wyomingans.) We drove and drove and stopped for lunch in Laramie. (I thought of you, Ginger. Isn't that where you and Loren went to school? Well, even if it wasn't, I still thought of you.)
We drove some more. Spencer asked if we were in Utah yet around 297 times. The Little America Travel Center had ads for literally hundreds of miles. Unfortunately, we weren't ready for a stop by the time we got to it, but maybe on the way home. We drove and drove and stopped in Evanston for one last pit stop. It was dinner time, but we didn't want to stop anywhere just for dinner. So we let the kids each choose a soda and one treat. I let Cole get a chocolate milk and some mini doughnuts, which he love but also put him into a crazy-sugar-induced state. (I know there are studies that say sugar doesn't put kids into crazy-sugar-induced states. These studies are stupid and wrong.) The child went nuts the last hour and a half of our trip, singing and shouting nonsense. It was actually pretty funny, especially when Tess mimicked him.
Oh - and another joy of the trip - Cole kept pulling down the top straps of his car seat. (No matter how tight I made the straps. The child is Houdini!) There was nothing we could do about it and nothing stopped him. So we finally just let it go. I know, this is terrible parenting, but I still haven't figured out how to stop him. Fortunately, he hasn't figured out how to undo the buckle, so he couldn't get out of the seat.
Around 7:15pm MST we pulled into Dad and Susie's house. Tess was EXHAUSTED and wanted nothing to do with Grandma, much to Grandma's dismay. We quickly put her to bed and unpacked, while the boys ran around like crazy banshees. They were SOOO happy to get out of that car!
And so were we.
4 comments:
Wow! I completely commend you on all the work you put into preparing activities for your trip. I saw all those great ideas on Pinterest, but had no time to implement them. I learned a trick from a friend with 5 kids, and we tried it out...it worked like a charm. I gave Logan and Avery each a roll of quarters in a ziplock bag with their name on it. I had my own container, and whenever they acted up, whined, fought, etc. they had to give me a quarter. Then whatever they had left they could use for spending money on our trip. It was awesome. They also watched a LOT of movies. We drive every summer, so my kids are pretty used to being in the car. I feel fortunate. Good luck on the way home!!
I definitely do not envy you but at least you sruvived :) I just wanted to add that although Perkins is by no means fine dining, I have always considered it Denny's equivalent and have always had a positive experience at the one here (granted, different country and all, but still :))
If it's any consolation (regarding Cole's Houdini-like escapee talents), when we drove to Utah last Christmas I kept having a little face appear over my shoulder--our 3-year-old constantly unbuckled himself and then would very quietly sneak around the car. At one point I turned around and he was asleep on the floor. Awesome parenting, right? And another time I only wised up to the fact that he was unbuckled and standing at the window watching the "scenery" go by when he forgot himself in his joy at actually seeing a train.
and btw--I am totally going to do some of these genius ideas the next time we drive out. I especially loved the lap desk and good behavior clothespins!
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